These past 2 weeks I have been researching and now finally conducting an experiment about Spherification, a part of molecular gastronomy. Molecular gastronomy explained simply combining mad scientist with food, to bring out depths, flavors, temperatures, textures, and more out of food that have never been experienced before. In this particular experiment I attempt to turn apple juice and soda into little roe looking balls. So what is Spherification exactly? Spherification is a technique used in "Modern" cooking, where you transform a liquid, whether it's a sauce or a drink, into a roe like state. The science behind it is that with your liquid of choice, you first add sodium alginate, which looks like protein shake powder. Next you blend them together with your liquid of choice and it turns into a thick syrup look and feel. After that you take your now syrup looking substance, and drip it into a calcium chloride and water bath using a syringe. The calcium chloride reacts to the sodium alginate and makes a thin membrane that solidifies the drops enough to retain liquid. Even though I did not personally try this; if the liquid you are trying to spherify has calcium in it, you need to add some sodium citrate or the liquid will react to the sodium alginate before you even make a sphere. Also you need to add some sodium citrate to your liquid if its pH is higher than 3.6 or else the spherification will fail/not work that well. So overall this experiment was a partial success. I was able to make 2 different kinds of "roe", unfortunately they didn't taste as good as I thought they would. They also had very strong membranes so that wasn't necessarily a good thing, it means that I have to take out the balls quicker. This experiment needed a lot of different materials so that it would work out well. It was also messy to clean up mainly because there was always some of the syrup like substance left. I also did not have any sodium citrate to tweak the pH of both liquids so that might be why they did not taste that good. This is definitely an experiment that I would like to do again and try out other liquids, maybe sauces next time. I also should have some sodium citrate next time I try this experiment if I do it again.
My big take away from this experiment is that doing experiments alone is somewhat tough, mainly because you cannot split the workload and in the end I had Darian, a classmate, assist me in documenting this experiment. I also learned that food science is very intriguing and I am looking forward to doing more in the future. For my first independent experiment I will be doing Molecular Gastronomy, more specifically spherification. The pictures above are paper pre plans of the experiment. I've always wanted to play with food per say so why not do food science for chemistry class?
Next week I will be doing the experiment and will post data and pictures when I am done. |
FehungFor Class of 2015-16 Archives
January 2016
|