Understanding food production, whether it’s at home are in a factory, starts with science. Once you have a grasp on some of the more basic science concepts, which you can find below, a whole new world opens up!
Have you ever noticed how fruits and vegetables have a wide variety of colours? The spectrum goes from orange to purple to green to bright red. It’s amazing how nature has developed all these bright and beautiful colours in order…
In the Netherlands we have this one cookie type that’s used for a lot of different dishes. They’re popular for use in cookie pie crusts, ice cream and a bunch of other recipes. Their name: Bastognekoeken, which apparently refers to…
Whenever making caramel, marshmallows, honeycomb or just about any other sugar candy you’ll often find that recipe either tells you to boil a sugar syrup to a certain temperature. Or, they’ll tell you to cook it to a certain stage, for…
Once you’ve peeled your banana, you’d better eat it. If you forget about it and return a few hours later it will have turned an unappetizing brown. Same goes for leaving an unpeeled banana on your counter top for a…
Why is an ice cube rock solid whereas a scoop of Italian gelato is almost liquid like? Even a ‘simple’ popsicle isn’t as hard as a pure water ice cube. Instead you can bite some off quite easily. Isn’t that…
Ever tried to make a simple dressing of olive oil and balsamic vinegar? Noticed that it’s impossible to keep these two mixed without continuously stirring or adding something like mustard? Wondered how food manufacturers are able to do this? If…
Sometimes a term might be so familiar to you that you use it all the time, whereas another person, who doesn’t know that term, has no idea what you’re talking about. When talking about science that can be quite a…
Imagine having the pages of a book, but having no clue in which order they should go. Or having a recipe with only an ingredient list, no instructions on how to make the food. Or having an IKEA cupboard, with…
Within the food industry it is very important to understand how your food will behave. Will it be deformed (too) easily (a muffin), will it flow through a pipe (a pasta sauce), will it stay on your product (caramel topping…
After writing about making your own extracts (vanilla & orange/lemon) and how to use these it is time we start talking more hard core science. What is extraction from a chemists perspective? And is there something we can calculate here?…
Ever read the labels on your food products? If yes, ever wondered how they come to the nutritional values stated on these labels? Or what they mean? Whereas people tend to think these are hard fixed numbers that have been…
Food Science is at the heart of this blog, however, in most cases we’ll be applying food science, assuming you’ve got a basic understanding of the food science concepts. Realizing that not everyone knows these basics, we’ve got a series…
