Math? Really? That answer has always frustrated me. Firstly, because math has been a lifelong nemesis. Numbers, no matter if they are in dollar form, ratios, percentages, sale prices, or weights and measures, apparently are processed in a part of my brain that is lacking in dendritic density. No matter how simple the calculation, I have to write it down, study it, do it wrong a few times, get frustrated, do it again, and then it all makes sense...maybe. (F'rinstance, yesterday Nik was explaining the cell phone plan options that he was considering...a $129 cancellation fee with a 10% monthly discount versus the new plan which was cheaper monthly but required an activiation fee of blah blah blah. It was like he was speaking some illogical foreign tongue. I felt like my brain actually turned off after about 30 seconds of listening to him.)
But the math conundrum is not the most irritating part of the chemistry=math answer. Maybe I am naive, but I thought that chemistry was learning about the elemental components of everything. For a fact freak like me, what could be more interesting than that? To learn how a relative handful of stuff can be combined to create everything in the world...well that pretty much sounds like the key to all knowledge, doesn't it? I admit that the numbers and letters on the Periodic Table of Elements are quite meaningless to me...but I do understand the basic concept behind it and that excites me. It's a Table of What Could Be. (So you can see my disappointment when someone throws cold H2O on this excitement by reducing it all to dreaded Math.) I keep threatening to take a Chemistry 101 class at the local community college...just to prove to these Math Terrorists, and myself, that there is more to Creation than math, hopefully.
Take pastry cream, for example...it's all about chemistry. Pastry cream is 1) a stirred custard and 2) one of a baker's multi-use items. Peek down to the recipe below, step #5, and you will see that it instructs you to let this mixture of eggs and milk bubble and cook for a minute. WHAT? Anyone who has ever made breakfast knows that cooking eggs till they bubble will create scrambled eggs and not a luscious creamy custard. Enter Chemistry.
Pastry cream contains eggs, sugar, milk, and cornstarch. While the temperature in the saucepan is rising, the egg proteins are unravelling from compact little pearls of albumin into long graceful strands that sweep and swirl around in the liquid surrounding them. In a concentrated mixture, just a bowl of eggs say, these unravelled proteins would bond (a chemistry term) with each other quickly, firmy, and efficiently (think scrambled eggs). But the milk in the pastry cream formula dilutes the mixture, putting more space and stuff between the egg-protein molecules (Molecules? Chemistry again). Think of it like this...10 kids playing Marco Polo in a kiddie pool are bound to find each other quickly...Game Over. Put those same 10 kids in an Olympic sized swmming pool and that game could go on all day (ugh). But there's more chemistry here...the sugar in the mixture coats the proteins (there are several thousand sugar molecules for each lonely protein molecule) making bonding less likely when the proteins do get close to each other.
Of course, ultimately the proteins will bond (because that's the whole point in cooking them) BUT, just like those kids in the pool, there is alot of liquid slopping around in the spaces between the proteins. And that's why we add cornstarch to pastry cream. As the mixture is heating and the proteins are unravelling and shouting out "Marco" and "Polo" to each other, the cornstarch is likewise getting hot and it starts to sweat its guts out. Cornstarch sweats a thickening agent that floats through the pastry cream mixture and via "hydrogen bonding" (Chemisty!) it captures water molecules. And the hotter it gets (until around 200 degrees) the more it sweats and the more water it traps. The mixture thickens as the water is trapped and the proteins bond, and that's when you turn the heat off and chill those hard working, exhausted molecules. Ahh yes, just as I thought...Chemistry is possible without Math, but Cooking is all about Chemistry.
Salt 1/4 tsp
Vanilla 1 1/2 tsp
Butter 2 oz