The Maillard Reaction
Sometimes I read the food article in the Baltimore Sun, and occasionally I'm surprised, perhaps even astounded, to find sciency discussions related to food chemistry and cooking physics. It's even more a delight when the author is attentive and gets it right!
Gosh, this one I clipped a long time ago, but it's still useful. From a piece about the "browning reaction" (i.e., the "Maillard reaction") and its relation to caramelization:
One nice day in 1912 Louis-Camille Maillard, a French chemist, conducted a simple experiment in his lab that turned out to be a shortcut that created meat flavor and meat aroma without any meat. He heated sugar (in the form of glucose) and glycerin (a sweet, syrupy alcohol), and his lab instantly smelled like a kitchen with a faint aroma of roasting meat.
Today we call his discovery the Maillard reaction. It turned out to be the chemical basis of much of our cooking, the most powerful flavor producer in the pot and in the oven. All chefs learn about it early in their training; they also know it as the browning reaction because all foods that acquire the flavor compounds of this reaction also turn brown in the heat.
This was good and commendable, but the author went further and explained how it happens with what I thought was unusual clarity.
The browning reaction is a chemical action between protein (amino acids) and sugars in the food. It needs high temperature, between 300 and 500 degrees. The browning only takes place at and near the surface of the food. Inside the food the temperature is too low and moisture too high for the flavors to develop. However, the myriad, rich flavor compounds from the outside can migrate deep into the food.
According to food guru Harold McGee in his book, "On Food and Cooking," "at least 100 different reaction products" result in browning, many of them flavoring compounds.
Caramelization, the second flavor-inducing chemical reaction, comes into play when the temperature of the food climbs to between 350 and 400 degrees, changing sugars into caramel. This process is a complex chain of chemical reactions producing more than 100 new compounds you don't need to know too much about — but the resulting flavors are something you definitely want to have on your plate.
[Quotations from: George Erdosh, "The golden touch: The chemical reaction of browning foods ignites flavor", from The Chicago Tribune, in The Baltimore Sun, June 2005 (no date specified on the page).]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, The Art of Conversation
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on Monday, 26 February 2007 at 22.53
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This post had me off at Google, wasting a godawful amount of time trying in vain to confirm something. It relates, I think, as magic occuring in a cooking process. But this one is of bit different kind.
Many years ago when I was living in a southern city, a business there would at times make oil from seed. For the life of me I can't recall what seed. Cottonseed, linseed . . ?
Whatever it was, an unmistakable aroma of ham baking in the oven would fill the town. It was so authentic it made mouths water and stomachs growl. I'll bet it helped sell a lot of ham at stores and restaurants, too.
on Saturday, 3 March 2007 at 01.02
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lets hope that this comment actually makes it public, having been trashed 3x afore by your dyspeptic server…
anyway, a chemical comment will usually bring me out.
a Maillard reaction is between a carbonyl oxygen (>C=O) and a nitrogen; in the case of foodstuffs, the carbonyl is usually a ketone or aldehyde form of a sugar molecule, and an amino acid in a protein.
sugar and glycerin do NOT undergo a Maillard reaction. sugars are carbohydrates (carboh, hydrogen and oxygen only), likewise glycerine. No nitrogen present at all. sugar and glycerin can certainly undergo caramelisation, but not a Maillard reaction.
might sound picky (anal retentive? moi?), but the maillard claim in the writing you quote implies transmutation, and short of nuclear reactions, that went out with the alchemists and the philosopher's stone.
we now return to your regularly scheduled blog, already in progress