Entertaining Food Science

[minoanmiss]

While discussing work related things with my boss I told him the joke about "if it takes 15 minutes to cook at 350 then it takes 1 minute to cook at 5250" He wrote back "lol" and then this nifty explanation:

"In response to your friend, you can tell them that theoretically their answer holds up only partially because the rate limiting factor/step is not the amount of heat being generated rather it is the heat transfer rate, or more precisely the thermal conductivity of what is being cooked. So unless they want a vaporized muffin unfortunately the answer is no, not right :)"

This has been your bit of food science for today!

(Am still giggling)

Comments

[ckd]

:-D

Also also, because "normal" temperature scales don't start from the same zero point "15 minutes at 350F" and "15 minutes at 175C" are roughly the same, but "1 minute at 5250F" and "1 minute at 2625C" are not the same (the latter is ~4750F).

Of course, multiplying temperatures in Kelvin (or Rankine, for those heretics) gives you even more ridiculous results; 15 minutes at 450K/810R would be 1 minute at 6750K/12150R (6475C/11690F) which would vaporize your muffin, oven, kitchen, and body. (Tungsten boils at 5550C! Tungsten!)

I might possibly be overthinking this to avoid work.

[minoanmiss]

This whole comment made me giggle in delight. :D

[squirrelitude]

Let's overthink it more!

I spent a moment trying to figure out if there would be *some* baseline above which you'd get a linear-like effect—but no, it does not appear to be in the cards, for a whole bunch of reasons.

With food, you're going to have a wide variety of chemical reactions that all have different activation energies, so it's a non-starter right there. Each will have a different response curve.

Even more importantly, there are other reactions you want to *avoid* (such as your food pyrolizing into CO2 and ash) so you want to stay *below* the necessary activation energy for those reactions (or at least keep them at a sluggish enough rate that they're negligible.)

OK, so what about "food" that is so simple that there's effectively only one reaction in play (and decomposition from heat isn't likely) such as dissolving salt in warm water, could you see a simple linear relationship? Well, I don't remember enough from college chemistry, but a quick search indicates the temperature response curve for chemical reaction rates is generally *exponential*. Something something Arrhenius equation.

[minoanmiss]

I keep rereadin this and maniacally giggling!

[pameladean]

The phrase "a vaporized muffin" made me laugh and laugh. But that's really interesting and useful information that I might have very theoretically been aware of but hadn't thought through. Food science FTW.

P.

[minoanmiss]

Food science FTW indeed! I remember figuring this out empirically as a kid, but I like having the scientific terminology.

[squirrelitude]

With rapid enough heating (and cooling!) you might be able to peel a potato by thermal ablation. :-P

(You absolutely could do it with a pulsed laser.)

[minoanmiss]

This is GLORIOUSLY GEEKY. If I write another story about The Martian this is going into it.

[cjsmith]

squee! That is delightful!

[cellio]

Yes, heat transfer! Surface area factors in there too, along with density of what's being cooked. It's cool that your boss engaged with it like that.

This reminds me of a story I once heard about some bloke who wanted to rush a grilled cheese sandwich (oven variety, not frying variety). He observed that his oven claimed to reach 800F during its self-clean cycle (aside: I doubt that, but let's go with it), so he could halve the time from his usual 400-degree sandwich.

He forgot that the self-clean locks the door.

Three hours later, he reported, his oven was sparkling clean (modulo a layer of ash), and there was no trace of his sandwich. :-)

[minoanmiss]

ahahahahaah the sandwich was sent off as a burnt offering. BWee.