Vol. XXXIII · Modern Techniques and the Frontier Plate 10 of 11open questions, kitchen myths, searing seals in juices, resting meat, wok hei, flavour pairing, MSG, alcohol burning off, salting beans, umami, evidence, science of cooking, what is settledF

Open Questions.

"Sear the meat to seal in the juices" was printed in cookbooks for a century after Justus von Liebig proposed it in the 1850s. It was never true. Other kitchen beliefs are still being tested.

Cookery is full of rules passed from cook to cook. Many are sound and were explained later; some were wrong, and some are still uncertain. Settled against: searing does not seal meat — seared meat loses at least as much juice as unseared, and the crust is there for flavour (VIII.1, XVIII.3); alcohol does not all evaporate in cooking — after an hour of simmering about a quarter may remain; salting the soaking water does not toughen beans, it softens their skins (XX.8); and in double-blind trials monosodium glutamate taken with food does not cause the "Chinese restaurant syndrome" once attributed to it. Settled for: umami is a basic taste, with its own receptor (XI.5).

Still open, or only partly understood: wok hei (XV.5) — the seared, smoky taste of restaurant stir-fries — is attributed to Maillard and caramel reactions at very high temperatures, to droplets of oil igniting in the flame above the wok, and to smoke compounds, but there are few direct studies; resting meat (II.9) reduces juice lost on carving modestly in some tests and hardly at all in others, and carry-over cooking matters as much; the "flavour pairing" hypothesis that ingredients sharing aroma compounds taste good together fits Western recipes statistically but East Asian cuisines tend to do the opposite, so it is at most one principle among many. A good cook treats these as hypotheses to test at the stove. The workshop sorts the claims.

Below: common kitchen claims sorted by the state of the evidence — settled for, settled against, or still open — with the evidence for the claim you choose.

What you will learn
Workshop
Evidence summaries from the cited sources and the course's plates: McGee (searing), USDA retention factors (alcohol), Geha et al. 2000 (MSG), Nelson et al. 2002 (umami receptor), Ahn et al. 2011 (flavour pairing). "Open" means the mechanism or size of the effect is not settled in published studies.

Hypotheses to test at the stove

The settled cases teach a habit: a plausible explanation repeated for generations can still be wrong, and a simple experiment — weighing seared and unseared steaks after cooking, measuring the alcohol left in a stew — settles it. The open cases are invitations. Anyone with a thermometer, a scale and patience can test whether resting changes the juice on their board, or whether a pairing suggested by shared aromas actually pleases their guests.

How to test a kitchen claim: change one thing only; cook both versions side by side with the same ingredients; weigh or measure what you can (juice lost, temperature, time); taste blind — have someone else serve the two in unmarked dishes; repeat at least twice; and write it down (XXXII.10). This course has tried to say, on every plate, which numbers are measured, which are exact arithmetic and which are teaching values. Keeping that distinction is the most useful thing a cook can take from the science.

At the stove

Test one claim: weigh two equal steaks, sear one before and cook the other without searing to the same temperature, rest both, and weigh again.

Justus von Liebig's 1850s theory that searing "seals" meat was repeated by Escoffier and Mrs Beeton; experiments in the 1930s already showed it was false, yet the phrase survives in recipes today — a reminder of how long a good-sounding explanation can outlive the evidence.

Terms

Settled
Supported or refuted by consistent evidence.
Open question
Mechanism or size of effect not yet established.
Blind tasting
Tasting without knowing which version is which.
Kitchen myth
A widely repeated claim that evidence does not support.
Settled false: searing seals in juices; alcohol burns off; MSG syndrome; salt toughens beans. Settled true: umami is a basic taste. Open: wok hei, resting, flavour pairing. Test claims one change at a time, measured and blind.

Sources

  1. H. McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, 2nd ed., Scribner, 2004.
  2. USDA, Table of Nutrient Retention Factors, Release 6 (2007): alcohol retained — flamed about 75 %; baked or simmered 15 minutes about 40 %, 1 hour about 25 %, 2½ hours about 5 %.
  3. R. S. Geha et al., "Review of alleged reaction to monosodium glutamate and outcome of a multicenter double-blind placebo-controlled study", Journal of Nutrition 130 (2000) 1058S–1062S: no consistent reactions to MSG taken with food.
  4. G. Nelson et al., "An amino-acid taste receptor", Nature 416 (2002) 199–202: the T1R1 + T1R3 receptor responds to glutamate, confirming umami as a basic taste.
  5. Y.-Y. Ahn, S. E. Ahnert, J. P. Bagrow and A.-L. Barabási, "Flavor network and the principles of food pairing", Scientific Reports 1 (2011) 196: Western recipes tend to combine ingredients sharing flavour compounds; East Asian recipes tend to avoid it.