There is a lot of confusion about the differences between compotes,
jams, jellies, marmalades, spreads, etc., all sweet things cooked for
our pleasure.
To get off on the right foot, this guide is first of all a lexicon of names for the various sorts of jams.
More analysis of particular jams will be added gradually, as we discover more about the very best jams and jellies in the world.
To learn more about these sweet things, follow the guide!
To minimize the lost of juices when cooking, sear the meat quickly. True or false?
This idea, introduced by Justus von Liebig around 1850 and later embraced by contemporary cooks and cookbook authors, is not true. Simple experimentation showed that seared roasts lost the same amount of moisture or more.
Nonetheless, it remains an essential technique in cooking meat for several reasons:
To learn more on this subject:
von Liebig, Justus. 1850. Researches on the Chemistry of Food.
McGee, Harold. 2004. On Food and Cooking (Revised Edition). Page 161, "The Searing Question".
Searing in Wikipedia.
Does Searing Meat "Seal In" Juices? More controversial materials in About.com Culinary Arts.
Increasing aroma intensity reduces bite size, making for smaller mouthfuls. So the stronger the aroma, the smaller the mouthful.
This intriguing observation is of interest to the food industry, nutritionists and anyone concerned about the quantity of food eaten.
Want to reduce the quantity of food you eat? Give it more flavour! Now that’s something to chew on!
Molecular gastronomy has been defined by molecular gastronomy pioneers Kurti and This as the scientific discipline that studies the physical and chemical processes that occur during cooking. Molecular cooking is the style of cuisine inspired by the knowledge acquired in molecular gastronomy.
They have been challenged by other scientists (see article by Ole G. Mouritsen) to change the name of this new science to gastrophysics, as that term is more representative of the domain covered.
Whatever the name of this new science, it will have a tremendous future impact on how we choose ingredients, and how we prepare and serve food.
This new science can have a disruptive effect, given that it calls into question what has been regarded for centuries as standard cooking practice. To be continued…
E-commerce in Canada is growing steadily. The volume of transactions to consumers (B2C) now exceeds 100 million transactions per year, and the total value of retail sales exceeds 15 G$ per year.
Contrary to popular opinion, in relative terms this volume reflects the same level found in the United States. However, buying foodstuffs online is not very popular in Canada, but the percentage of online shoppers in this domain is constantly growing.
Large retail stores like Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, Costco and Sears have all begun to offer online sales of their products, which will have a significant impact on adoption of online shopping by Canadian consumers. They have also started to offer foodstuffs online and as they do, they will radically modify our food shopping habits.
In Canada, fine food products are produced by small producers who are not well organized and have not succeeded in adopting common tools for optimizing the production and marketing of their products. This situation will be corrected in the near future.
These new customers who are looking for top-of-the-line food products should be able to find them on OGourmet web site.
Looking for nutrition and the ingredients of food items? Do you have an iPhone?
Then the FoodFacts.com app is just what you need! Search for products by keyword or ingredient, browse food categories, or scan a product's bar code for more information about that product.
And it’s free!
The Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between an amino acid and a reducing sugar, usually requiring heat. It is vitally important in the preparation or presentation of many types of food, and, like caramelization, is a form of non-enzymatic browning.
In the process, hundreds of different flavour compounds are created. These compounds, in turn, break down to form yet more new flavour compounds, and so on. Each type of food has a very distinctive set of flavour compounds that are formed during the Maillard reaction. It is these same compounds that flavour scientists have used over the years to create artificial flavours.
Food products like caramel made from milk and sugar, roasted coffee, roasted meat, maple syrup, etc., get their particular flavours from this process. It is highly sensitive to temperature and the presence of other chemicals (ingredients) and will result in the creation of different compounds (flavours) with slight variations of these parameters. The whole process is still not yet completely understood.
What does it mean for cooks and gourmet lovers?
First, the list of ingredients on a product label is not at all a guarantee of the flavours that the product contains. For example, you may find big differences in flavour between caramels even if they all contain only milk products and sugar.
Secondly, some producers, sensitive to this issue by experience or by knowledge, have tested hundreds of variations to find out the most delicious one and have created a procedure and controls to produce the same good results systematically.
That is what marks the difference between run-of-the-mill products and those produced by meticulous artisans and connoisseurs. OGourmet is doing its best to discover these outstanding products and to let you enjoy them with confidence.
Interested in producing your own Maillard reaction? This recipe is for you: Foie gras on maple tiles.
Most people know brown rice when they see it, but what about all the other grains?
It’s one thing to rattle them off, but it’s an entirely different matter to know their various nutritional profiles and how to cook them. Then there’s the confusion of defining or classifying grains, as some grains that we call grains are not.
To become an expert on grains in 5 minutes, read Official grains of Canada from The Canadian Grain Commission.
A whole-grain glossary from Carrie Floyd in Culinate.
Or Tips for Grain Products from Health Canada.
Honey has a long history as a comestible and is used in various foods and beverages as a sweetener and flavouring.It has also played a religious and symbolic role in various cultures.
Wild honey has been gathered for human consumption since the Stone Age. Cultivation of honeybees began during the Bronze Age, and the Egyptians kept beehives 5,000 years ago. In South America, the Aztecs and Mayans raised domesticated stingless bees for honey.
Honey contains less calories than sugar (64 calories against 84 for 20 g). It has the same glycemic index but it provides more antioxidants.
To learn more, read Food Facts on Honey from Foodland Ontario.
Try the Honey with Orange Flavouring from Caprices d’Angéline, Quebec.
Suckling pigs have more crackling when the head of the pig is cut immediately after being roasted. True or false?
Surprisingly it’s true, with test results published in Scientific American Magazine1. Blind tasting by 143 people confirmed that the skin of pigs with the head cut was crispier!
Why? Here is what researchers found.
“The underlying mechanism was easily discovered, as it was observed during cooking that in one pig a stream of vapour was escaping from a hole made during preparation.
Heat evaporates water from the surface of the meat during cooking, making the crust. Vapour formed inside the meat is not enough to compensate for the loss of surface water.
When the pigs are not heated any longer, the crust softens if vapour goes through. Cutting the head prevents vapour perfusion, as it escapes through the opening”2.
This is a good example of the open-minded approach needed to test such statements.
1 This, H., and N. Kurti, 1994. Physics and Chemistry in the Kitchen. Scientific American, 270, 44–50.
2 This, Hervé. 2005. Modelling dishes and exploring culinary ‘precisions’ – The two issues of molecular gastronomy. British Journal of Nutrition (2005), 93, Suppl. 1, S139–S146.
