Thread by @ProfVigeant

’Tis the day before #Thanksgiving, time for more #FoodSci tweets! Up today we have: Dinner rolls, two kinds of dip, finishing the pumpkin pie. Let’s get started! 1/14

Our lovely CSA (Johnny & Leah of Tewksbury Grace) gave us a *lot* of beets this year. We have no #Thanksgiving food traditions for beets, time to make new ones! #FoodSci 2/14

Something that’s come up a lot in #FoodSci class this year is a suspicion of foods that arise from human activity - yes, processed foods, but also foods that have been created by humans such as GMOs. 3/14

Hence, we’ve revisited that nearly everything we eat is human-influenced. Take the humble beet, originally from the Mediterranean basin &have been grown by humans for food for 1000s of years, although apparently originally the leaves were thought of as the good bit #FoodSci 4/14

It is very much the case that the beet-like plants growing wild rarely have the lovely greens or nummy sweet roots that we’re looking for now; thank the Mesopotamians for getting that going. #FoodSci 5/14 More here: pbs.org/food/the-histo…

In any case, I need something new to do with beets, and I discovered one can turn them into dip for bread. Let’s go! First up, steaming them until they’re soft. #FoodSci 6/14

While that happens, please note the mix of golden and red beets. The colors in all beets arise from a chemical class called betalains, the red variant of which is betanin #FoodSci 7/14 (structure from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betalain)

What’s interesting about this chemical is that it’s very different from our other Thanksgiving red-food, the red cabbage, which is red from anthocyanins. They’re shaped rather differently, and while they are both pH sensitive, it’s not exactly the same way. #FoodSci 8/14

P.S. here's an old #FoodSci tweet on red cabbage and pH:

https://twitter.com/ProfVigeant/status/933117142098239495

As can be seen here, adding acid to Betanin also changes color, but lore from pinky-red to blood red. #FoodSci

As you have no-dobut noticed if you’ve ever cooked with beets & red cabbage, betanin is more colorfast & more heat stable. Nice if you’re dying things, less nice if you’re trying *not* to have the kitchen look like murder (it even died the other beets!) 9/14 #FoodSci

To make this dip, the softened beets go into a food processor with garlic, hot pepper, maple syrup, and plain yogurt, as well as spices. And then we’re going to let it sit overnight. Why? 10/14 #FoodSci

Diffusion! Now, just after mixing, flavor compounds are still in their original locations-garlic in garlic bits, capsaicin in pepper bits, etc. Mixing means those bits are dispursed, but at the level of small(~100um) particles, still much bigger than molecules.11/14 #FoodSci

If we want molecules to mix (since flavor works at the level of molecules, that’s a yes)mixing isn’t enough. We also need the compounds of interest to leave where they are (they will, being at high concentration there & low elsewhere)& diffuse throughout the dip.12/14 #FoodSci

P.S. That’s the law of mass action (actually, the movement is in response to a gradient in chemical activity, but ‘concentration’ is a fine substitute most of the time). #FoodSci

I’m compelled by the law of Chem/ChemE profs to say diffusion is a random process.But a random process that starts w/a high concentration in one spot & low concentrations elsewhere will always end up more or less uniform concentration everywhere, given enough time 13/14 #FoodSci

And that’s what we’re after here - right now, you hit a bit of garlic and WOW. Tomorrow, it’ll all be garlic throughout. I think we’re stuck with shocking pink, however. 14/14 #FoodSci

@threadreaderapp unroll the roll!