Chemical Cookery

Throughout the STEM Festival, each Year 9 class had the opportunity to have a cooking lesson with Mr Dean. Mr Dean talked about his time as a chef and how he used molecular gastronomy to make his dishes more interesting. We had to recreate spaghetti and meatballs using white chocolate for the spaghetti and raspberry domes for the meatballs! We were teamed in groups of four or five and after a demonstration, we got straight to it. Overall, we all found the lesson really fun (even if some of the dishes didn’t work too well) and it was a great break from our usual lessons! The spaghetti and meatballs tasted great, although the texture was slightly weird! We had to use different chemicals like sodium alginate, calcium lactate and agar agar. The sodium alginate and calcium lactate react together and form a gel. This allows a membrane to form around the raspberry juice and give a pop when bitten into! The agar agar is a setting agent and when heated enough, allows for heat stable jellies to made. This allows the spaghetti to be made using tubes and syringes!

Mr Dean, Science Department

Share!