The Kitchen and the Lab.
We must establish the very fact that every kitchen is in itself a laboratory, and that every meal in turn, an experiment of sorts. Every person who prepares and cooks food in a kitchen is indeed engaging in a highly scientific set of activities and unleashing principles of biology, chemistry, and physics that he or she does not apply as casually in any other part of life, besides the everyday miracle of life itself.
What is the difference then between a science laboratory and the average household kitchen? Is it a matter of scale? Food science is Science above all else, whatever scale it happens on. In the kitchen, our raw materials, animal or vegetable in particular, are products of biology, while the reactions that take place on the plate or during cooking are driven by chemistry, and the laws of thermodynamics determines what happens when we heat, cool, mix, or all the other things we physically do when cooking.
We make use of chemical and physical science casually and in our daily lives when we add salt to our water before boiling, make an emulsification of fats and oils when preparing a simple vinaigrette, or when mixing a marinade for our meat at dinnertime; essentially changing the properties of its organic compounds by altering its surrounding environment.
The kitchen and the lab therefore become one in union, the perfect place to playfully test, demonstrate and create. More precisely, research and experimentation over the past 30 years have changed the way we think about food and flavor themselves. Food scientists have taught chefs that each ingredient has a complex network of chemical structures, called volatile compounds that give each food its own unique flavor. These compounds are responsible for over 80% of what we perceive when we take a bite or a sip.
Our Youth Test Kitchen (YTK) programming was carefully developed and designed for science enrichment classes with experimentation from the kitchen rather than theory as the basic means of explaining the scientific facts and principles behind food preparation and processing, engaging students in their own learning process. Students may then make direct observations that they will frequently see in the kitchen and will be able to learn the science behind these phenomena, with a higher level of understanding and ability to develop further application and extrapolate.
Even the humblest kitchen is a highly sensitive environment, and every meal is an experiment. Throughout the gamut of culinary activities, we exploit scientific properties of food constituents routinely. Our program offers students a hands-on approach to applying the textbook terminology and its conceptual framework learned from their classroom lectures.
Curriculum enrichment courses are focused within three main categories:
Biology
Chemistry
Elective STEAM focus classes
The YTK program aims to continuously develop relevant coursework in integrative biology, covering multiple science disciplines at different scales from the molecule to the entire organism. Our chemistry classes offer focuses on chemical compounds, chemical reactions, conductivity, and/or basic organic chemistry demonstrations with further studies in chemical functional groups.
Developing a playful program is for us essential to link science with the culinary arts. Based on experimentation, our chefs will explain and demonstrate the scientific facts and principles, offering further exploration for a unique, memorable experience for your students.
