Chemistry of cooking. Lab report

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Requirements from Prof:

The “Chopped” lab will be the basis for your final exam. Upon completing the dish, you will be required to

write up a paper describing your dish and the chemical/scientific properties and processes that made it

come together. This document contains a rubric describing how you will be graded.

In Lab:

While in lab, there are several important things that you need to do. The first and most important is that

you need to be creative. Your dish can be anything you want: breakfast, appetizer, main course, or

dessert. It is up to you. However, each ingredient needs to be transformed and incorporated into the final

dish. You will be assessed on both the creativity of your dish and your ability to transform each of the

ingredients. I highly suggest that you use the pantry to make a final dish. It will also serve you well to take

photos (during the cooking and of the finished plate) for use in the final report. While you will work with a

partner in the lab, your reports need to be original. You can use the same pictures. I expect that all words,

references, graphs, and illustrations will be unique to your own report.

Written Report:

Formatting The report can be formatted any way you choose. However, it must be at least 2000 words

(not including references) in length and contain appropriate photos, graphs, illustrations, and other

images.

Contents Your report needs to describe the dish that you made. This description should certainly include

a recipe with instructions so that someone else would be able to reproduce your dish. You also need to

adequately describe the chemical/cooking techniques that were required to prepare your dish. I will be

checking to make sure that your report accurately reflects all of the techniques/processes that were used.

I will also be checking to make sure that you adequately describe all of these processes. Remember all

of the topics we covered this semester (hydrophobic/hydrophilic, texture, acid/base, reaction

energetics, changing recipes, and flavor). The adequate description will require references (to

scientific literature or kitchen science cookbooks or kitchen science websites) and will also be bolstered

by the use of diagrams that help to explain these processes. My lectures from the semester can serve as

a template for the types of illustrations/diagrams that can be useful. The infographics in “Why does

asparagus make your wee smell” are also useful. I am not limiting you to these types. Creativity is a good

thing. Most of all, I would like to remind you that this is a chemistry course. I would like you to keep in

mind the types of chemical concepts we have discussed all semester long and I expect that you will

incorporate these concepts heavily into your description of the cooking process.