Cooking & Food Science Science Projects (80 results)
Who doesn't love food? It's fun to make, it's fun to eat, it's fun to ...study? That's right! There is a lot of science that goes into the everyday foods that you love. Explore questions such as how baking ingredients work, how and why certain ingredients mix well together, and why people's tastes differ.
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When you think of successful inventions from the 1900's that have dramatically changed how people live, what comes to mind? The car? Radio? TV? The computer? What about the microwave oven? You might not remember a time when microwave ovens were not a standard part of most kitchens, but your parents or grandparents probably do. They can remember when heating leftovers took a good 30 minutes in a traditional oven. Or thawing a food from the freezer meant leaving it in the refrigerator overnight.…
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Has a milk-based soup, sauce, or gravy ever curdled on you (formed lumps) as you were preparing it? Curdling is the process of coagulation that occurs where the proteins in the milk clump together. Sometimes curdling is desirable—for example, if you want to make a delicious cheese or yogurt—but if you are trying to make a milk-based soup or gratin, or if you're adding milk to a hot drink, curdling is very unwanted because you lose the smooth, creamy texture. Nobody likes clumps and…
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Peanut butter is a popular ingredient in sandwiches, cookies, and many other common foods. In this cooking and food science fair project, you will roast peanuts in the oven at 350 degrees for 20, 30, and 40 minutes to produce variable levels of color and flavor. Roasting not only adds complex flavors to the peanuts, but it also destroys enzymes that produce off-flavors.
Each lot of roasted peanuts will be used to make a batch of peanut butter. You will evaluate each batch of peanut butter for…
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Brrrr, freezing cold! It's the worst nightmare of any fresh fruit or vegetable! If the produce in your kitchen had legs, they would run in a panic every time the freezer door opens. Why? Well, freezing temperatures are not kind to fresh produce. Freezing kills the plant tissues and alters them on both a chemical and physical level. Chemically, the enzymes in the produce become more concentrated and do not work normally, so that discoloration, off-flavors, vitamin breakdown, and toughness may…
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French fries, hash browns, mashed potatoes with gravy, potato latkes, there are so many things to make with the humble potato. The potato is a tuber from the perennial plant Solanum Tuberosum of the Solanaceae family. There are actually about 5,000 varieties of potatoes, but most of them can be traced back to the original potato from southern Peru. This single ancestor originated more than 10,000 years ago. In addition to being high in vitamins and minerals, potatoes have a varying amount of…
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Spicy fried tofu. It's a delicious and savory main dish at many Asian restaurants. Stab a golden-brown piece, bite into it, and the juice inside rushes out, filling your mouth with rich flavors. Continue eating and you find the texture is very chewy and meat-like. Did you ever wonder how those white blocks of tofu you see in grocery stores are transformed into the chewy little sponges packed with flavorful juices you see in Asian restaurants? Try this cooking and food science fair project to…
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When you open a can of green beans, have you ever wondered why the beans are not mushy, or more like a puree? Canning requires boiling the beans for a long period of time to kill bacteria, so why don't the beans fall apart into small pieces? Some fruits and vegetables—like cherries, apples, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, beans, cauliflower, and tomatoes—have the ability to undergo hardening, or firming of their plant tissues. A special enzyme, called pectin methyl…
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Whipped egg whites are used in many sweet and savory recipes. They are used to add air into cake batters, meringues, and soufflés. Egg whites, also known as albumin are 15 percent protein dissolved into water. When egg whites are beaten or whipped, the protein chains unravel. This is called denaturation. The process of whipping egg whites adds air to the mixture, in addition to denaturing the proteins. The denatured proteins create bonds with each other and trap air bubbles within…
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It's the bottom of the ninth, and you've spent a great afternoon at the ball game with a hotdog, a soda, and an ice cream in hand, but I'll bet you're not thinking about how many crops went into those classic baseball snacks. Sure, the bun contains wheat, but did you know that the hotdog might contain wheat, too? And soybeans may have been used to give that ice cream its perfectly smooth texture, while corn was likely used to sweeten the entire meal! Crops can be changed and added to processed…
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What is cooking? Cooking is applying heat to food in order to help make it taste good. But the decision to cook your food doesn't end there. Do you want to cook it at a low temperature for a long time or do you want to apply high heat and cook or sear it right away? You might think that a pot is just something in which to cook your food, but it is also a cooking tool. Pots and pans are made from different kinds of materials, such as aluminum, stainless steel, iron, and ceramics. Each of these…
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