The 10 key principles of cooking
Understand these ten processes and you understand most of what happens when you cook and bake.
For anyone who wants to start with the fundamentals
- Evaporation
Where it all begins: as long as there is water, nothing gets hotter than 100 °C.
- Heat conduction
How heat gets into food at all, and why the outside cooks faster than the inside.
- Maillard reaction
From 140 °C you get what we love as the smell of roasting and a brown crust.
- Caramelisation
The Maillard reaction's relative: sugar on its own turns brown and aromatic.
- Proteins change (denaturation)
Why meat, fish and eggs cook through, and why they turn dry when cooked too long.
- Connective tissue turns into gelatine
The opposite: tough meat needs time until its connective tissue melts.
- Starch gelatinisation
What thickens sauces, softens potatoes and makes risotto creamy.
- Emulsion
How oil and water hold together: mayonnaise, vinaigrette, hollandaise.
- Gluten development
The network in dough that makes bread rise and can make cake tough.
- Osmosis: salt and sugar draw out water
Why salt draws out water, and what that means for when to salt.
Test yourself
Why does a wet steak not brown in a hot pan?