0

I am doing a bit of food science research around induction cooktops, and wondered if there are any measurable differences in the cooking outcome when using electric heat vs. gas heat. In specific, gas heat creates a current of air, heated by the gas and carrying water as a combustion byproduct. This air goes past the lip of the cookware, and possibly causes effects due to the change in humidity and air temperature.

Contrast this with induction, where the temperature of the cooktop generally stays within a few degrees of ambient.

So, assuming that the cooking is otherwise identical-- and ignoring any questions about which is easier to use, cheaper to buy, more "traditional", etc...-- are there any known ways by which a chemist could determine if food was cooked on gas vs. induction?

If the answer is yes, taking that a step further, and fully aware of the fact Does using Electric stove vs Gas stove have any difference in food taste? exists[*], could a trained taster possibly discern the difference?

[*] which does not answer my question, as my focus is enquiring about the science not the practical daily usage. I'm looking measurable differences, even when those differences are not noticeable.

Kenn Sebesta
  • 101
  • 2
  • Actually the combustion products of methane contains water, so it's not dry – L.Dutch Mar 16 '23 at 19:23
  • @L.Dutch that is correct, but I'm making an assumption that the relative humidity goes down and so the heated air is locally drier than ambient. It's possible I'm incorrect in that assumption! – Kenn Sebesta Mar 16 '23 at 19:27
  • Whoa, generally in SE we don't vote to close or downvote without leaving explanations, esp. for new contributors. The people who voted to close missed the essential, which is that this question is about the physics of cooking, not about people's personal experiences when cooking w/electric vs gas. – Kenn Sebesta Mar 16 '23 at 21:29
  • Hi Kenn, maybe you can help us understand what you are asking then. As a cooking site, our presumption is that everybody is asking from a culinary viewpoint, and we mostly follow the SE rule that behind each question, there should be a practical problem to solve. We do take physics questions, if there is sufficient culinary angle. So maybe you can explain, what are these "chemical differences" you are looking for? – rumtscho Mar 21 '23 at 08:56
  • @rumtscho thanks for the helpful explanation. I'm researching whether there are any measurable differences in the chemical transformation of food when it is cooked with gas vs. induction. The goal is to tie this into the cultural context of gas vis-a-vis induction, although I absolutely am not taking a side on the US culture war aspect. I've done a fairly deep dive in to the literature via scholar.google.com, and am coming up dry. This seems like low-hanging fruit for academic studies, so I'm a little surprised. I'm guessing that my search approach is what's wrong, so reached out to SE. – Kenn Sebesta Mar 21 '23 at 12:36
  • I am, in a nut shell, looking for a Herve This-ian approach to this question. I'm hoping to find peer-reviewed experiments I can cite on whether there is or is not a physical outcome difference based on the nature of the heat generation. (Ignoring the very specific foods which require direct charring with flame.) And an interesting follow-up is to ask, if there is a difference, how can we leverage that difference in the kitchen for interesting new foods? Or alternatively, how can we minimize it if so desired? – Kenn Sebesta Mar 21 '23 at 12:46
  • I must say I see no low-hanging fruit here, because answering your question requires not a couple of experiments, but a long-term research program, and the way academia works, this one would die at the grant submission stage. This also makes me think that your question is too broad for our site. It is now clear that you are not defining the word "difference" in regard to a purpose. But when you say "chemical difference", that's also not a single metric, in the sense that "difference in weight" would be. It seems that you mean "any possible difference detectable by any tool at the disposal... – rumtscho Mar 22 '23 at 10:19
  • ... of an analytical chemist" - which is an awfully huge field to cover. And then you also expect evidence that the difference would be attributable to a complicated mechanism of action, whose effects are likely to be minuscule in comparison to anything else going on in a pan. The expected effect size is also small (if it were large, we'd have anecdotal evidence for it). This all makes it awfully difficult to research. And the "leverage or minimize" part is irrelevant in practice, even if the effect were noticeable (which it almost certainly isn't) - there are easier ways to change humidity. – rumtscho Mar 22 '23 at 10:26
  • I'll hop over to Chemistry.SE chat and ask the people there to take a look at your question, they will be better judges than I am (or the other cooks here) on what an answer could look like, whether this is indeed as broad as I suspect, and also if they think research exists. – rumtscho Mar 22 '23 at 10:28
  • @rumtscho that is perfectly summed up, thanks! I do see your point about finding funding to do research, but I also am not sure that this isn't very simple research to take a first stab at. So I am hopeful that some engineer somewhere had some undergrads heat some pots and measure the weight of the resultant food. More money investment than that and I think we're on the same page that this would die at the funding stage. – Kenn Sebesta Mar 22 '23 at 16:20
  • I agree that the question is (was) overly broad in the sense that we can never itemize all the possible outcomes. That has now been fixed to ask if there are any *known* outcome differences. This could indeed be better asked on Chemistry.SE (or even left closed as "overly broad"), thanks for looking into it and I look forward to hearing what the answer is! – Kenn Sebesta Mar 22 '23 at 16:21
  • @KennSebesta "known" was kinda implied in the original :) An answerable question would be to ask about the difference in a metric you specify. Also, "had some undergrads heat some pots" - this would be worthless as an experiment. After a metric has been decided, the PI would have to decide on a recipe, then define when the recipe is considered "equivalent" when cooked on the two different sources, then create an exact protocol for preparing the recipe. Then have it cooked a few hundreds to a few thousand times to establish the distribution of outcomes. And then the comparison starts. – rumtscho Mar 23 '23 at 12:54
  • Chemistry would also consider the question too broad, and also wouldn't want to take it without a stated purpose of the measurement - see what their moderator wrote in https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/63225929#63225929. – rumtscho Mar 23 '23 at 12:54

0 Answers0