Food and Science!

So I have been obsessed with this molecular cooking craze for a while now and I bought some ingredients to fuck around with. Being the exhibitionist that I am, I was over excited and wanted to share my experiment with everyone.

What I bought to play with:

Sodium Alginate- This is a thickening agent that is a sodium compound from the cell walls of brown algae.

Calcium Chloride- This is a type of salt usually used in cheese making, and mainly as a dehydrating agent.

So I guess there was no science behind what I did because it was nature at its best doing what it does. I kind of just kept playing around with measurements until i got something awesome.

So I made, in the end some cantaloupe caviar. It was pretty cool. It was:

Cantaloupe juice, strained through sieve

Sodium Alginate

Calcium Chloride

Water

So after juicing and straining the cantaloupe, I added the sodium alginate to the juice and put it in a syringe. Then I added the calcium chloride to like a cup of water. Then I dripped little drops of the juice in the water solution. It was very small amount of everything. I let it sit in there for like 1-2 minutes and moved it to just a plain water bath. It was a really cool texture. The reaction creates a gel on the outside and a liquid center. The gelling is irreversible even to fire. I have extra stuff if anyone wants to play around. I forgot what was all in the sauces they were just like thrown together.

This is what they looked like.