Week 1: Fooding With My Mind: Harvard Style

If you want to build a better chocolate chip cookie, you'll have to learn how to compute the number of molecules in baking soda using Avogadro's number (6.02214129(27)×10²³ mol). Then calculate how much carbon dioxide the baking soda will produce in a chocolate chip recipe.

That's just a taste of a free online course through Harvard: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science. Will you learn amazing truths? Absolutely. Is there a killer molten chocolate lava cake recipe waiting to be discovered, a better french fry, perfect scrambled eggs? Oh yes.

Can you do the math for chemistry, physics and engineering concepts as they relate to food? Does your calculator handle big numbers? Can you grab a study buddy who loves this stuff? If the math is a deal-breaker (I understand, believe me), audit the class. Give it the old college try. Learning enlightens the soul (and food will lift your spirits).

The weekly lectures are insightful and full of "a-hah!" moments - as you would expect from Harvard. There are top-tier chefs too famous and too many to mention, but you've heard of Ferran Adria of El Buli fame? He's part of the lecture series. Supplementary reading comes from Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen." 

Note to self: Buttering the inside of a ramekin and sprinkling it with sugar does NOT give the souffle something to cling to as it rises, says McGee. Stop saying this in my French pastry classes.

Many giants in the industry lend their expertise, demonstrating techniques you've likely heard of but never seen - like popping marshmallows into liquid nitrogen, then straight into the mouth; carbonating cocktails; using gelation to make olive oil gummies. Sous-vide tricks. Explained!

For an easy overview to fire your interest, here are my takeaways, starting with the first week.

Week 1: 

Heavy on the history of food science, with a good anecdote about German chemist  Justus von Liebig, who accidentally changed the way the world cooked steak. He believed the juices mattered more than the meat fibers, deciding one must cauterize the steak with high heat to seal in the juices. Even the French went along with it; today we take a much gentler view of how to treat both fibers and juices to avoid shoe leather.

You'll hear of Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford; he invented the modern oven. There's the turn of the century Poison Squad - tasked with eating some of the most commonly used food additives to study the effects. (One wonders if they had T-shirts with the words "None but the brave can eat the fare.") Members would eat increasing amounts of an additive, tracking the impact on their bodies until they started to get sick. Read more in the Esquire article The Poison Squad: An Incredible History.

You'll learn how new thoughts and ideas developed - from how to finish sauces with meat extracts to the first electric blender. You'll take the journey from cooking via the bounty of nature to Adria's bounty of the imagination.

You'll mull the first Equation of the Week (in a collection of 10 equations): 1 mole = 6.022 x 10²³ molecules.

Each week, you'll discover a new equation that typifies the main concepts presented, and you'll work through problems using that equation. There are mini quizzes, weekly homework problems and labs. No tests. Memorize that.

Number of pages of notes I took in the first week: 22 
(awright, so I don't know a molar mass from a molecule).

Next up: Energy, temperature and heat in Week 2.