The engineering inside our dishes

For an engineer the real value of a product is not in its molecular composition but in the intrinsic properties derived from the structure that is formed. Nobody cares about the molecules in a cellular phone except that they have to be arranged to receive and emit calls in reliable form. In the case of foods this brings the focus to the “engineering inside the product” rather than on the process engineering of mixing, drying, heating, freezing and so on, which has been the traditional realm of food engineering. The objective of this article is to introduce food scientists, chefs and amateur cooks to basic concepts and terminology used in food materials science, and to give examples of the engineering inside what we eat.