• Question: Why does food smell different when it is cooked

    Asked by bob7057 to Ciara, Elaine, Golnaz, Gonzalo, Yannis, Yvonne on 7 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Gonzalo Delgado-Pando

      Gonzalo Delgado-Pando answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      Cooking is a way of prcessing food, when you cook the food you increase the temperature of that food and with it some chemical reactions happen. For this reactions to happen they might need this temperature boost and that is why the flavour changes.
      Other thing is that you can smell more of a food when is heated up than when is not, this is because with the temperature some particles go to the air and you can smell them easily. It is like boiling water, the water goes from liquid to gas. Well, some particles in the food kind of boil going to the air so we can smell them.

    • Photo: Ioannis Zabetakis

      Ioannis Zabetakis answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      when we cook food, the heat generates lots of new chemical compounds, that we call flavour molecules. These flavour molecules are volatile (i.e. we can smell them) and they carry a nice smell.

    • Photo: Ciara O'Donovan

      Ciara O'Donovan answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      This is due to the heat causing reactions which creates compounds which we can smell. The type of smell will depend on what type of food it is as different reactions will happen when we cook different foods.. for example when we make bread a reaction called the maillard reaction is happening between sugars and amino acids (which make up proteins) which we can then smell as the bread is browning.

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