Because french fries are good hot but disgusting when cold
Because french fries are good hot but disgusting when cold - Woe to letting the french fries get cold on the plate. They are no longer crunchy and therefore become inedible. Explanation? Chemistry question.
Woe to letting the french fries get cold on the plate. They are no longer crunchy and therefore become inedible. Explanation? Chemistry question.
Everyone likes french fries but as soon as they get cold they're really bad. Because? The problem lies in the chemistry, i.e. in the drastic change of structure that occurs with the change in temperature. Matt Hartings, a chemist at the University of Washington (USA) explains why french fries are tasty when hot and crunchy and disgusting when cold: the large percentage of starch naturally contained in potatoes is palatable for our palate when it is very hydrated.
You can imagine starches as if they were made up of small crystal spheres: at high temperatures, when the potato chips fry in oil, the water penetrates these spheres and fills them.
This is the moment of maximum hydration of the structure, which therefore represents the peak of the taste of fried potatoes. However, once the heat is exhausted, the water comes back out of the crystals and settles on the surface of the chip, making it soft and moist, dispelling its crunchiness and changing its flavour. Even the aroma, which also plays a very important role, disappears completely as the temperature drops.
