TheBanyanTree: Is there a food chemist in the tree?

[tobie at shpilchas.net]

First of all:  CORRECTION ———  My spell check monster mangled some things.  I particularly enjoyed this:

"ParParvicevice"      ………… um.   no.    It’s:  Parvice, as was correctly noted later in my little S.O.S.

And now:

	Thank you JulJulieJul for your informative and elevated dissertation on the question of meringue.  I’ll have to check out the Great British Bakeoff.  (next time someone bothers me extremely, I’m going to say, "Oh go BAKEOFF, buster!")  I thought of the pH.  But I don’t think that’s it, or at least that’s not all.  I looked up the pH of all the fruits I’ve used and they all hover around the 3.0 - 4.0 range.  All the berries worked no matter how acidic.  The cranberries poofed up beautifully just as did the raspberries and strawberries.  I’ve tried with a batch of blackberries and that worked as well (though the billion tiny seeds are hell when frozen, so NIX on the blackberries).  It’s berries berries berries that work the best of any of the fruits and all had roughly the same pH.

Here’s what goes into the mix:

egg whites and sugar beat the hell up —— the amount of egg white and sugar never vary from fruit to fruit.
lemon juice —— amount never varies
berries or other fruit  ________ amount never varies no matter what kind of fruit

	Liquid content probably isn’t it either, because for instance strawberries are fairly dry compared to raspberries and the cranberries were quite dry.  Yes, some of the fruit gets mushed and is liquidy.  But pineapple, which was very very liquidy didn’t whip up a frenzy like the berries did.  It worked, kind of — better than mangoes which were just as juicy.  Cherries were the worst in terms of juice — the entire kitchen was thoroughly cherried. I was finding bits of cherries all over the house for days.  (Hmmm. Maybe it’s the flies they attract!).  There were times when I thought: oh this is NOT going to work. Look at all that liquid. How could those egg whites hold up and not collapse?  But if it was berries, it worked.

	It’s something inherent in berries that is not present in other fruits.  I should line up the fruits I’ve used in order of how well it worked (volume and airiness of the result) and go from there.  Or maybe I should call the University of California’s chemistry department.  We have some nobel laureates here. I’d love to throw some raspberries at them.  But it could be that a culinary school would be the best bet.  And we’ve got plenty of that here, too.

	Onward!  Any help would be appreciated.

And I’d love that recipe, Julie.  Cooking is my main outlet now.

Your perplexed kitchen gadget,

Tobie




> On Sep 17, 2018, at 7:19 AM, Teague, Julie Anna <jateague at indiana.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear Tobie,
> 
> I'll take a stab at it. I'm not a food scientist, although for all of the hours I've spent watching The Great British Bakeoff, I should be.  Or maybe I COULD be if I'd spent all those hours in an actual food science class.  In fact, I just binge-watched season 5 this weekend while waiting for the new puppy to make the motions which indicate she needs to pee or poo.  She's twelve seeks old, so that's pretty much all I got done all weekend.  There was one whole show about making meringues in this season, so again, you'd think I'd have learned something.  I do know that they added many flavors to the meringues, but mostly in the form of natural flavor extracts.  The fruit was usually added to the top, or in some other layer of jelly or sponge that paired with the meringue, the most notable being peach and prosecco which sounded to die for.  I, myself, have made brown sugar flavored baked meringue with strawberries and non-pareve whipped cream on top, and I make meringue cookies with peppermint flavoring and mini chocolate chips and topped with crushed peppermint candies.  These, my friend, are amazing crunchy bundles of deliciousness, and I'll send the recipe when I can find it if anyone is interested. 
> 
> But back to your dilemma.  There may be a couple of things going on here. First, I do know that lower pH helps stabilize the egg white foam.  This is one reason some people put a little lemon juice or cream of tartar in the meringue.  But most fruits come down on the acidic side of 7 (neutral pH) and are somewhere in the same neighborhood, pH-wise, so I don't know if this would cause a big difference. 
> 
> So, thoughts two and three. First, thought number two: sugar.  More sugar generally helps hold more air in the meringue.  Maybe you are adding more sugar with the tart berries, and less sugar with other fruits?  Or maybe not, if you are following a precise recipe with the same amount of sugar each time.  But it's a thought. 
> 
> Secondly, thought number three: liquid.  Do you pulverize the fruit in both situations?  When I make pies with blueberries or strawberries, for instance, they can be pretty juicy, so I add a bit of corn starch tapioca flour or  something binding like that.  But when I make pies with peaches, they are insanely juicy.  So juicy that the bit of starchy flour doesn't help much, so I add tapioca, the kind you make pudding out of.  Based on this observational evidence, I'm wondering if the other fruits you are trying are adding much more moisture to the meringue--so much moisture that the proteins in the egg whites can't do their thing as effectively.  So, I don't know...maybe drain other fruits a bit more and try that? 
> 
> That's all I got, but I do hope my valiant efforts have earned me the recipe!  
> 
> Julie  
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TheBanyanTree <thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com> On Behalf Of tobie at shpilchas.net
> Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2018 10:34 PM
> To: A comfortable place to meet other people and exchange your own *original* writings. <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com>
> Subject: TheBanyanTree: Is there a food chemist in the tree?
> 
> It’s Sunday here, still the 16th of September (my least favorite month)
> 
> 
> Say folks,
> 
> 	I am puzzled. Some would say I am perplexed. But we’ll leave that to Spinoza.  I am trying to figure something out to do with cooking.  And I am doing that while the dinner is waiting to come out of the oven (some of it is on the stove, some in the fridge).  
> 
> 	I make a thing for Jewish holidays that I call, "ParParvicevice".  That’s an abbreviation for Pareve (pronounced: PAR-veh) Ice Cream.  Pareve is the middle ground for the "do not mix meat and milk" Godly edict.  You know, from the biblical commandment: do not boil a calf in its mother’s milk.  (Yes. A great part of Kashruth has to do with that little sentence in the Torah. See, we have a 5,000 year old case of OCD and here we are.)  ANYWAY.  Parvice is a non-dairy ice cream that can go with either a milchik meal or a fleyshik meal (milchik = dairy — fleyshik = meat). Pareve, as I said is the in between. It can go with either in a meal.  Fish is also pareve. Go figure.  Ask a vegan.
> 
> 	Honest, this Parvice is astonishingly good.  It’s like eating a sweet cloud.  I make it with whipped egg whites and usually berries.  Imagine a cloud of strawberries you can consume, not too calorious either.  Okay.  So here’s where the food chemist comes in.  For some reason, berries of any kind (so far) : strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, blackberries, etc. work beautifully. The egg whites and sugar whip up so that two measly little egg whites makes almost two whole gallons of parvice.  BUT. If I try this with other fruit, it doesn’t work.  Well, it will kind of.  But it’s denser and won’t fluff up.  It’s an intense work out.  Good, but not what I aimed for originally (though I’ll say that the chocolate Parvice knocked my socks off, so dense and chocolatey).
> 
> 	So what is it about berries and the whipped egg whites.  It’s the only difference in the recipe.  When it’s berries, it works.  When it’s other fruit: stone fruit, pineapple, mangoes, anything else, and it doesn’t fluff up.  What’s in berries that reacts with the rest of the ingredients?  Tell me and I’ll give you the recipe.  You yourself will have your socks knocked off for one fraction of the calories and zero fat.
> 
> Tobie
> 
> and the dinner calls me
> 
> "Might makes right."     Old proverb
> 
> "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."    Matthew
> : 5:5
> 
> "Make a fist."     Phlebotomist to patient
> 
> 
> Tobie Shapiro
> tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>
> 
> 
> 
> 


"What are you?"
c.1951, Silver Spring Maryland
standard introduction line in the schoolyard



Tobie Shapiro
mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net