[Sca-cooks] Egg yolk was Silly Siense Season...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jul 29, 2008, at 12:45 PM, Johnna Holloway wrote:

> Actually I think Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking (2004) explains  
> this.
> Under
> "Eggs as Emulsifiers
> As we've already seen, cooks can use egg yolks to thicken all kinds  
> of hot sauces.
> The yolk proteins unfold and bond to each other when heated, so form  
> a liquid-
> immobilizing network (p.604). Egg yolks are also very effective  
> emulsifiers, and for a
> simple reason: they themselves are a concentrated and complex  
> emulsion of
> fat in water, and therefore filled with emulsifying molecule  
> aggregates." pp632-633.
>
> He then on page 633 goes into yolks containing LDL's or low-density  
> lipoproteins,
> which in turn are made up of "emulsifying proteins, phospholipids,  
> and cholesterol, all surrounding
> a core of fat molecules." Also the larger egg yolk granules also  
> contain both LDL's and HDL's.
>
> Yolks emulsify best when warm, so maybe a room temp would work best.


Hieatt's comments on this being a cholesterol-based phenomenon seem a  
little oversimplified to me, but it could be involved, and then  
there's the fact that egg yolks are full of lecithin, which is not  
only an emulsifier but also was, as I recall, the primary ingredient  
of the original nonfat cooking sprays.

I'm thinking the pan would need to be warm, to expand and open pores  
in the iron, but not so hot the yolks immediately weld to the surface  
and char.

Adamantius




"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter