Food Science B

[rehabnurse]

thanks for your help, summit (and everyone else).

i know i am not explaining this right. i seriously wish i could just sit with someone for 10 seconds and go over this. trying to type it out is hard.

i get how to plot things. but what I do *not* get, is: how do you know what the cP is? okay, say i put milk through my viscotester. and say, hypothetically, i get 30 seconds. what i cannot figure out, for the life of me, is how do you plot that on the graph? you plot it where the two values intersect on the graph, yes?
but, what is the second value you plot against?

if the only data i have is: 1) milk, and 2) 30 seconds time, how do those two values intersect on the graph, if one axis is time, and the other axis is in cP?!?

ugh, i am so confused, and this is my last week's practice. i have totally failed my kids in this area.

i could understand if one axis was time in seconds, and the other axis was liquid (milk, canola oil, etc). that i get. you would find milk on the one axis, find the time it took in seconds (30 as above example), find the corresponding points, and voila! plotted. however, all the graphs i see have time in seconds on one axis, and cP on the other. what i'm not getting is where/how you find that value, when all you're finding when you test each liquids is *time*.

am i explaining my question enough? you guys are all so helpful, but this is the item i don't get. how do you find cP if what we are measuring in is time?!

i have stayed up all night trying to figure this out, and i am still stumped.

[summit]

thanks for your help, summit (and everyone else).

i know i am not explaining this right. i seriously wish i could just sit with someone for 10 seconds and go over this. trying to type it out is hard.

i get how to plot things. but what I do *not* get, is: how do you know what the cP is? okay, say i put milk through my viscotester. and say, hypothetically, i get 30 seconds. what i cannot figure out, for the life of me, is how do you plot that on the graph? you plot it where the two values intersect on the graph, yes?
but, what is the second value you plot against?

if the only data i have is: 1) milk, and 2) 30 seconds time, how do those two values intersect on the graph, if one axis is time, and the other axis is in cP?!?

ugh, i am so confused, and this is my last week's practice. i have totally failed my kids in this area.

i could understand if one axis was time in seconds, and the other axis was liquid (milk, canola oil, etc). that i get. you would find milk on the one axis, find the time it took in seconds (30 as above example), find the corresponding points, and voila! plotted. however, all the graphs i see have time in seconds on one axis, and cP on the other. what i'm not getting is where/how you find that value, when all you're finding when you test each liquids is *time*.

am i explaining my question enough? you guys are all so helpful, but this is the item i don't get. how do you find cP if what we are measuring in is time?!

i have stayed up all night trying to figure this out, and i am still stumped.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to my Food Science Binder or rules right now. But in the rules book (the official ones from SO that each of you should have) there is a list of ingredients from which to choose when making your viscotester. From what I can remember off the top of my head, it has water at like 1 cP, oil, Hershey's syrup, sweetened condensed milk,...honey at 7,000 cP. So, after you look in the rules book and take note of the cP that SO assigned to each of those liquids, you use those values to correspond to the time of the liquid you tested. Do that for each liquid (time of flow for each liquid corresponding to each of the liquids' cP from the rules. That gives you the graph. Does that help?

[al3201]

Well, if you tested all the items specified in the rule book, then you can make a time vs cP graph. The rule book tells you which liquid is which cP. If you do not the viscosity of milk of first, you would not be able to plot it on the graph. You need predefined viscosities in order to plot your graph. (Make sure you know the volume you are testing. It should stay constant.)

You could then use the graph to find the viscosity of milk, in your example, by finding which cP matches a time of 30.



Here is a scenario:
Say you have liquids of 1(water), 10, 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 cP.
Say you got 10 , 12, 20, 25, 30, 32, and 40 seconds respectively (of course not real data, just a scenario).

Then plot the points respectively, with cP as the x-axis and time ad the y-axis. If you test all of the items you should get a pretty good graph.

[Beastybob12345]

Did anyone else have their viscotester's hole measured for accuracy? I think we got points off because it was "slightly to big"

I made a big hole and a small hole...

[PicturePerfect]

I need help on the effect of ingredients on baked goods. Can someone tell me what too little/too much of each ingredient listed below does?
-Lipids
-Sweeteners
-Flours
-Leaveners
-Water
-Eggs

(For the first 4, I need info on specific types and overall. For example, for Leaveners, what effects do too much/too little baking soda or baking powder have on baked goods? What about leaveners in general? For the last 2, I just need general info.)

Also..
What would cause a pancake or something to be gummy? If it is gummy, does that mean the batter had a high density/low density or high viscosity/low viscosity?

Sorry if it doesn't make sense...

[Beastybob12345]

Um, well I know that if you put to little leavening agents, the item will collapse...

[Skink]

That's why the rules recommend doing your own baking experiments to experimentally determine that for yourself! Impressively enough, one of the best team's binders includes pictures of top, side, and inside views of every manipulation you can think of. I was amazed by it. You probably don't have that kinda time. You can do searches for some of this, though be careful to check to make sure that they're talking generally and not for a specific recipe.

The one I'd worry about most is eggs because they serve several functions and aren't easy to just think through. On the other hand, doubling leavening agents has a VERY obvious effect. You could even guess what that is if you think through what leavening agents do for the baked good. You can think through a lot of these.

Here, I'll give you a sample (sorry, I forgot to take pics ) that teams had difficulty with at Regionals this season. I gave them many cupcakes to ID (with some parameters, of course) what manipulation I made to a basic recipe. For this one, I told them I didn't make any substitutions but, instead, halved something. The cupcake itself was a little browned on the top while a control isn't, and it didn't dome. What did I half? Try to think it through. It's actually a hard problem until you understand what happened. The recipe might help.
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 large eggs
Preheat oven to 350 degrees blah blah blah...

Actually, I lied. I forgot to take pics of all the others! I actually have this batch. Alright!

[PicturePerfect]

@Skink: Ok, first, lemme say: You are amazingly helpful.

Now...
Did you only halve one ingredient? I'll guess milk...? Or maybe baking powder.

Also, do you have any info I could have on eggs? Thanks in advance, even if I don't get any xD

And for leaveners, I meant taste-wise. I know too much baking soda will give a baked good a soapy, bitter flavor (who actually ate soap to figure out what it tasted like? xD), but what about baking powder? Or cream of tartar?

[Gemma W]

I would guess you halved the eggs, because egg helps the gluten hold the structure and the air in, so it would collapse without it, hence the lack of dome.

[Skink]

@Skink: Ok, first, lemme say: You are amazingly helpful. Uh, thanks. That's why we're here, right?

Now...
Did you only halve one ingredient? I'll guess milk...? Or maybe baking powder. Just one. If I did more than one, then we couldn't tell if any effects or changes observed were due to one ingredient or the other. That's why in science we only change one variable at a time. Anyways, let me drop the answer in a hide tag at the bottom for any passers-by to not get 'spoiled'.

Also, do you have any info I could have on eggs? Thanks in advance, even if I don't get any xD Eggs are the only thing on the McDonalds menu that are any good. They come from chickens. They have an air pouch in them. Eggs bought at the store should be refrigerated. There's an egg song, too.
...okay, okay. Eggs at a glance:
Eggs have more calories per serving than most of the other Approved Ingredients (some sweeteners notwithstanding). They have the most protein by a factor of 3 or more than most of the others. This should make sense.
I think I said this above, but eggs serve all of the following functions: emulsification, leavening, providing moisture, structure, and the obvious, like flavor. The rest of the information I have on eggs is a modified version of this Web page. It should be eggsactly what you're looking for!

And for leaveners, I meant taste-wise. I know too much baking soda will give a baked good a soapy, bitter flavor (who actually ate soap to figure out what it tasted like? xD), but what about baking powder? Or cream of tartar? Baking powder doesn't have any weird tastes that I know of. Maybe someone else can hop in. Cream of tartar gives a sweeter, citrus-y taste, the opposite of baking soda, you could say. That should make sense because cream of tartar is acidic.

I would guess you halved the eggs, because egg helps the gluten hold the structure and the air in, so it would collapse without it, hence the lack of dome.

The Halved Ingredient (Click to Show Hidden Text)

Gemma's answer is the one the 'good' teams gave me.  It's good reasoning but, unfortunately, still wrong because that's not what I did.
I halved the flour.  My understanding of what happened there is as follows.  Halving the flour gave the batter 1 1/8 cups flour.  There are 1 1/3 cups sugar in there.  The sugar-flour ratio is way off considering there's now more sugar than flour.  It browned like that because there's too much sugar relatively.
...at least, that's my guess, anyways.