
An industry dedicated to making foods crispy - sergeant3
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/crispy
======
curuinor
If you read the papers on palatants and food processes destined for animals,
they'll increase consumption by 20, 30% easily.

Check out this patent for a horse nugget, for example:
[https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/63/5b/ef/5e6b6bd...](https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/63/5b/ef/5e6b6bd9325d6d/US20170143002A1.pdf)

So if you take that and realize there's more money in palatants for humans
than in animals, that'll explain an entire obesity epidemic entirely without
any other explanations.

But by dint of this fact, natural flavoring and proprietary crunchification
processes and things like that are the thing which will not go away in the
general movement against food additives. It's essential to the business.

~~~
marmaduke
To be fair the best French baguettes are crunchy and soft at the same time and
have only water, flour, salt, sugar? and yeast, so nothing much to be afraid
of there.

~~~
GuiA
And they require an immense amount of skill to make, which means you can only
find really good bread in communities where a baker artisan can run a
sustainable business. In the age of home grocery delivery, it's an uphill
battle.

The number of bakers in France has steadily gone down over the past half
century or so. It's been going up a bit recently due to the new phenomenon of
upper class white collar workers who quit their job in their 30s to find
meaning in their life to do something more "noble" like baking, but it remains
to be seen what the long term impact of this will be.

You can manufacture Twix and Cheetos at scale, but not baguettes.

~~~
user5994461
It's funny you'd say that, one of the thing that has been killing bakeries for
the past 5 years is the broad adoption of bread making appliances. Small home
appliances where you poor the ingredients, mostly half of water and half of
flour, then it does the whole mixing and cooking by itself in a few hours. The
bread always comes out warm and perfect. Making bread has never been easier.

top sellers on amazon France:
[https://www.amazon.fr/gp/bestsellers/kitchen/57878031](https://www.amazon.fr/gp/bestsellers/kitchen/57878031)

~~~
fma
More like mass produced bread from the grocery store is good enough for busy
lives.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/france-bakery-
bread...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/france-bakery-bread-paris-
normandy-pastry-village-rural-life-a9198686.html)

------
Xcelerate
Food science is really interesting; I've kind of gotten into it as a hobby
lately (having a background in chemical engineering and an obsessive interest
in cooking). Last night I was making some melted cheese for nachos and used
sodium citrate to emulsify the cheese sauce and sodium hexametaphosphate to
sequester the calcium (weird aside: the non-numeric chemical formula for
sodium citrate is NaCHO). It's fascinating to me how much work goes into this
stuff. There are decades worth of research articles studying the effect of
melting salts on cheese.

Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that processed foods don't taste _dramatically_
better than restaurant food considering how much work goes into optimizing
everything. I suppose a large part of this process is not strictly optimizing
for flavor, but rather shelf life and cost among other factors. Although I do
know a lot of Michelin star chefs will use whatever additives are necessary to
make a dish taste as good as possible — at least if they don't have a strict
focus on natural, locally sourced food.

~~~
roel_v
" Last night I was making some melted cheese for nachos and used sodium
citrate to emulsify the cheese sauce and sodium hexametaphosphate to sequester
the calcium "

Can you expand on this for a non-chemist? What's the effect, flavor- or
texture wise, of sequestering calcium?

~~~
phonypc
Smooth texture, that doesn't break (separate into oil and protein) with heat.
Those ingredients and/or similar ones are principally responsible for what
makes "processed cheese" processed. So think Velveeta or Kraft Singles, but
potentially made with higher quality cheese.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Good quality hard and semi-hard cheese made with rennet should melt and not
separate. E.g. gruyere, cheddar, gouda or emmental, particularly the protected
varieties.

If good cheese didn't melt it would probably not be considered an attractive
characteristic and it would not be something people bother to try and simulate
with additives.

~~~
phonypc
You can of course melt almost any unprocessed cheese without separating it,
but they all split if overheated and don't behave well with added liquid (e.g.
in sauces) without assistance from some additive. Processed cheeses with these
"melting salts" have categorically different melting characteristics, they
aren't trying to merely simulate regular cheese; they start as out as regular
cheese after all.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> You can of course melt almost any unprocessed cheese without separating it,
but they all split if overheated and don't behave well with added liquid (e.g.
in sauces) without assistance from some additive.

That is really not my experience. Are we both talking about good to high
quality European hard and semi-hard cheeses, especially PDO varieties?

Edit: come to think of it, I should probably also check what you mean by
"overheated". E.g. in Greece, where I come from, _saganaki_ [1] is a signature
dish that consists of a slab of graviera or kefalotyri (hard cheeses, in the
alpine style) deep-fried in batter. I've had my share of sagnaki and I've
never seen one break and separate in the way you say.

______________

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saganaki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saganaki)

~~~
phonypc
Yes, some preparations even rely on cheese separating. E.g. parmesan tuiles,
even when prepared with PDO Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano can be seen
breaking and expelling their fat before crisping. Every preparation of onion
soup I've seen, even when using proper Gruyere or Comte, has an oil slick on
top that has been expelled from the cheese. The cheeses used in saganaki
(which I've never seen battered, only fried directly) weep oil _before_ they
melt.

Processed cheeses, on the other hand, will typically burn before they break.
And they flow very differently when melted.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
In that case I have no idea what you're talking about :)

I think we may be talking about different things. I don't eat processed cheese
so I don't know how it behaves. A quick search on the internet tells me that
processed cheese can be melted to the point it is poured. It is then used in
sauces. For sure, you can't pour real cheese. So I'm talking about the kind of
melting you see, e.g. in a raclette:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM)

Yes, real cheese will weep when you heat it but that's not "oil". Depending on
the age of the cheese, some of it is whey and the rest is butterfat. But your
description of "breaking" makes it sound like you expect cheese to cleanly
separate in a puddle of butterfat and a chunk of protein, whereas real cheese
will melt into a viscous fluid. That is - if it's cheese that melts in the
first place. For instance, feta or haloumi don't melt, etc. I suspect I might
misunderstand your description of "break" though.

Regarding saganaki, it is prepared with many different cheeses, normally Greek
cheeses. I have no idea how Greek-style cheese behaves, that is prepared
outside Greece, but feta will not melt and only weep whey, whereas graviera,
kaseri, kefalotyri etc "yellow cheeses" (as we call them) will melt. Saganaki
is battered (or sometimes rolled in flour) for this reason- to keep the cheese
from spreading after it melts. That's how it's made in Greece. I guess it's
made in a different fashion outside of Greece.

Finally- although I've never tried to make tuiles from parmesan, there is a
large industry of counterfeit Parmiggianio Reggiano:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U1crD18iM)

Which might well explain ill-behaved "Parmiggiano Reggiano".

~~~
phonypc
I use oil interchangeably with butterfat in the context of dairy. I'm aware
cheese does not contain vegetable oil or petroleum.

The raclette in your linked video has begun to separate and formed an oily
sheen on the outside. If you continued to cook it in a pan it would eventually
form a puddle of fat.

I don't consider (real) parm ill-behaved when making tuiles. They're yummy.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I'd expect it to form a puddle of molten cheese. So you 'd say that the
raclette in the video is "breaking"?

The way you said it I thought you were describing something really awful that
you wouldn't want to eat. I don't see why you'd have to add er additives to
cheese otherwise.

Edit: OK, I still don't get it. Do you have a picture or a video of what
you're describing?

------
spectramax
When I was in college, I had a roomate who interned at Frito Lay. We got a lot
of "beta" samples of new stacks that weren't public - the amount of
engineering that goes into making snacks on ultra high volume scale is insane.
I tested a bunch of snacks and provided feedback - which goes back into the
engineering iteration loop before the snack is perfected, optimized for cost
and manufacturability. It was indeed fascinating. There are hundreds of
parameters to optimize - for e.g. the shape of the chip can affect how much
oil it can retain affecting cost, taste, nutrition, etc.

~~~
jbay808
I know that these things are optimized like crazy, but I often feel like the
focus groups must just not include people like me. Most of the processed food
industry makes foods that I find sickly sweet or absurdly oily, among other
issues. Soda for example.

I wouldn't describe as a failing of the Coca-cola company the fact that I
don't like coke. Everyone has preferences. I would describe as their utter
failure the fact that the first time I enjoyed drinking a cola since age 10
was when I had an unsweetened cola-flavoured La Croix.

For the longest time I didn't understand why vending machines exist, until I
went to Japan and noticed I was always within arm's reach of a refreshingly
bitter tea.

I had always mentally equated that bottled drink == headache-inducing sugar
rush and it necessarily had to be that way. Even when they made a sugar free
drink, they just loaded it with other sweeteners.

But that was really just an optimization process gone wrong and gotten trapped
in a local minimum, I guess. I hope they're starting to learn their lesson.

~~~
chime
> but I often feel like the focus groups must just not include people like me.

I'm sure they do. That's why they came out with the baked chips, hundreds of
non-sugar diet drinks (e.g. slightly flavored 0 calorie water). We all eat. We
all get addicted. They just need to find your poison and optimize it.

> I hope they're starting to learn their lesson.

As this article shows, they've got an entire industry to learning every
possible lesson.

~~~
jbay808
The slightly flavoured water is a very new development -- the la croix I
mentioned. When I had it, I thought for once, they've finally found something
I like. But why did it take so long?

~~~
dasil003
La Croix was founded almost 40 years ago, I remember drinking it (not very
enthusiastically) as a kid growing up in the 80s.

~~~
jbay808
Oh what?? Wow, I'm quite surprised. Were they making the same sort of product
back then?

Maybe it just took them a long time to spread to Canada.

~~~
mntmoss
They can identify the market but not have the right way of reaching it. Two of
the biggest changes in the past few decades:

1\. Everything can be shipped online, so niche targets have more options. I
have a memory of craving Yoo-Hoo in college, in the mid-2000's and seeing no
local outlet for it, and therefore I went on Amazon and purchased six boxes of
the stuff. I got what I wanted, although by the time I was done with those six
boxes, I was very much over Yoo-Hoo.

2\. The move towards stocked-fridge offices as seen in every SV tech campus,
which make more of these items a B2B purchase, and therefore incentivize
developing and marketing products on the basis of productivity-enhancing
qualities. In the not so distant past it was more common for a campus
cafeteria to be relatively modest, putting things in the hands of the culture
more generally...

...and there is evidence for a "big sugar" industry conspiracy in the late
20th century pinning the blame for heart disease on high-fat diets, and
therefore shifting the culture for a whole generation, but primarily in North
America. Other countries did not have the same kinds of trends. And since that
marketing position has gradually decayed they are forced to start selling
water minus the sugar, indeed they anticipated that happening when they
started bringing out diet sodas in the 80's.

~~~
jbay808
Seems like Safeway and Walmart these days are all stocked with at least four
competing brands of drinks that are just carbonated water + flavour, even out
in rural areas. That should have been possible before online shipping and SV
beverage cabinets.

Anyway, diet sodas have been around forever but to my memory always attempted
to taste as sweet as the sugary drinks.

------
markbnj
> That’s a mural I saw in the Frito-Lay headquarters in Plano, Texas. I was
> there! My pilgrimage to the pinnacle of potato chips!

Oh I think not... for that you would need to visit Nottingham, PA ;).
[https://www.herrs.com/visit-us/](https://www.herrs.com/visit-us/)

~~~
gsk22
Frito Lay vs some company no one's ever heard of? I'd say the original
statement stands :)

~~~
markbnj
It certainly stands if you base the decision on volume anyway. And millions of
people have heard of Herr's. I can only empathize with those who haven't.

------
fbelzile
NPR's Planet Money podcast did an episode last Oct related to this [0]. It was
pretty cool to hear how the rise in food delivery services (drive-throughs
before that) created an entire industry for engineered cooking oil that helped
keep fries crispier, longer.

They also have an expert project how we'll likely have delivery vehicles in
the future with deep fryers built in.

[0]
[https://www.npr.org/2019/10/23/772775254/episode-946-fries-o...](https://www.npr.org/2019/10/23/772775254/episode-946-fries-
of-the-future)

~~~
Stratoscope
> _They also have an expert project how we 'll likely have delivery vehicles
> in the future with deep fryers built in._

Ah, like Zume for french fries! In fact this would give something for Zume to
do with their abandoned robotic pizza delivery trucks. Just replace the ovens
with deep fryers.

And if Zume doesn't pick up on this, Softbank Vision Fund will be sure to
invest.

------
anonsivalley652
Food for thought: Something can be crunchy but not crispy, but can something
be crispy but not crunchy?

Interesting cooking book:

 _On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen_ by McGee, 2007

Bonus: [https://www.frenchguycooking.com](https://www.frenchguycooking.com)

------
dwd
Sort of related - has anyone purchased one of these counter-top air fryers?

To me it just looks to be a small convection oven (which I have), but doesn't
seem to offer any advantage except maybe ease of cleaning or power
consumption.

Are they better sealed so little heat leakage or a stronger fan?

~~~
wffurr
No and no. Your small convection oven probably does a better job than any air
fryer.

[https://thewirecutter.com/blog/you-dont-need-an-air-
fryer/](https://thewirecutter.com/blog/you-dont-need-an-air-fryer/)

~~~
dwd
Thanks for the link. Their review was amusing:

[https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-air-
fryer/](https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-air-fryer/)

"The Best Air Fryer Is a Convection Toaster Oven"

Definitely sticking with the oven.

------
Gatsky
I love crispy things deeply. However, the crispifying process seems to
generate a lot of advanced glycation end products (AGEs). The safety of
ingesting large amounts of AGEs is in doubt.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4648888/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4648888/)

------
xbryanx
One of my favorite(only?) bits of sci-fi/food-engineering trivia is that Gene
Wolfe (The Book of the New Sun) was the mechanical engineer who developed the
machine that cooked the first Pringles chips:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pringles#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pringles#History)

~~~
brians
And EE “Doc” Smith of the Lensmen invented tech critical to Krispy Kreme.

Food science is important work—it took a LOT of attention relative to comms in
the first half of XXc.

------
drenginian
The three most delicious flavors are sweet, salt and crunch.

~~~
userbinator
For Asians, replace salt with umami:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami)

~~~
fiblye
East Asian and Central Asian food is still extremely salty, so nothing is
being replaced. People in Asia overall consume far more salt than even
Americans.[1]

[1] [https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/where-is-the-
salt...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/where-is-the-salt/)

------
frandroid
The prose in this article is as crispy as the chips they describe... Some sort
of crispception.

------
notimetorelax
Whenever I visit the US I always have this feeling that most food is mushy.
It’s almost made to be easy to swallow with lowest effort.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Where are you from, for comparison? The stereotypical cuisine from most
nations I can think of is "mushy", from Indian curry dishes to noodle dishes
to breads/pastas to beans/legumes to basically anything that's carb heavy.

Off the top of my head, the only "non-mushy" cuisine I can think of might be a
meat heavy one and maybe an uncooked vegetable one. The former definitely
describing my upbringing in Texas. Felt like I grew up on beef and mustard
greens.

~~~
notimetorelax
Your're right, I'm comparing to French or Italian cuisine. Even more
thoroughly cooked German or Swiss still retains more texture.

