Reverse Spherification and holding the spheres

[Anonymous Modernist 847]

I have been playing around with the reverse spherification technique and found that the sphere itself holds great for even up to a few days when submerged in water. The problem is that the flavor starts leeches out into the water almost immediately, resulting in a more tasteless orb as time goes on. This seems to have a correlation with the viscosity of the liquid inside the sphere (the thinner the liquid, the more flavor leeches out). A few questions:

1) If I thickened the holding water with something like xantham gum, would that keep the flavorful liquid from leeching out?

2) Does the amount of time the frozen/calcinated liquid spends in the alginate bath have a correlation to how thick the sphere wall is and thus how much flavor leeches out?

3) Would storing the sphere in the same liquid inside it (minus the calcium) make up for any flavor loss? I am trying to avoid this last option as food cost becomes an issue at some point.

4) Finally, would using the same flavor of the inner sphere for the alginate bath make any difference? Again, the food cost thing.

I am going to try and play around with this after the weekend, but if anyone has any suggestions in the meantime, please let me know.

BTW, thanks for the book and the forum, I have been waiting for something like this for so long!

[Anonymous Modernist 578]

It sounds like you've essentially set up a dialysis system, something used in labs all the time to remove unwanted (small) molecules from a substance of interest (see overview of principles here:

http://www.piercenet.com/browse.cfm?fldID=5753AFD9-5056-8A76-4E13-5F9E9B4324DA).

Basically, high concentrations of (small) soluble molecules (inside the sphere) will move across a semi-permeable barrier (the sphere membrane) to the low concentration (the water bath) until equilibrium is reached. I don't know the average pore size in the sphere membrane so it's hard to know exactly what is leaving, but in general small molecules (salts, sugars, alcohols etc.) will move pretty freely and be difficult to contain.

The easiest ways to minimize flavor loss in this instance then, it seems to me, would be to do two things: 1) Minimize (as much as reasonable) the volume of the holding bath; and 2) incorporate some (or all) of the ingredients inside the sphere into the holding bath. If you can keep the volume down, the cost might not be prohibitively high.

Hope that helps.

Edited to add a better link.

[Anonymous Modernist 310]

To reduce the food cost you could reuse the storing liquid in your next batch of spheres. You could probably have the calcium in it since there is no free aginate to react with.

[Anonymous Modernist 10]

Jonathan said:

It sounds like you've essentially set up a dialysis system, something used in labs all the time to remove unwanted (small) molecules from a substance of interest (see overview of principles here:

http://www.piercenet.com/browse.cfm?fldID=5753AFD9-5056-8A76-4E13-5F9E9B4324DA).

Basically, high concentrations of (small) soluble molecules (inside the sphere) will move across a semi-permeable barrier (the sphere membrane) to the low concentration (the water bath) until equilibrium is reached. I don't know the average pore size in the sphere membrane so it's hard to know exactly what is leaving, but in general small molecules (salts, sugars, alcohols etc.) will move pretty freely and be difficult to contain.

The easiest ways to minimize flavor loss in this instance then, it seems to me, would be to do two things: 1) Minimize (as much as reasonable) the volume of the holding bath; and 2) incorporate some (or all) of the ingredients inside the sphere into the holding bath. If you can keep the volume down, the cost might not be prohibitively high.

Hope that helps.

Edited to add a better link.

Exactly. You can make your setting bath with a flavorfil liquid, such as you used for your spheres, or you can thicken the bath with xanthan to prevent leaching.

[Anonymous Modernist 10]

Jonathan said:

It sounds like you've essentially set up a dialysis system, something used in labs all the time to remove unwanted (small) molecules from a substance of interest (see overview of principles here:

http://www.piercenet.com/browse.cfm?fldID=5753AFD9-5056-8A76-4E13-5F9E9B4324DA).Basically, high concentrations of (small) soluble molecules (inside the sphere) will move across a semi-permeable barrier (the sphere membrane) to the low concentration (the water bath) until equilibrium is reached. I don't know the average pore size in the sphere membrane so it's hard to know exactly what is leaving, but in general small molecules (salts, sugars, alcohols etc.) will move pretty freely and be difficult to contain.

The easiest ways to minimize flavor loss in this instance then, it seems to me, would be to do two things: 1) Minimize (as much as reasonable) the volume of the holding bath; and 2) incorporate some (or all) of the ingredients inside the sphere into the holding bath. If you can keep the volume down, the cost might not be prohibitively high.

Hope that helps.

 

Edited to add a better link.

Exactly. You can make your setting bath with a flavorfil liquid, such as you used for your spheres, or you can thicken the bath with xanthan to prevent leaching.

[Anonymous Modernist 847]

I figured there was something like that going on. I have found that using the same liquid as inside the sphere (minus the alginate) as the holding bath works the best. I tried thickening with xanthan and found that sometimes, the sphere became too bouyant (sp?) and the exposed portion would still end up leaching out slightly. Thanks for all the help!