Oil Loving vs. Water Loving...

[Ore]

Ciao,

Thank you for spending time with our ever curious brains! My question:

I can't exactly recall the term - maybe Lipophillic & hydrophillic - but I am very interested in searching out the ingredients that give their flavor or aroma off best - in oil or in water.

For example, vanilla beans give off there aroma much better in oil than in water - I think the older version of On Food went over this... but, is there an actual way to tell which way a fruit, vegetable, or food stuff go's??

Is there a way to tell if the food stuff is fat loving or water loving??

I hope that wasn't too confusing!

Grazie!

Ore

[helenjp]

An interesting idea, Ore!

I guess one issue is how to get rid of the more pungent phenol-type components, while preserving the milder fragrances, yet not locking them in so much that we cannot taste them on the tongue...

Look forward to comments.

Edited November 7, 2004 by helenjp (log)

[Harold McGee]

Most aroma molecules have both fat-like and water-like portions, and so have at least some ability to be extracted into both fats and oils on the one hand, and water-based liquids on the other. The most volatile molecules, the ones that most readily escape into the air and reach our smell receptors in the nose, are predominantly fat-loving (lipophilic)—otherwise they would be held more tightly in foods (which are almost all water-based). Something to keep in mind—if you extract a fat-loving aromatic into fat or oil, the fat or oil is going to hang onto it and make it less volatile than it would be in water. This means the aroma will be released more slowly, but also more gradually, with a greater persistence. Flavor extraction and release are fascinatingly complicated, and it’s hard to generalize about real foods.

Prego!