the principles of cooking food
The cooking of food involves heating it in a variety of ways to make it more palatable. The heat to cook the food comes from a variety of sources, including electric elements or hotplates; gas flame from a stove or barbecue; the heat from a conventional oven; and heat generated by a microwave oven. Heat is transferred to the food and cooking medium (the fat, water, stock or milk) by means of convection, conduction and radiation. It must be remembered that most foods are cooked by a combination of at least two of the processes of transferring heat, not just one. For example, a baked butter cake will be cooked by heat directly reflecting from the oven walls (radiation), heat circulating in the air of the oven (convection), and heat transferred from the cake pan to the cake mixture (conduction). The three methods of heat transference are: Convection: When food is cooked through the convention process,...