The Maillard reaction does a lot of good
The crispy crust of skin-on fried fish, crisped bacon and the crunchy crust of fresh bread. You have the Maillard reaction to thank for that.
The Maillard reaction is a series of chemical reactions that I might understand if I had ever paid better attention in chemistry class. The chemistry behind the Maillard reaction is (not just for me) particularly complicated. So I’ll spare you the details. In short: it’s a reaction between sugars and amino acids. Any product that contains carbohydrates and proteins—and that’s almost every product—undergoes this reaction when heated.
Cote de boeuf
The end result of this series of reactions isn’t difficult to understand, however. A product changes color and flavor. Steak tartare, for example, is red in color; when you bake or roast a piece of meat, it turns brown. Tartare also tastes completely different from a piece of baked or roasted meat. Think of a seared piece of cote de boeuf: a crispy crust on the outside, juicy meat on the inside.
Coffee
The same reaction is responsible for decent coffee, for example. You can’t do much with a coffee bean until you roast it—in other words, until the Maillard reaction occurs. The coffee bean changes color: an unprocessed bean is green, while after roasting it’s brown; and it changes flavor: coffee as we know it tastes roasted. It’s a little trick you’ve probably always taken for granted. Few people, apart from the chemists among us, think about why bacon turns brown and crispy when you fry it. Many simply think something along the lines of ‘yes’ or ‘hmmm’.
The Frenchman Louis Camille Maillard discovered this reaction and is therefore now regarded as the founder of modern food science. The next time you fry an egg with bacon and make a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning, spare a thought for Mr. Maillard.
