How long should you dunk an Oreo?
‘Milk and cookies’ is an iconic food combo in the United States. So it’s not surprising that scientists sought (and found) the answer to the most pressing question in modern American food history: What is the optimal dunking time for an Oreo cookie in milk?
It took researchers from Utah State University’s ‘Splash Lab’, who specialize in the behavior of fluids, a few hours a day for two weeks to arrive at the research result: four seconds is the ideal dunking time.
Crunch
But before we get into this four-second rule, we would still like to take a closer look at the parameters of the study.
Because what is the ideal state of a cookie dunked in milk? More specifically: of an Oreo? How soft or still crunchy should an Oreo feel after dunking, anyway? Shouldn’t the researchers have reached a scientific consensus on that first?
Some Oreo dunkers may like the black-and-white cookie to carry a film of milk around it, but not completely lose one of its key qualities, namely the ‘crunch’. Others may prefer a more advanced state of ‘decay’, because that is when the flavor of the milk truly fuses with that of the cookie.
Goldilocks
If you study the results of the research, it turns out that the scientists ‘assume’ that most people like a so-called ‘Goldilocks situation’, which means just right. And in this specific case, ‘just right’ according to them means not completely mushy, but not barely moistened either. Scientifically speaking, we find that rather vague.
The research suggests that they themselves like a fairly soft and milky Oreeo. According to their exhaustive research, an Oreo absorbs 50 percent of the amount of liquid it can take in during the very first second. By the fourth second, it has reached maximum absorption. That is why, according to them, it is best eaten after a four-second dunk. By the fifth, the Oreo has become so soggy that it starts to fall apart.
Mushy
We certainly don’t want to contradict these respectable researchers, but personally we find an Oreo that is on the verge of its own disintegration just a little too saturated with milk. Let’s just call it what it is: mushy, and therefore no longer suitable for human consumption.
Given the scientific fact that after one second, 50 percent of the milk the cookie can absorb at all has already been soaked up, we therefore prefer an ideal dunking time of three seconds max. For that indispensable ‘crunch’.
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