Culinary fluid mechanics and other currents in food science

TL;DR

This paper reviews how recent advances in fluid mechanics are transforming food science by exploring phenomena like multiphase flows, turbulence, and interfacial effects, leading to new culinary techniques and scientific insights.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of how fluid mechanics principles are applied to food science, highlighting recent discoveries and future research directions.

Findings

Advances in hydrodynamics influence food texture and preparation.

Surprising fluid phenomena in cooking lead to scientific innovations.

Interfacial and turbulent flows are key to new culinary techniques.

Abstract

Innovations in fluid mechanics are leading to better food since ancient history, while creativity in cooking inspires applied and fundamental science. Here, we review how recent advances in hydrodynamics are changing food science, and we highlight how the surprising phenomena that arise in the kitchen lead to discoveries and technologies across the disciplines, including rheology, soft matter, biophysics and molecular gastronomy. This review is structured like a menu, where each course highlights different aspects of culinary fluid mechanics. Our main themes include multiphase flows, complex fluids, thermal convection, hydrodynamic instabilities, viscous flows, granular matter, porous media, percolation, chaotic advection, interfacial phenomena, and turbulence. For every topic, we first provide an introduction accessible to food professionals and scientists in neighbouring fields. We then assess the state-of-the-art knowledge, the open problems, and likely directions for future research. New gastronomic ideas grow rapidly as the scientific recipes keep improving too.