Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science (chemistry)
2-3 hours per week • Start today
Individual Course
Course Length
16 weeks
2-3 hours per week
Featuring faculty from:
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Enroll as Individual
Certificate Price:
$ 249
Enroll as Individual
Certificate Price:
$ 249
Top chefs and Harvard researchers explore how traditional and modernist cooking techniques can illuminate basic principles in chemistry, physics, and engineering. Learn about elasticity, viscosity, mayonnaise, baking, and more!
In this course, which investigates physical transformations in food, we will be visited by world-famous chefs who use a number of different styles and techniques in their cooking. Each chef will demonstrate how he or she prepares delicious and interesting creations, and we will explore how fundamental scientific principles make them possible.
Topics will include:
• How cooking changes food texture
• Making emulsions and foams
• Phase changes in cooking
You will also have the opportunity to become an experimental scientist in your very own laboratory — your kitchen! By following along with the recipes of the week, taking precise measurements, and making skillful observations, you will learn to think like both a chef and a scientist. This practice will prepare you for the final project, when you will design and perform an experiment to analyze a recipe of your choice from a scientific perspective.
The lab is certainly one of the most unique components of this course—after all, in what other science course can you eat your experiments?
The course will be delivered via edX and connect learners around the world.
Self-Guided
edX
The chemical and physical principles that underlie everyday cooking and haute cuisine techniques
How chefs can use enzymes to make foods that would otherwise be impossible
How to use the scientific method to learn how a recipe works, and find ways you could improve it
View the modules for this course:
Your Instructor
Preceptor of Science and Cooking and HarvardX Fellow, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Department of Physics
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Your Instructor
Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Department of Physics
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Your Instructor
Glover Professor of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics and Harvard College Professor
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These courses can be bundled together to receive a Professional Certificate at a discounted price.
Learn More2-3 hours per week • Start today
2-3 hours per week • Start today
Ways to take this course
A Verified Certificate costs $249 and provides unlimited access to full course materials, activities, tests, and forums. At the end of the course, learners who earn a passing grade can receive a certificate.
Alternatively, learners can Audit the course for free and have access to select course material, activities, tests, and forums. Please note that this track does not offer a certificate for learners who earn a passing grade.
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