Texture, taste and aroma: multi-scale materials and the gastrophysics of food

Cooking and eating are definitely pleasures. Cooking and eating are definitely materials research fields. Cooking and eating are definitely complicated forms of physical, chemical and biological processes with only one aim: pleasure, satisfaction, and satiation. Natural materials as grown in fields, on trees or in water change their state, structure, colour, taste, and smell. Consequently cooking involves simultaneous and non-separable physical, chemical and biological processes in a highly coupled manner, unlike in classical physics, chemistry and biology. Cooking and eating define a new class of multidisciplinary scientific problems on many length and time scales. However, cooking and eating remain culture [1].The conformation and dynamics of water-soluble long carbohydrates and partially water-soluble native or denatured proteins define, together with the water content, the textural properties of foods. In addition, local short-range interactions of these macromolecules with comparatively small ions (salts), polar molecules (water, low molecular weight sugars) and amphiphilic molecules (emulsifiers) have a strong influence on macroscopic properties, for example, the mouthfeel as it is demonstrated with simple model systems such as tasty multi-component gels.These pure ‘materials properties’ are typical in the field of soft condensed matter physics but all foods live from their sensory properties, taste complexity and specific aroma release. Here again, the water–oil/fat solubility of taste and aroma compounds plays a significant role. Water dissolves most of the taste-relevant hydrophilic units (ions, protons, sugars, glutamine acid), whereas oils and fats act as ‘good solvents’ for the lipophilic aroma compounds. Consequently, the interplay between aroma release and odour activity with structure and texture properties follows certain fundamental physical principles. Some of these ‘universal’ features define a relation between structure, processing, solubility an