Learning About Emulsions by Making Three Traditional Sauces 


Today we learned about emulsions, how they are formed and how they are used in cooking. Emulsions are a mixture of two liquids which are normally immiscible are held together by an emulsifier. In cooking emulsions are usually made to combine oil and water. The molecules in emulsifiers work by having one end which is hydrophillic (water loving) and one end which is hydrophobic (water fearing), thus the water is attracted to one end of the molecule and oil to the other. This allows stable mixture to form. Two very common emulsifiers are egg yolks and milk/dairy cream (specifically milk proteins), which we used to make our sauces.


We made three sauces: beurre blanc (white butter sauce), hollandaise and mayonnaise and to varying degrees of success. The first sauce we made was beurre blanc. Beurre blanc is a white butter sauce which consists of heavy cream, butter, white wine and vinegar and shallots. Our sauce turned out rather well, though the taste of vinegar was a little strong. The second emulation we made was mayonnaise, which didn't turn out as well. First we made the mayonnaise by following recipe by heating egg yolks, lemon juice, water and sugar in a skillet. We may have slighty overheated as our eggs began to scramble a little around the edges, but it was a total loss. We then put the mixture in a blender and added salt and mustard and slowly added oil. When we finished blending it wasn't very well mixed and didn't look very appetizing. The second time we made the mayonaise we didn't didn't add the oil slowly  but rather all at once to test to see how would effect recipe. The resulting mayonnaise was very runny. The final sauce we made was hollandaise. To make this sauce we were supposed to mix egg yolks, lemon juice and water in a double boiler then slowly add melted butter to the mix after heating it up; however we misread the directions and ended up mixing everything at the beginning. The ingredients still resulted in an emulation and tasted like hollandaise sauce, but it was extremely runny. Overall it was an interesting experience and we learned some very basic facts and techniques about the chemestry of cooking.