Read Online Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bee Wilson
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married, and her meals have an Anglo-French panache. In her neatly kept pans, she whisks up dreamy béchamels, buttery peas, smooth purple borscht. The pans seem utterly in keeping with her style of cooking. She would never dream of serving food on cold plates or with the wrong cutlery. Her enameled cast iron serves her well. It is only when those of us with less discipline venture into the kitchen that cracks appear. For one thing, these pans are heavy, and I always fear my wrists will go limp and I’ll drop one. There’s also the fact that none of them is big enough for pasta. But the real trouble is the surface. If you are used to cooking on more forgiving stainless steel, it’s a shock to find how easily things stick to the bottom of Le Creuset at high temperatures. Several times, I’ve left one of my mother-in-law’s pans slightly too long on the burner and nearly ruined it (at which point she comes in and briskly saves the day with bleach).
When nonstick pans first arrived on the scene—they were first launched in France by the Tefal company in 1956—they seemed like
a miracle. “The Tefal pan: the pan that really doesn’t stick,” was the original pitch. The reason food sticks to a pan is because proteins react with some metal ions at the surface. To prevent food from sticking, you need to stop protein molecules from reacting with the surface in this way—either by stirring it so vigilantly that it doesn’t get a chance to stick, or by introducing a protective layer between the food and the pan. Traditionally, this layer is provided by “seasoning” the pan. With unenameled iron pans—whether a Chinese wok or an American cast-iron skillet—seasoning is a critical step; skip it, and your cooking will suffer (and the pan will rust). First, the pan is soaked in hot, soapy water, rinsed and dried. Then, oil or lard is rubbed into the surface and very slowly heated for several hours. Some of the fat molecules “polymerize,” leaving a slick, shiny surface. Each meal that you cook adds a further layer of polymerized fat. Over time, the pan becomes as slick as Brylcreem. In a nicely blackened wok, the food slides and jumps. You can cook a whole panful of cornbread in a well-seasoned skillet, and when it is done, it will simply drop out, like a pill from a blister pack. But it takes a certain attentiveness to maintain a seasoned pan. It must never be scoured. The surface can also be ruined by acidic ingredients such as tomatoes or vinegar. When the seasoning on a cast-iron pan wears away, you have to start all over again.
In 1954, Marc Gregoire, a French engineer, came up with another way. PTFE, or polytetrafluoroethylene, had been known by chemists since 1938. The slippery substance was used for coating industrial valves and for fishing tackle. As the story goes, Marc Gregoire’s wife first suggested he try to use the PTFE he had been using on fishing tackle to solve the problem of her sticky cooking pans. He found a way of melding PTFE to an aluminum pan.
How does it work? Stickiness happens when food bonds with the surface of the pan; but PTFE molecules do not bond with any other molecules. At a microscopic level, PTFE is made up of four fluorine atoms and two carbon atoms, repeated many times in a much larger molecule. Once fluorine has bonded with carbon, it does not want to
bond with anything else, not even with the usual culprits such as scrambled egg or steak. Under the microscope, says scientist Robert L. Wolke, a PTFE molecule looks rather like a spiky caterpillar, and this “suit of caterpillar armor” prevents the carbon from sticking to food molecules, hence that theatrical effect when you pour a tiny bit of oil into a new nonstick pan and it seems to be repelling the droplets out of the pan.
The world went wild for Teflon. In 1961, DuPont backed the first production in the United States, called the “Happy Pan.” Within the first year, American sales were 1 million units a month. Like a
When nonstick pans first arrived on the scene—they were first launched in France by the Tefal company in 1956—they seemed like
a miracle. “The Tefal pan: the pan that really doesn’t stick,” was the original pitch. The reason food sticks to a pan is because proteins react with some metal ions at the surface. To prevent food from sticking, you need to stop protein molecules from reacting with the surface in this way—either by stirring it so vigilantly that it doesn’t get a chance to stick, or by introducing a protective layer between the food and the pan. Traditionally, this layer is provided by “seasoning” the pan. With unenameled iron pans—whether a Chinese wok or an American cast-iron skillet—seasoning is a critical step; skip it, and your cooking will suffer (and the pan will rust). First, the pan is soaked in hot, soapy water, rinsed and dried. Then, oil or lard is rubbed into the surface and very slowly heated for several hours. Some of the fat molecules “polymerize,” leaving a slick, shiny surface. Each meal that you cook adds a further layer of polymerized fat. Over time, the pan becomes as slick as Brylcreem. In a nicely blackened wok, the food slides and jumps. You can cook a whole panful of cornbread in a well-seasoned skillet, and when it is done, it will simply drop out, like a pill from a blister pack. But it takes a certain attentiveness to maintain a seasoned pan. It must never be scoured. The surface can also be ruined by acidic ingredients such as tomatoes or vinegar. When the seasoning on a cast-iron pan wears away, you have to start all over again.
In 1954, Marc Gregoire, a French engineer, came up with another way. PTFE, or polytetrafluoroethylene, had been known by chemists since 1938. The slippery substance was used for coating industrial valves and for fishing tackle. As the story goes, Marc Gregoire’s wife first suggested he try to use the PTFE he had been using on fishing tackle to solve the problem of her sticky cooking pans. He found a way of melding PTFE to an aluminum pan.
How does it work? Stickiness happens when food bonds with the surface of the pan; but PTFE molecules do not bond with any other molecules. At a microscopic level, PTFE is made up of four fluorine atoms and two carbon atoms, repeated many times in a much larger molecule. Once fluorine has bonded with carbon, it does not want to
bond with anything else, not even with the usual culprits such as scrambled egg or steak. Under the microscope, says scientist Robert L. Wolke, a PTFE molecule looks rather like a spiky caterpillar, and this “suit of caterpillar armor” prevents the carbon from sticking to food molecules, hence that theatrical effect when you pour a tiny bit of oil into a new nonstick pan and it seems to be repelling the droplets out of the pan.
The world went wild for Teflon. In 1961, DuPont backed the first production in the United States, called the “Happy Pan.” Within the first year, American sales were 1 million units a month. Like a
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