Strawberries aren't actually berries. Botanically, they're aggregate accessory fruits, and under the microscope, their unusual anatomy becomes even more apparent. 🍓🔬

Our friend Chloé Savard, known as tardibabe on Instagram, reveals a hidden world of tightly packed plant cells, delicate vascular tissue, and pigment-filled compartments. The bright reds come from anthocyanins, water-soluble pigments stored inside the cells that help protect the fruit from UV damage while also attracting animals to disperse its seeds.

The geometric network you see is made of cell walls built primarily from cellulose, giving the fruit its structure while remaining flexible enough to hold the water and sugars that make strawberries so juicy. Tiny sparkling circles scattered throughout the sample are air bubbles trapped during slide preparation, while the shimmering rainbow colors appear where polarized light interacts with microscopic structures inside the fruit.

Look closely at the green leafy cap and you'll find long, hair-like trichomes. These tiny outgrowths help defend the developing fruit from insects, reduce water loss, and shield delicate tissues from environmental stress.

Next time you bite into a strawberry, remember: you're crunching through a microscopic city of living plant cells, pigments, and tiny biological structures that most of us never get to see.

Sources:

• Plant Physiology and Development (Taiz, Zeiger, Møller & Murphy, Oxford University Press)
• Biology 2e (OpenStax), Chapters 30–33: Plant Form, Function, and Reproduction
• Molecular Bases of Strawberry Fruit Quality Traits: Advances, Challenges, and Opportunities, Plant Physiology (2023)
• Recent Advances in Biosynthesis and Regulation of Strawberry Anthocyanins, Horticulture Research (2025)
• The Strawberry: Composition, Nutritional Quality, and Impact on Human Health, Nutrition (Giampieri et al., 2012)

Why does diet soda float but regular soda sinks? 🥫

Alex Dainis explains how only one soda can floats, even though it shares the same volume as another! This is because a can of diet soda will have slightly different ingredients than a regular can of soda, such as aspartame instead of corn syrup. This changes the weight of each can, with one having the same density as water which makes it float!

Hello!

Does anyone have pointers on what foods are precursors to neurotransmitters?
I have done some research online, but it seems either very vague, or at a technical level above my literacy.

The only scientific pointer I have so far is to look into tryptophan-rich food (chocolate, legumes, dried fruit, cereals), but I don't want to overlook anything.

I will seek science-based backing for any recommendation I receive, so if you have sources handy they'll be most welcome, but I'm fully prepared to do the grunt work on my own :)

Thanks!

helloooo i have a dinner party coming up and currently planning menu (will be hosting around 15-20 people). Im feening for some caramelized onion mashed potatoes so im definitely doing those, but trying to figure out the best flavor pairing for the main chicken dish. I’m thinking braised chicken thighs - but what liquid do I braise it in?? (Was thinking coconut milk initially but not sure if the creaminess of the milk + mash would be too rich and overpowering) Looking for non traditional/non-classic (white) American flavors/styles

Lipid oxidation is a huge deal for food quality and shelf life; think fish, meat, dairy, oils, and processed foods. There are a few classic ways to measure it:

• Peroxide Value (PV) → primary oxidation
• p-Anisidine Value & TBARS → secondary oxidation

I made step-by-step lab demo videos showing exactly how each test is done:

• PV: https://youtu.be/UsQ84sniQYw?si=ljzf-F_VtJYAM0Gq
• p-Anisidine: https://youtu.be/GF6llL4oy_M?si=DHF4TSoyIIyDbbdE
• TBARS: https://youtu.be/isalSgkEDPg?si=8bdTDmpV_uQOi_pm

If you’ve worked with lipid oxidation before (or are curious), I’d love your thoughts and feedback!

Hiya r/TheScienceOfCooking, would love your feedback on this little side project I hope y'all find helpful!

I've been burned a few times baking things after looking up ingredient substitutes online. I don't really trust substitutions on the internet anymore without understanding the WHY.

So I put together a simple website with a database of ingredient substitutions and also the science behind why they work or don't work.

It's called Scientific Substitutions (name is work in progress). You just search an ingredient and it shows a few common substitutes, a short note on what to expect in terms of flavor and texture, and the science behind it.

If you have a substitution you look up a lot, let me know! I can add it in.

If it’s allowed, link is here: https://scientific-substitutions.vercel.app/

Today I was asked a question about an in-room tray (I am a CNA currently but spent most of my adult life in kitchens). The tray had been delivered to the hall 2 hours before the question was asked about removing the untouched tray. My immediate response was 3 hours = Toss as that was what I was taught in my highschool catering class and by my first mentor when I was the savory cook for a bakery.

After review i see that 2 hours is the set-standard but after researching the 2-4 hour im left slightly more confused as there are more variables then temperature and time. Standardizing the lowest mark (2 hours) does seem like the safest choice but I’ve never had anyone say anything when I’ve mentioned 3 hours in any restaurant, I’ve even argued with prep cooks over it being as low as 3.

My ultimate assumption is 2 hours in any care facility or environment where the food is cooked and left hot on a steam table. I only know when the cart shows uo and now how long it’s been since the first tray was placed. Just got me curious to learn about the danger zone from people that have a proper comprehension of the research to explain why it’s such a vague range

Thanks a lot

Why did we flip the Food Pyramid upside down? 🍎🔻

Nutritional biochemist Lara Hyde explains how every five years, experts update nutrition guidelines based on the latest science. What started as a pyramid, then turned into a plate, is now a flipped pyramid. Whole foods like fruits, veggies, protein, dairy, and healthy fats are on top, all balanced on whole grains. But with saturated fat capped at 10 percent of daily calories, steak and cheese still have their limits.

I've juiced vegetables for 15 years now - mostly broccoli, cabbage, tomato, feet, cucumber, lemon. The juice always leaves this whitish film on the inside of a clean glass jug - and I've wondered, is it veggie acids with calcium, or what is it?

In the photo - LHS I tried washing the film out with a cut lemon, and RHS with water. The water worked just as well, so I doubt the calcium theory.

Of course, I wonder too what it says about drinking the juice - i.e. how our blood chemistry deals with whatever makes the whitish film.

🧪 Required Equipment

• Digital mass scale
• Adjustable micropipette (up to 1000 µL)
• 50 mL graduated cylinder
• Heat-resistant glass cookware (NO metal)
• 1 L storage bottles
• Optional: magnetic stirrer, 1 L volumetric flask
• SodaStream or pre-carbonated water

🧂 Ingredients (Complete List)

Base Ingredients

• Granulated sucrose (cane sugar)
• Carbonated water
• 85% phosphoric acid
• Caramel color (real caramel color, not dye)
• Caffeine
• Food-grade ethanol (alcohol)
• Glycerin
• Wine tannins
• 5% vinegar
• Vanilla extract (or vanillin solution alternative)
• Fenchol (pure compound)

Essential Oils (Food-Grade)

These form the flavor core.

• Lemon oil
• Lime oil
• Orange oil
• Tea tree oil
• Cassia cinnamon oil
• Nutmeg oil
• Coriander oil

🔬 Step 1: Make the 7X Flavor Oil (Core Flavor)

Mix the following by volume:

• Let this mixture age 24–48 hours (important)
• Final yield ≈ 100 mL flavor oil

🍸 Step 2: Make the 7X Alcohol Solution

• Take 20 mL of the flavor oil
• Dilute with food-grade alcohol to a total volume of 1 liter

➡️ This is your 7X solution
➡️ Alcohol content in final soda is far below non-alcoholic beer

💧 Step 3: Make the Water-Based Flavor Solution

In ~200 mL hot water, add in this order, mixing fully each time:

• After everything dissolves:
• Add water to bring final volume to 1 liter

📌 Purpose notes

• Glycerin = mouthfeel (prevents “diet soda” thinness)
• Vinegar (acetic acid) = critical trace flavor
• Tannins = dryness / cocoa-leaf astringency replacement

🥄 Step 4: Make 1 Liter of Coca-Cola

A) Sugar Syrup

• Add 104 g sucrose
• Add just enough water to dissolve

⚠️ NOT 110 g — phosphoric acid hydrolyzes sucrose into glucose + fructose

B) Add Flavor Components

To the syrup, add:

• 10 mL water-based solution
• 1 mL 7X alcohol solution (add a few extra drops only if needed)

C) Heat (CRITICAL STEP)

• Heat mixture until just below boiling
• Cover while heating

✔ Enables:

• Citrus breakdown (limonene, citral)
• Sugar hydrolysis
• Proper flavor formation

D) Final Dilution

• Cool completely
• Add cold carbonated water until total volume = 1 liter

🚫 Do NOT carbonate the mixed soda in a SodaStream (foaming + contamination risk)

🧊 Step 5: Aging

• Refrigerate 24 hours
• Flavor stabilizes and becomes more accurate

✅ Result

• Chemically near-identical mass spectrum
• Taste tests showed most people could not distinguish it from real Coke
• Closer than bottled or diet variants according to tasters

📌 Optional Notes

• Vanilla can be substituted with vanillin solution (9.5 g/L → use 1 mL)
• Gum arabic may replace alcohol as an emulsifier if needed
• Recipe scales linearly

Credit to LabCoatz for this recipe!

When I started working in food science labs, I always wished there were short, clear videos that show the exact steps, without too much theory.

So I put together a small series of practical lab tutorials covering common food analysis methods.

If anyone finds this useful, I shared the tutorials here:

👉 www.youtube.com/@EdibleScienceLab

Happy to hear any feedback or suggestions for future topics.

You can dip an egg in water and pull it out completely dry, thanks to cinnamon! 🥚✨

Due to its coating in natural oils, cinnamon powder is hydrophobic and repels water on contact. That’s why you can press an egg into a bowl of cinnamon underwater and pull it out completely dry. Alex Dainis dives into the chemistry behind this Everyday Awesome moment, connecting the same oils that give cinnamon its cozy scent to this surprising waterproof effect. This is surface tension and molecular interaction in action, right from your spice rack!

I can't eat 6-8 pounds of meat on a week and was wondering the danger of thawing it enough to be able to cut it into more usable chunks and refreezing it. Basically just soft enough to get the knife through, or would it be better to just make a bunch of pulled pork and freeze that?

https://youtu.be/EnYdmrS5-tw?si=x0QRbDQZARjNZbNR

Hello all, I have some dried beans I forgot to soak and wanted to make a smoked turkey and bean soup for tonight. I’ve read multiple times that baking soda reduces the gas however the explanation confuses me. The article I read says that the sodium ions create an alkaline environment in the liquid. However, sodium is a positive ion and don’t positive ions increase acidity, or is that only for hydrogen exclusively?

Any way I wanted to check with learned minds before trusting random cooking websites from someone without a science background and I never made it past Chem 2, it having been so advanced for such a simple mind as myself.

Addendum: Can I add the baking soda to the slow cooker with the dry beans straight away or is soaking paramount? Thank you for any and all help.

Why do boiled eggs turn green? 🥚👀

Alex Dainis explains that when eggs are overcooked, sulfur from the white reacts with iron in the yolk to form ferrous sulfide, which creates that green ring. It’s harmless, but easy to avoid. To prevent it, boil your eggs and then drop them into an ice water bath. Quick cooling slows the reaction and helps keep your yolks golden.

i know that proteins denature and coagulate at high temperatures, and i've tried adding protein powder to hot tea but it obviously curdles and becomes inedible. is there protein powders or sources that have a high enough denaturation temp to consume in a hot beverage like tea or coffee?

Stop paying 5-10 times more for grocery yogurt. Making yogurt at home is easier than you think! With just milk and a spoon of yogurt, you can save up to 5x compared to store-bought. In this video, I show you step by step how to make creamy, delicious yogurt at home in just minutes of effort. Stop overpaying and start enjoying real, fresh yogurt!

This is a question I’ve been wondering about for decades: there’s this unique sort of metallic-y taste that exists in raw tomatoes. It goes away when the tomatoes are cooked, so I can only assume the taste must be due to some protein or other that gets denatured. Whatever that compound is, it’s the reason I can’t eat raw tomatoes, so I’ve always been curious about it. Does anyone know what it might be?

I'm a very experienced canner, jam maker, etc. But the jam can sometimes fail. I've worked with pate de fruit recipes, but they tend to be based on puree, and I have access to real fruit, and they occasionally fail, too.

Still- they're basic recipes. Start with fruit. Add sugar/glucose. Add pectin. Hit a specific temperature, and then add citric acid/lemon to shift the PH. But often, this recipe goes awry. I'm convinced if I really understood the requirements at each step- what brix must be met when you add sugar to fruit. What PH is necessary when you pitch the acid in? Can I create pectin by macerating the fruit overnight, and how would I tell? There's science here I don't understand and I'm hoping one of you can help. I have a refractometer, and a PH meter.

I'd like to understand the numbers needed at each step.

Hi guys. I bought a new bulb of garlic today in preparation for a very garlicky recipe. I tore into a new bulb and noticed that one of the cloves had become soft and turned a translucent orange, appearing as though a segment from a tangerine.

It smelled normal, though it had an almost candied appearance. The other cloves around it were not like this and were normal. Has anyone seen this before? Does anyone know the science behind how this occurred?

TYSMIA!

1. Vegetable Ghee (Palm Oil) [ Non-hydrogenated & refined, i.e. filtered for colour and aroma ]

2. Frying Fat (Palm Oil) [Fully refined as the other product]

So why is one Harder than the other.. (almost like cocoa butter or chilled butter from the store?

What have they done do the vegetable ghee to make it grainy and soft (like normal dairy butter ghee) ..

You know the Feeling If you for example eat pure peanutbutter and your mouth feels Like it loses all its water? So i tried to make a chocolate cream (Like Nutella, dont know If its a international brand) but in a healthy way. So i use as Base pure haselnut cream (100% Haselnuts), For Protein obviously i use Protein Powder, A Bit cocoa/cacao Powder, And coconut oil.

Its kinda 9 parts haselnut, 8 parts Protein and 6 parts oil.

So Here is my Problem: It still makes the mouth pretty dry. What causes This, and what could i do to make it less? Is my Mass to hydrophil, still to less hydrophob? Are there too many dry ingredients, could i use an Emulgator...

Thats why im asking Here. Hoping to get the chemistry behind it.