Cooking For Engineers

[Jim Cooley]

Hell of a lot of science beneath THAT particular art!

It really is an art, too -- or at least was until StarB**ks kinda-sorta quantified it into the crappy cr@p one commonly thinks of as foamed milk.

In a cafe, a long long time ago I once made espressos and foamed, or scalded, milk with steam.

I think the trick to the whole affair is surface tension, and I'll tell you why.

Whole homogenized milk, the more fat the better, works best.
As does COLD milk -- the colder the better.

Those are my clues, and I might be wrong. Many other variables go into creating micro-pore foamed milk, including of course, technique. Yet even technique may yield clues as to why one person's cappucino is better than another's.

God help me if I've got those apostophes in the right places!

Jim