Cooking For Engineers

[Tenzint]

Hey there again

Seeing that my previous question was answered and sorted out within minutes, I have another one:

I've worked out my density of the pastry - thanks for your help with that.

Now I want to work out the density of a meat mixture - obviously the formula is the same, but the problem is that the mixture won't really have a breadth, width or height. It'll be a kind of "stew" type mixture.

I am so lost all over again, any help would be great.

Thanks

[GaryProtein]

Take a small piece of meat-brisket or whatever you like to use, about 100 grams and weigh it exactly. Then place it in an accurate measuring vessel calibrated in milliliters with enough water to completely cover the meat. Measure the total volume of water with and without the meat inside the vessel. That will give you the volume of the meat. Divide the weight (mass) by its volume and you will have the density of the meat in grams/ml.

You can do the same thing with the vegetables and then do a weighted average for all the ingredients.

OR, you could take a portion of the raw ingredients or the finished stew, weigh it and then do the dame thing with the water bath for volume to have the density of the finished stew. Of course, you probably won't want to eat that "test" serving.

[Tenzint]

Thanks

This could take a while, but let me see how I go with this!

[kgb1001001]

Take a plastic ziploc bag. Weigh it. Write down the weight. (Might be best to do this in grams)

Take a few spoonfuls of your mixture and put it in the bag. Weigh the bag including the mixture and write it down

Fill a measuring cup or other graduated container (would be easiest if it's measured in milliliters) half-full of water. Take note of how much water is in the cup. Stuff the bag down into the cup and write down the new level of the water.

Now subtract the weight of the empty bag from the weight of the bag+mixture. This is how much your mixture weighs. (You can now put back the mixture with the rest of it).

Subtract the level of the water in the full cup from the level of the water in the half-full cup. This is how much water you displaced, or the volume of the mixture. Divide the weight of mixture by the volume displaced and you have your density.

[GaryProtein]

I could see why the density of the pastry could be important because there is a certain flakiness and texture involved and because baking really is organic chemistry synthesis in the kitchen, but why is the density of a stew so important???????

[Tenzint]

Thanks again for the suggestions. I'll give it a try.

As to why I need the information on the denisty of the "stew", we are in the process of designing additions to our range of pie production machinery and as such we need to know the formulas (or methods) to ensure that the machines can be manufactured to client specifications.

Thanks for all your help.

[Howard]

The plastic bag method won't be too accurate unless you use a Foodsaver or something.

[Tenzint]

Thanks Howard. Luckily, I have one of those. Today is "experiment" day, so I'll let you all know how it goes.