Chemical Education Today
Commentary
What’s Wrong with Cookbooks? by Addison Ault
Cooks use cookbooks; cooks like cookbooks; cooks buy cookbooks, lots of them. If lab manuals are the chemist’s cookbooks, why don’t chemists like them? Perhaps they should! As someone who works in the kitchen as well as someone who works in the lab, I like recipes. Where do I find them? Lots of places: in cookbooks/lab manuals; in magazines/journals; in private communications: “Wow! That’s cool; can I have the recipe?” I cut them out of the paper, and I download them from the Web; I subscribe to Cook’s Illustrated, and I subscribe to the Journal of Chemical Education. I’ve even developed a few recipes myself—Dr. Orgo’s Grape-Up, for example, 1 and the resolution of αphenylethylamine (1). Now why is it that when I’m showing my grandchildren how to cook I’m quite happy to get out a recipe, but when I’m showing my students how to operate in the lab I’m supposed to hide the book? Let’s imagine a “discovery lab” in my kitchen. OK kids, what do you want to make? Tiramisu!!! Sure! You can find the starting materials in the cupboard and the bowls in the drawers. The mixer is on the counter. Just ask me if there’s anything you don’t understand. Well, what do we really do in the kitchen? Just make oatmeal? I hope not. We make chocolate chip cookies— something we’d like to have, something forgiving, and something a beginner can succeed at with some supervision. And where do we start? We start with a recipe! And the important word here is start. After that it’s just like in the lab: what measurements are critical? (Does it have to be exactly 1 teaspoon of vanilla? Or exactly 10 mL of water?) Why do we need sodium bicarbonate? What variations are possible? (White sugar or brown sugar, HCl or H2SO4?) Heat or bake for how long? (Actually, timing is more subtle in cooking since
Recipes and procedures are a point of departure; used thoughtfully, they can develop skills and provide insight.
in cooking you rarely want to reach equilibrium.) Given the similarity between cooking and chemistry, is it reasonable to expect our chemistry students to become chefs after just a few days in the lab? Recipes and procedures are a point of departure; used thoughtfully, they can develop skills and provide insight. They can be modified to suit the situation, and they can be extended by analogy.2 (We’re out of chocolate chips; let’s use M&Ms. Or how about white chocolate chips?) Of course they can be followed thoughtlessly; but don’t blame the recipe. What’s wrong with cookbooks? Nothing! Notes 1. Dr. Orgo’s Grape-Up is a 1:1 mixture of grape juice and either 7-Up or Sprite. 2. McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. The Science and Lore of the Kitchen; Simon and Schuster, Inc.: New York, NY, 1997; ISBN 0-684-84328-5. Rave reviews from Nature, Science, and C&E News, as well as from M. F. K. Fisher and Julia Child. Here’s where you find out why your recipe works. The flow diagram on p 393 for the purification of cane sugar will quicken the pulse of the true organic chemist.
Literature Cited 1. Ault, A. Resolution of D,L-α-Phenylethylamine; J. Chem. Educ. 1965, 42, 269.
Addison Ault is a member of the Department of Chemistr y, Cornell College, Mount Vernon, IA 52314;
[email protected].
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 79 No. 10 October 2002 • Journal of Chemical Education
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