The Scientific Way to Bake Perfect Pancakes

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Do you like pancakes and pancakes? Then you will definitely be interested in the secret with which pancakes prepared according to any recipe will have an ideal shape and a competitive look.

Baking pancakes is a rather complicated process. They turn out to be too thin, then too thick, and sometimes even - full of holes. Do you want them to be always perfect? One of the latest research in mathematics and ophthalmology will help you. (One day this research will save someone's eyesight, but now it's about something completely different.)

Scientists from University College London have published the results of a study of 14 pancake recipes from around the world in Mathematics Today. Surprisingly, it is assumed that this will help to study in more detail the causes and development of glaucoma, which will lead to the discovery of new, more advanced methods of its treatment.

Researchers have introduced several specialized concepts to describe pancakes. The first is “aspect ratio”. It is the ratio of the diameter of the pancake, raised to the third power, to the volume of the dough for making it. The next term was "baking ratio": the volume of liquid used to the volume of flour used. The higher this indicator, the more liquid the dough turns out.

As the study has shown, there is a direct dependence of the aspect ratio on the recipe. Thick Dutch pancakes, similar to tiny pancakes, have an aspect ratio of 3, and thin Russian pancakes or French crepes - 300. The baking ratio for all the investigated recipes balances between 100 and 225. As it turned out, the blush of the pancakes primarily depends on it.

Numbers by numbers, but how does it work? If you make a dough with a baking ratio of about 100 and try to bake a thick pancake, the end result is not a tasty product, but a lunar surface. There is water in the dough, which must go somewhere, and when it evaporates, peculiar craters are formed, which do not have time to tighten when baking with such ratios.

If you try to bake a thin pancake with a baking ratio of about 225, a mass of small dark spots and a dark ring along the edge form on its surface: a very thin dough, when the water evaporates, begins to burn even before the pancake is baked. And in the center of such a dish there will be many small holes through which the water evaporates. If you bake a pancake with a baking ratio of 175, the color will be uniform regardless of the thickness of the pan as the water will drain out gradually.

And what does glaucoma have to do with it? The fact is that initially the researchers were studying it. During the process of illness, fluid accumulates in the eyes and cannot escape. This puts pressure on the optic nerve, slowly damages it, and causes blindness. For treatment, you need to find a way to remove water from the organ of vision, which means you need a model for removing water from complex structures. Therefore, scientists began to bake pancakes.

Let's try to test the theory: are the researchers at University College London right? We are waiting for your math recipes in the comments!