Baking science question - eggs

[housewolf]

I don't know if anyone here would know this kind of thing, but thought I'd ask anyway....


I have 2 baked custard recipes (actually Pots de Creme au Chocolat).

One calls for whisking the egg yolks and sugar to a "lazy ribbon" then combining with the cream/chocolate/vanilla mixture and bake.

The other says to stir the egg yolks to mix lightly, then combine with the cream/chocolate/sugar/vanilla mixture, then put it all in a double boiler and stir them over low heat for about 3 minutes.

My question is this: after baking and cooling, how would the custards be different? Would the textures be different, and if so, how? Would one be thinner than the other? Smoother? Creamier? Richer?

Or is the purpose of both just to thicken the egg yolks, and they would turn out the same? Does whisking egg yolks with sugar have the same effect on the proteins in the yolks as gentle heating would?


Are there any food scientists here? I'll bet Alton Brown could tell me, if only he paid as much attention to us as we pay to him!

[supernova]

1. Double boiling is a gentler way to cook

custards.

I'm not a food scientist, but this is what I do know from spending years in my grandmother's and mother's southern kitchens:

Double-boiling over the stove gives you more control and you're actually supposed to continue wisking while it cooks. Just to make sure you don't develop lumps in the eggs and risk re-crystalizing the materials on the sides of the bowl.

What you're after, in any case, is cooking the eggs thoroughly.

Even if you bake it in the oven, the traditinal way is a bain marie, sticking the custard cups in a larger pan of water to cook.

[housewolf]

5. Bain Marie

Both recipes called for baking in the oven in a bain marie. I made the first recipe that called for whisking the yolks with sugar, maybe I'll try the other one next time.

Or maybe I'll do what H2S suggest, and do half a batch one way and half the other way, and see if they turn out the same.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. I'd try channeling .... er ... I tried ...

.... this guy

but it didn't work.

One thing's for sure. These two methods (whisking vs cooking) clearly use two very different principles to get to essentially the same place. In the end, I suspect there's little difference in the results. They both combine the ingredients and they both end up with a cooked product (the custard). All that happened is the heat got applied in slightly different ways at the very beginning.

I'd be very interested to know if, made side by side, there would be any discernible difference. I'd put my money on 'not'. But that's just a guess.

One thing is certain, however ..... I'm stumped.

[housewolf]

6. Thanks for trying to contact Alton for me...

Darned, I KNEW this was a question for him!!!! Or Shirley Corriher.

Maybe I'll follow your suggestion next time and do have a batch one way and half the other and see how they are different. I think there might be some sort of difference from the air beat into the whisked yolks. And I wonder if the partially-cooked mixture will bake faster than the other.

One thing I know... the pots de creme au chocolate are MUCH better with 50%- 100% more chocolate than the recipes call for!

[Warpy]

3. Both methods are an attempt to avoid scrambled eggs

with clumps of sugar. Yum.

There will be no difference in the end product. The double boiler method gives you a little more control and would completely prevent the scrambled eggs and sugar problem caused by not whisking the eggs and sugar thoroughly enough in the first method due to ringing phones and squalling kids and other interruptions. What the first method does is fully incorporate the egg yolks into the sugar mixture to prevent those scrambled egg clumps when the custard is cooked.

[housewolf]

7. Oh that's an interesting thought...

I didn't think about the sugar/egg combining, and the possibility of heating the mixture melting the sugar to combine it into the eggs more thoroughly.

Good thinking, Warpy!

Thanks

[eleny]

4. How about asking at Garden Web?

Since Alton doesn't have a forum at his site, how about the Garden Web? They have a bazillion forums about everything to do with the home. There may be someone there on the Cooking Forum who can answer this. http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/

[housewolf]

8. Garden Web

Hmmm... don't think I ever heard of Garden Web, I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the tip!

This may also be just the sort of prompt I need to re-subscribe to the newsgroup rec.food.cooking or rec.food.baking, someone there might be able to answer a question like this. I used to enjoy the rec.food.*** newsgroups a lot but lost my connection to them when I changed isp's.

Thanks for the tip to garden.web.

[eleny]

9. Newgroups were always so much fun

Then, when forums like this one got big, I migrated over. If the newsgroups are still going strong, there were always very knowledgable people involved.