The Physics Behind Cooking Intelligence

Cooking reflects human’s highest intelligence from both scientific and artistic perspectives. This work investigates the essential physics behind intelligence in cooking. The physics behind cooking time and preparation method is carefully studied and quantitatively presented, which reveals the most interesting science behind various recipes, tricks, and mysteries to achieve optimal temperature and flavor in cooking and culinary arts. Firstly, the cooking time’s square power relation with the food’s physical dimension explains the most delicate thoughts behind fast cooking and why Chinese and Indian foods prefer shredding the food into tiny pieces before cooking. Secondly, the orders of difference in magnitude between thermal and mass diffusivity coefficients explain many food preparation methods used widely throughout centuries of human history in both Eastern and Western culinary cultures.