Kellogg's Sugar Guy

I had the opportunity to talk to a scientist from Kellogg on Saturday. He was explicit in his disclaimer that he was not here as a representative of Kellogg; his views were his own. He was here to give a talk at our annual “Careers in Chemistry” Symposium. His point was that in order to find a right job for you, you need to know yourself, and how you work with others and that sort of thing.

After his talk, I had the chance to talk to him. He is Kellogg’s “Sugar Guy” so I asked him about Starch. I was hoping that he could tell me what different effect each starch would have in a recipe, or how I could learn such things aside from having a test kitchen. He said, essentially, that the starches behave differently in different situations, and that he couldn’t tell me without knowing the temperature and water concentration. He suggested that really having a test kitchen is the best way to figure things out. That, and getting a good Food Science textbook.

Given his choice, he said he would use tapioca starch, because it has the clearest of flavours. I guess I will need to set up my test kitchen to investigate the effect of texture.