Emulsifiers hold two liquids that normally won't stay mixed together. Some examples of this are ice-cream and salad dressing.

Answer 1

Hi, Michael,

Many students wonder why studying chemistry is important. "I'm never going to work in a chemical company!" What the heck does chemistry have to do with cooking? Though I've never intentionally worked in a chemical company, in a cleaning frenzy I cleverly burned off the rubber skirt of my garbage disposal by re-creating the "volcano demonstration" from 4th grade. Do you remember what happens when you combine baking soda and vinegar? "Chemistry in the Kitchen!" If you want your cuisine creations to taste and look edible, understanding how ingredients bond is important. Emulsifiers are ingredients that help foods to combine for smoothness and stability.

How do emulsifiers work? If you recall from high school chemistry that there are molecules attracted to oils (lipophilic) (lipo = oil, philic = attracted to) and molecules attracted to water (hydrophilic) (hyro = water) ,this will help you to understand emulsifiers and how they work. If you fill a glass with water and add a few teaspoons of oil to the glass, you will see that the oil and the water stay in layers; they do not mix. If you add an emulsifier to the glass, such as dried mustard or egg yolk, the molecules of the emulsifier will bind to both the oil and the water. The emulsifiers flip the water-attracted side of the emulsifier to the water, and project the lipid-attracted side of the emulsifier to the oil, allowing the emulsifier to hold together simultaneously molecules of water and oil. If you picture several people holding hands together simultaneously, the person in the middle would be the "emulsifier," holding one hand to the oil and the other hand to the water molecule.

There are many kinds of emulsifiers used in cooking, some naturally occurring, such as honey, eggs yolks, mustard, beeswax, candelilla wax, carnauba wax, rice bran wax and organic liquid lecithin. Others have been created in industrial laboratories, such as sodium stearoyl lactylate, mono- and di-glycerols, ammonium phosphatide, and xanthan gum. Emulsifiers help create food stability and a sense of creamy texture.

Now, about that garbage disposal! Baking soda and vinegar are great cleaning agents, but please watch several youtube videos on how to combine them properly to make sure you don't destroy YOUR garbage disposal or your eyeballs!

(https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS906US907&sxsrf=ALeKk00DmpoK48xtM7wM5r6pZNS6-pZPkA%3A1607803813215&ei=pSPVX_LNDKWC9PwPmPeOkAg&q=emulsifier+examples&oq=emulsifier+e&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgAMgUIABDJAzICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADoHCAAQRxCwAzoHCAAQsAMQQzoHCCMQyQMQJzoECAAQQ1CUD1j8EWCIJWgBcAJ4AIABTYgB2AGSAQEzmAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpesgBCsABAQ&sclient=psy-ab)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthan_gum Dec 15, 2017)