Message #219119

[Courtney Caine]

The fragrance of cooking basmati or jasmine rice is another example of an improvement. What you smell when the steam wafts above the rice cooker is an aromatic compound called 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (or 2AP), which is also an important note in the aroma cooked popcorn, bread crust, crabmeat — and screwpine leaves. Screwpine leaves are aromatic leaves used to flavor rice dishes and sweets in India and southeast Asia.

The rice BADH2 gene underlies variation in the production of 2AP and a survey of this gene in aromatic rices around the world has shown that although one gene variant (or allele) is by far the most common, the aroma can be generated by a variety of mutations of the BADH2 gene.

To learn more about the science and history of food, Olsen recommends On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. This compendium of food lore even includes the science that underlies the recipe for “thousand-year-old” duck eggs, the “startlingly decrepit” delicacies Chinese love to serve to nervous American tourists.

http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/20914.aspx