What does chemistry have to do with your family feast? Quite a lot if you brine your turkey.<\/p>\n
And along with why you shouldn\u2019t season steak right before grilling, it\u2019s one of the many fun facts explaining science and food preparation in \u201cChemistry for Cooks<\/a>,\u201d a new book by Sandra C. Greer \u201966<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a textbook, but it\u2019s accessible to the general reader,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The book, which she described as her Covid project, \u201cassumes you know absolutely nothing about chemistry.\u201d It opens with a chapter about atoms and molecules, and is followed by another on water because it\u2019s so central to cooking.<\/p>\n The book includes some organic chemistry, \u201cbut not enough to scare anybody,\u201d said Greer, as well as information on nutrition, taste, the main categories of food and, of course, the vital role of sodium chloride, or salt. Published in 2022 by MIT Press, the book sprang from a college chemistry course she taught.<\/p>\n Each chapter features recipes, like her mother\u2019s favorite fruit cobbler, and uses science to analyze them. For instance, she details the chemistry behind brines, or diffusion, which is the movement of a substance like salt in water, and osmosis, the brine moving into the cell membrane of the turkey.<\/p>\n An Upstate native, Greer attended Greenville and Hillcrest high schools before she was invited in her junior year to attend Furman on a full scholarship, replaced the next year by a full National Merit Scholarship. As she competed in regional science fairs over the years, she\u2019d come to know some of the judges, including Furman Professor Donald G. Kubler, who had let her work in Furman\u2019s science labs.<\/p>\n Recognizing that she was bored in high school, it was Kubler, later an important mentor, who suggested she skip her senior year and come to Furman. Her time at Furman collided with the turbulent 1960s and racial integration and women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were still restrictions on how women dressed \u2013 no pants on campus \u2013 and we had to attend church on Sunday,\u201d she recalled. \u201cIntegration began while I was at Furman.\u201d<\/p>\n Along with a \u201cterrific education\u201d and a \u201cgood foundation for life,\u201d Greer made lifelong friends at Furman.<\/p>\n After graduating with a degree in chemistry, she earned her master\u2019s degree in 1968 and her Ph.D. in 1969 from the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n Those were difficult days for women to get work in academia or industry.<\/p>\n \u201cGovernment was a good place for women scientists to find a job,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Married in grad school, Greer\u2019s husband had gotten a post-doctoral fellowship to what is now the National Institute for Standards and Technology. She also got a research appointment there and a year later, she gave birth to twin sons, one of whom, Andrew Sean Greer, won a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his book \u201cLess.\u201d<\/p>\n Then in 1978, she took a position as professor of chemistry at the University of Maryland, where she spent the next 30 years teaching, doing basic research and running a laboratory.<\/p>\n \u201cMy research was in the general area of phase transitions and polymer solutions,\u201d things like how liquids mix and unmix, how polymer molecules dissolve in solutions, she said.<\/p>\n In 2008, Greer moved to California to be closer to her sons and took a job as provost and professor at Mills College. There she saw the need to offer a science course that wouldn\u2019t intimidate students: chemistry for cooking was launched.<\/p>\n \u201cThe students were very excited about it and 30 signed up immediately,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Along with teaching the science, Greer held cooking demonstrations to illustrate the facts, which the students enjoyed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt changes the way you think about cooking,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n While not Furman\u2019s first woman with a chemistry degree, Greer said she was the first woman chair of the chemistry department at the University of Maryland, where a seminar room in a new chemistry building will be dedicated to her in April.<\/p>\n \u201cChemistry for Cooks\u201d is Greer\u2019s second book since retiring. The first, another text on ethics for scientists \u201cnever took off, though it\u2019s still available on Amazon,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cFortunately,\u201d said Greer, \u201cthis one is doing pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What does chemistry have to do with your family feast? Quite a lot if you brine your turkey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":29508,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,60,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-alumni-profiles","category-chemistry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}