Here's Why The Cookie CrumbLes

[LuCkY]

Scientists say cooking method and humidity play key roles

 

Researchers devised this contraption to measure the strains suffered by cookies (or semi-sweet biscuits, to use the British term) as a result of cooking procedures. Some cookies are stacked at lower left.

 

LONDON, Oct. 2 — British scientists think they have worked out why the cookie crumbles.

 

 

EVERY YEAR, cookie-makers throw away thousands of cookies because they emerge from the oven cracked or broken. Thousands more reach the supermarket shelves but then crumble in the hands of their would-be eaters.

It is widely assumed that cookies crumble because they are roughly handled before they reach the consumer. But researchers at Loughborough University in central England say the problem may be due to cooking techniques and humidity.

The scientists tested batches of a particular type of cookie — known in Britain and other countries as semi-sweet biscuits or tea biscuits — to see if their theory held up.

The type of cookie that was tested is known as a semi-sweet biscuit or tea biscuit in Britain and many other countries.

 

“When you take (a cookie) out of the oven it likes to absorb moisture from the atmosphere,” Loughborough University’s Ricky Wildman told BBC Radio on Thursday“If the humidity of the atmosphere is set incorrectly, some parts of the biscuit are trying to dry out while some parts of the biscuit are trying to suck moisture in,” he explained. “Certain parts are contracting, others are expanding. This sets up internal forces within the biscuit, and it effectively self-destructs.”

He described the process as like “an earthquake running through the biscuit.”

“It’s very exciting,” he added.

The resulting research paper— titled “A Novel Application of Speckle Interferometry for the Measurement of Strain Distributions in Semi-Sweet Biscuits” — was published Thursday in the online version of the journal Measurement Science and Technology.

Wildman’s research team says cookie-makers should monitor the humidity in their factories more closely and bake their wares for longer at lower temperatures.

He said the research has serious implications for an industry worth $2.5 billion a year in Britain. “The economic costs to manufacturing are quite considerable,” he said.

 

MSNBC’s Alan Boyle and Reuters contributed to this story.