When you heat a liquid, you generally expect it to boil but rather than solidify. What is the science behind this process? Examples are cakes pancakes and eggs
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Flour contains starch, which are long chains of sugar that are normally lumped into small clumps. If you mix them with water and heat them up, these chains attach to each other, turning the whole thing into a solid gel.
Eggs are often used to improve texture, but aren’t what makes the pancake solid. (/u/calybium)
Both flour and eggs contain a lot of proteins. In general proteins are tightly rolled up when they are created in the cell. However if you heat them up you brake the bonds that keep them tightly together. So the protein becomes long strings that will easily bond with other molecules and each other. This makes the object solid.
Partially that is egg whites solidifying because their chemical structure changes (when you cry eggs they solidify rather than evaporate). Same with pancake batter, it’s chemical structure changes. And, additionally, the water inside boils out, but the effect of that is negligible
It’s about the protein in the eggs. Proteins are very large molecules, formed like massive chains. These chains are crumpled up in a specific way, bunched into a big ole blob. The shape of this blob determines how the protein works. When you expose protein to heat, the crumpling changes, and the protein’s properties change altogether. This process is called “denaturing”. Denatured eggs proteins become solid
Rule 2.
r/askculinary might know better.
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