Obviously I’m not talking about what you add during the different preparations, but just about the way you cook something.
Like boiling VS roasting broccoli. Boiled broccoli smells and tastes like death and despair, but the second you roast them they’re absolutely delicious.
Or eggs, hard boiled eggs taste completely different from when they are cooked in a pan.
Or again meat, roasted meat is completely different from boiled meat even if you add little to no other ingredients during the cooking process.
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Cooking is basically chemistry. Every piece of food is filled with complex molecules that interact differently at different temperatures.
Boiling is a fast way to cook food because water is very good at transferring heat to something else, and you’re cooking the food on all sides. However, boiling water doesn’t actually attain a high temperature relative to what your oven or pan is capable of, just 100 degrees C. Food will only brown at higher temperatures, and that browning produces lots of new flavors that we tend to enjoy.
However, the temperature at which water boils is still enough to cause many chemical reactions in the food. If boiled for only a minute or so (a chef would call this “blanching”), broccoli takes on a bright green color and is deliciously crisp and fresh. Boiled for longer, and it begins to release additional chemicals that dull the color, make it mushy, and give it a sour taste/smell. Something similar happens to eggs that are boiled too long.
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