Aren’t we just supplying heat to the food? What causes the drastic difference in taste?
In: Chemistry
Different factors play a role here. What happens to food if you apply heat? I’ll name a few things:
Fat melts, becomes liquid or creamy. Makes the texture nice and pleasant.
Sugars caramelize.
Starch granules pop and gelatinize, therefore become smooth and soft, have a better mouthfeel.
Proteins (with some sugars) go through the maillard reaction which is still not understood in its entirety. It’s the reaction which causes the browning of meat, for example.
(Unpleasant-ish) textures change. Eggs and doughs solidify – meat and hard vegetables become softer and nicer to eat and chew.
Some toxins are denatured (e. g. beans and some mushrooms need to be cooked to be edible).
And of course one point could also be that we’ve grown to prefer the taste of cooked food during our evolution, as some of these processes make foods more digestible and therefore provide an evolutionary advantage.
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