Chapter 8: The Kitchen Check Access

Chemistry is supposed to have its roots in cooking, and indeed cooking does effect chemical changes. Perhaps understandably, the modern kitchen is less of a chemical laboratory than it used to be. More and more we are eating prepared meals, takeaways, or going out to dine, and when we do cook at home we want to use fresh or frozen food, in the form of meat, chicken, fish, vegetables, flour, sugar, butter, spices, and fruit – none of which comes with a list of ingredients. So what products are likely to be found in a kitchen and come with a list of components? Surprisingly few, unless the family consume lots of processed foods. Here we are concerned with items a cook might use. We will also look at some cleaning products, and two products that we might never need: one designed to ignite a flame, the other to detect flames that are a danger; in other words, a box of matches and a smoke detector.