From Prep Station to Plate: Nine Kitchen Transformations

Start where a professional kitchen starts. Mise en place is the French discipline of preparing and arranging every ingredient and tool before cooking begins, so a cook can move through a menu during service without stopping to prepare a component mid-recipe.

The first act of preparation is often a cut. Julienne turns vegetables into long, thin, matchstick-shaped strips of uniform size, and the term was first printed in Massialot's Le Cuisinier Royal et Bourgeois in 1722; the cut serves as a finished garnish or as a step before further cooking.

Infusion draws flavor out of plant material into a liquid by steeping, as in tea, herbal preparations and flavored oils or vinegars. The entry sets it apart from decoction, which boils the plant material directly, and from percolation, where the liquid passes through it.

Emulsification joins liquids that do not normally mix, such as oil and water, into a stable suspension of tiny droplets with help from an agent like egg yolk, mustard or lecithin. It is the basis of mayonnaise, hollandaise and vinaigrette.

Heat now changes the ingredient itself. Caramelization browns sugar, breaking its molecules into hundreds of aromatic compounds, and is distinct from the Maillard reaction, which needs both sugars and proteins. Slowly browned onions are the entry's everyday example.

Tempering shows that heat can also be used to control structure. Melted chocolate is heated, cooled and reheated under constant agitation so the cocoa butter crystallizes in a stable form, giving a glossy finish, a crisp snap and resistance to bloom.

Proofing is the final rise of shaped yeast dough before baking. The yeast keeps fermenting the dough's sugars and releases carbon dioxide, which leavens the dough and gives well-risen bread its open, airy crumb. British and Australasian cooks call it proving.

Soaking and cooking maize in an alkaline solution such as water and slaked lime removes the hull and makes niacin available, preventing pellagra. The entry dates the earliest evidence to equipment on Guatemala's southern coast from 1200 to 1500 BCE, and it underlies tortillas and tamales.

The path ends with a modernist technique. Spherification uses sodium alginate with calcium chloride or calcium gluconate lactate to form a thin gel membrane around a liquid. Unilever documented the chemistry in the 1950s, and Ferran and Albert Adrià brought it to cuisine at elBulli.