Cooking Science Wiki

A personal knowledge base exploring the science behind food and cooking. This wiki is built incrementally — every source ingested and every question investigated makes it richer.

What’s here

The wiki is organized into four main areas:

Science — The foundational principles: Maillard reactions, emulsions, protein behavior, starch chemistry, and fermentation. These pages explain why cooking works the way it does.

Ingredients — Deep profiles of ingredients and ingredient families, grounded in their chemistry and biology. What eggs actually do in a batter. Why onions make you cry. How flour becomes structure.

Techniques — Cooking methods examined through a scientific lens. What’s really happening during braising, deep-frying, and bread-baking.

Sources — Summaries of every source document ingested into the wiki, with links to the pages they informed.

How to use this wiki

To explore: Start with the Wiki index and follow links. The connections between pages are as valuable as the pages themselves.

To add knowledge: Drop source material (articles, notes, clippings) into raw/ and ask the LLM to ingest it. Each source will generate a summary and update relevant pages across the wiki.

To investigate: Ask questions. The LLM will search the web, the wiki, and synthesize answers. Good answers get filed back as new pages.

To maintain: Periodically run a lint check to find contradictions, orphan pages, and gaps worth filling.