RECIPE CARD - JULIA EARLEY

Ratatouille Ingredients
Main dish
● 2 Eggplants
● 6 Tomatoes
● 2 Squashes
● 2 Zucchini
Sauce
● 2 Tbsp Olive Oil
● 1 Onion
● 4 Garlic cloves
● 1 Red pepper
● 1 Yellow pepper
● 1 Can of Crushed tomatoes
● Salt and pepper
Seasoning
● 2 Tbsp Basil

Ready in 1.5 hours ● 1 Tsp Minced Garlic

Serves 8 people ● 2 Tbsp Parsley

280 calories ● 2 Tbsp Thyme

● Salt and Pepper
● 4 Tbsp Olive Oil
Personal commentary:
On my 13th birthday, I had the pleasure
of traveling to Soho in New York. On Equipment Needed
the morning of my birthday, I had ● Oven and Stove
brunch at a beautiful french restaurant
across the street from our hotel. I ● Knife
decided to try something new and ● Serving dish and utensils
ordered a delicious ratatouille! This ● Baking pan / dish
dish combines different vegetables in a
● Oven mitts
beautiful combination of flavors.
Recipe Steps Tips
1. Preparation: Preheat oven to 375º - Try to purchase similar sized
F. Clean vegetables with water vegetables for an even display of each
type in the dish.
2. Slice eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini,
and squash about 7mm thick and - If sauce is too bitter for your liking,
set aside add a bit of baking soda and red wine
vinegar
3. Making the Sauce: On a stovetop,
heat up olive oil on medium heat.
Dice onion, bell peppers, and
garlic and add to oil. Mix until
soft. Add salt, pepper, and
crushed red tomatoes and stir.
Take off of heat and add minced
basil and mix. Pour sauce into a
dish pan and smooth it.
4. Arranging the Dish: Arrange slices
of vegetables over smoothed
tomato sauce. Start by placing
vegetables in the center of the pan
then begin to build it outwards like
a budding rose. Season with salt
Experiment:
and pepper. For my chemistry experiment, I tested
5. Cover the pan with aluminum foil how the thickness of a slice of zucchini
and bake in the oven for 40 affects how it cooks. I tested 5 different
minutes. After 40 minutes, remove thicknesses of zucchini ranging from
the foil and let it bake for 20 more 1mm to 10mm, recorded their internal
minutes. This is when the temperatures after being out of the
wonderful scents will enrich your oven, had their textures rated from
kitchen. 1-10 and their taste rated from 1-10 in
a blind test. For each width, I tested 4
6. Done! Take ratatouille out of the equal slices placed evenly on a pan in
oven and enjoy a delectable colorful my oven. I preheat the oven to 350º
meal!

and baked each test for exactly 5

minutes. As seen below, my results
conclude that when zucchini slices are
cut at a width of 7mm they yield the
best texture and taste out of any other
thickness tested.

Chemistry behind it:

When you cook things using an oven,
you're using conduction, (Unless you’re
using a convection oven.) Ovens work
I was able to observe that thinner slices
by emitting infrared radiation from hot
of vegetables cook faster all the way
coils that heat up the air molecules
through. My second experiment that I
inside the oven that heat the food up by
conducted aimed at finding internal
conduction. On the particulate level,
temperature reached in respect to
when molecules are heated they begin
time. Here, I kept the oven at a constant
to move around faster and bump into
temperature of 375º and used the same
each other. This process starts at the
7mm slices of zucchini the entire time.
outside of the food and slowly moves
Every 2 minutes I took the zucchini
into the center as the food continues
slices out and used a thermometer to
cooking. This is why the outside of food
measure their internal temperatures. I
cooks before the inside.
found that the data was a logarithmic
As the size of an object increases, its
curve. This means that the temperature
surface area increases by a square
increased substantially at the
measure, and the volume increases by a
beginning of the experiment, but as it
cube measure, meaning the surface
cooked longer the temperature started
area to volume ratio will continually get
to increase less and less. The standard
smaller and smaller. This means that
temperature at which vegetables are
there will be less thermal energy
considered cooked is 135º (Clark,
entering the object per volume unit.
Calvin.) I found that it took 40 minutes
Smaller objects have larger SA/V ratios,
for my zucchinis to reach a
so they allow more heat to enter the
temperature of 135º, suggesting that is
object per volume unit. Therefore,
how long it takes to thoroughly cook
smaller objects heat up faster than
zucchini.
larger objects. We must take into
consideration the time which it takes
heat to reach the inside of the object,
the width of the object, and that the
baking process is not exactly linear.
There’s no simple way to find the representing random walk. Random
volume or surface area of an object and walk is a form of probability that
immediately know how long to cook it models the path a particle takes as it
for. bumps into things and it is sent out in
random directions. This is happening in
In order to accurately calculate the
an oven when hot air particles are
amount of time you should heat
bouncing around hitting the food
something to reach a desired
inside. For my length, I used half the
temperature, I used an equation that
width of my zucchini.
calculates the length of diffusion from
time and diffusion constant. The When solved, this equation says that to
2
(𝐿 ) reach its optimal temperature, zucchini
equation is written as 𝑡 = 4𝐷
. I will
should cook for 2355 seconds, or 40
be using a diffusion constant, D, of minutes. This is almost the exact same
−3
1. 3 · 10 𝑐𝑚/𝑠𝑒𝑐 to represent as my experiment above.
zucchini. This is modeled after
diffusion, which is a way of

Sources
 https://tasty.co/recipe/ratatouille
https://genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/thumbs.html
https://foodcrumbles.com/calculating-the-time-it-takes-for-a-pie-to-cook-fouriers-law/
https://sciencing.com/calculate-time-heat-object-8223103.html
https://www.howitworksdaily.com/how-do-ovens-cook-food/
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/adventures-in-chemistry/experi
ments/heat-energy-on-move.html
https://www.statefoodsafety.com/Resources/Resources/coo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_equation
King-times-and-temperatures-poster
https://bellyfull.net/ratatouille-recipe/