Liping Ma (2010, p.111) states that “mathematics is not rigid.”
Originally, I would have completely disagreed with this statement as I believed that mathematics wasn’t important and not needed in real life. I thought that after doing maths in school I would never use it ever again because it was pointless.
However, I discovered mathematics when baking a lemon meringue pie, which I had never thought about before.
The first piece of maths I noticed was in the recipe.
For the pastry
- 175g plain flour
- 100g cold butter, cut in small pieces
- 1 tbsp icing sugar
- 1 egg yolk
For the filling
- 2 level tbsp cornflour
- 100g golden caster sugar
- finely grated zest 2 large
- 125ml fresh lemon juice (from 2-3 lemons)
- juice 1 small
- 85g Butter, cut into pieces
- 3 egg yolk and a 1 whole egg
For the meringue
- 4 egg white, room temperature
- 200g golden caster sugar
- 2 level tsp cornflour
I never noticed before that there were so many mathematical terms used in baking such as number, kilograms, grams. When thinking about this mathematically, it is important to follow the recipe as this is key to making the best pie that I possibly could. If I had added too many eggs or butter, the pie would probably be inedible.
The next piece of maths that I discovered whilst baking was the mathematical sequencing which is more important than I had thought it would be. When it came to making the lemon curd for the center of the pie, it is important that the cornflour, sugar and lemon zest were mixed in a pan first before adding the melted butter and beaten egg yolks. This is important as if the eggs were to be added first, the recipe would not work. This is an important feature to take into consideration. This also applied to making the meringue, as I had to ensure that I had to beat the egg whites before adding in the sugar.
Other maths, I noticed in the recipe was the temperature in which I had to cook each individual section of the pie. If I had not taken the temperatures into consideration then the pie would have either been burnt or completely undercooked (and not eaten)
In conclusion, I think that baking has a lot more maths included than I had originally realised. I had to be able to understand mathematical language, be able to weigh ingredients correctly and sequence the recipe to get the best result possible! However, it didn’t quite go to plan (but it all got eaten!)
