Poll based on a question asked by someone in my FL

[sraun]

[Poll #1071633]

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i know someone who is an alcoholic and who prefers to not even consume cooking wine, and i assume that alcohol in pie crusts would fall under the same thing.

point of detail

[the-blue-fenix.livejournal.com]

In that you probably know this. But if the crust as a whole (with the alcohol ingredients in) is baked, the alcohol will evaporate first in the heat and leave only its flavorings.

Cold pie crusts, e.g. graham cracker crusts, yeah the alcohol will still be present.

I can take pie either way but I appreciate your courtesy in thinking about your friends who can't.

Re: point of detail

[harimad.livejournal.com]

But if the crust as a whole (with the alcohol ingredients in) is baked, the alcohol will evaporate first in the heat and leave only its flavorings

I wouldn't be too sure. Everyone says that about wine sauces but that's not true either. Unless you simmer a wine sauce for a long time - something like 40 minutes - significant amounts of alcohol remain. References available upon request (although it could take a bit, they're buried in Gail's Recipe Swap, which has been reorganized and put on a different system since I last spent time there).

Breaking the crust down into subcases:
1. If the bottom crust is blind-baked without being glazed, than much of the booze will evaporate, but some will be left because some is always left.
2. If the bottom crust is blind-baked with being glazed, then who knows? Can alcohol evaporate through baking egg white?
3. If the bottom crust is not blind-baked than I don't think there is a path for the alcohol to evaporate through. It would have to get through a glaze if any, then the wet filling (and wet filling stays wet during baking), then the upper crust, and then through any glaze on the crust.
4. For top crust, see 1 & 2.

Re: point of detail

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

How significant? If it is anything under 0.5% by volume it would not be considered alcoholic by most religious authorities since it would be physically impossible to get even slightly buzzed off of it. Witness the sale of non-alcoholic beer in very strictly Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia.

Re: point of detail

[harimad.livejournal.com]

For a wine sauce there is no definitive answer: it depends on how much wine vs other liquid, how long it was simmered, at what temp, and the surface area of the pot vs its volume. So I'll put it a different way. If I were making dinner for a recovering alcoholic, the only way I'd serve a wine sauce is if I reduced a bottle of wine to a cup or less and used that as flavoring. OTOH, if I were pregnant* I would eat the average wine sauce without qualm.


* A highly hypothetical proposition

Re: point of detail

[sraun]

My quickie research said about 5% by volume for the liquid - a mixture of 95% water and 5% alcohol has a lower boiling point than either pure water or pure alcohol. As long as there's any liquid, some of it will be alcohol.

Now, what that makes the % alcohol for whole crust? I don't know. This is very much an edge case / extremes set of questions.

Re: point of detail

[sraun]

My quickie research said about 5% by volume for the liquid - a mixture of 95% water and 5% alcohol has a lower boiling point than either pure water or pure alcohol. As long as there's any liquid, some of it will be alcohol.

'Cooking drives off the alcohol' is one of the great urban myths in America - or maybe one of the great failures of our science education.

Re: point of detail

[dr-a-nightfall.livejournal.com]

Actually, heating an alcoholic drink WILL evaporate off the alcohol, or the best part of it.

However.

If you add something to it- sugar is a good example- then you will retain a much higher amount of alcohol than you normally would. (I once demonstrated this by spiking a heated alcohol drink with sugar just before it was heated.) So, in this case, both sides are right. Sort of.

Re: point of detail

[harimad.livejournal.com]

heating an alcoholic drink WILL evaporate off the alcohol, or the best part of it.

Which leads to the question "Is a wine sauce is like a drink?" You've already brought up the issue of additives. At the evaporation stage, wine sauces usually have at least fat and flour, usually veggies and spices, and often bits of food as well. Does it matter whether we're talking about wine and beer, or hard liquor? Same question for oven heating vs stovetop - in cooking terms the two are different but maybe for evaporation it doesn't matter.

This has a hot-and-heavy discussion on several of my food blogs and I'd really like to have The Answer. The last research I saw showed there was still plenty of alcohol left in most wine sauces, and the actual amount depends on how long it was heated, and the surface area compared to the volume.

Re: point of detail

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

That sounds backwards. I know that 95.6% alcohol and 4.4% water forms an azeotrope, that is that the boiling point is lower than for the mixture than it would be for pure alcohol. This is why salt drying and benzine are needed to produce ethanol for engines.

[fsf-rapier.livejournal.com]

It is very kind of you to ask.

Most people that object on religeous grounds would not accept any alcohol at all.

As for health concerns, it would depend upon the receipe. For example:

1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup Bourbon
3 pounds Granny Smith apples, about 9 to 10 apples
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup chopped pecans, toasted*
pie pastry for 2-crust pie
2 teaspoons apricot or pineapple preserves, melted
1 tablespoon buttermilk or evaporated milk
1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 cup bourban is 4 shots. Using rough mathmatical calulations, this would be approximately .5 shot per piece in an 8 slice pie. For a 100 pound person (my 8 year-old daughter weighs almost 60lbs, to put this in perspective) consuming .5 shot of 100 proof alcohol would end up with a blood alcohol content of approximately .019%, assuming they were working on an empty stomach, which they wouldn't be if they were eating pie *smiles*. The body burns approximately .015% every hour, so after 90 minutes there should be no alcohol in the system

This assumes that none of the alcohol would boil away during the 45-50 minute baking time. Alcohol usually boils at about 180F, and you are baking at 450 for the first 15 minutes and at 350F for 30-35 minutes after that. It's probably safe to assume that some of the alcohol would, in fact, boil away.

Unless your guest has a specific allergy to the type of alcohol that you are serving in your food, you should be fine health wise.

Good luck!

Re: point of detail

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

That's the common wisdom, but like so much common "wisdom," it turns out not to be true when someone actually tests it. According to one site:
"According to a 1992 study by Augustin, et al at the Department of Food Science and Toxicology, Food Research Center in Moscow, Idaho, the amount of alcohol that actually cooks off varies, depending on how long the food has been cooked, how it's been cooked, at what temperature, and based upon the specific alcohol and food ingredients in question.

"In general, the longer you heat the booze, the less alcohol remains. If you simmer the food for several hours, only about 5 percent of the alcohol will remain. ...

Preparation method: Alcohol remaining

Alcohol added to boiling liquid, removed from heat: 85%
Flamed: 75%

Stirred in and baked or simmered for….
15 minutes: 40%
30 minutes: 35%
1 hour: 25%
1-1/2 hours: 20%
2 hours: 10%
2-1/2 hours: 5%

* These figures are based on US Department of Agriculture Research"

Re: point of detail

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Not according to research; see my comment below.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

People accepting "no alcohol at all" for religious reasons should be careful; today's lab tests are accurate enough they can find alcohol in a fresh orange. Not very much, but some real alcohol.

I think it's more likely that the religious prohibition is against *added* alcohol, and possibly extends to situations where tests show that the amount left is below the naturally occurring amounts. Which means exactly the same thing for cooks cooking for such people, but is still, to me, an important distinction.

Re: point of detail

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Trouble is that I have no idea how to measure alcohol in something as complex as a sauce. Brewing, no problem. Just get a hydrometer or a refractometer. But a sauce? Maybe I'll see if there is someone with a chromatograph around that I can bother with cooking stuff. Because I would assume that the sort of skillet reducing stuff for sauces would be a different result than simmering an alcoholic beverage in a pan for a length of time. Which seems to be what the USDA numbers give us.

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

Vanilla has alcohol in it. I never flag my baked good as containing vanilla. Well, unless I am somewhere where we are listing every ingredient in something, of course.

Re: point of detail

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

But will the starting point of % of alcohol change these evaporative rates? And is their simmering putting stuff in a pan and letting it do its thing in deep volume or is it classic wide pan reducing to produce a thick sauce? Just looking at the numbers I would guess this would be most aplicable to doing something like Coc Au Vin or another stew made with wine added rather than a pan sauce.

Re: point of detail

[harimad.livejournal.com]

I see three hints:
1. Alcohol added to boiling liquid, removed from heat, 85%. That sure sounds like 85% of the original alcohol left rather than 85% of the liquid is now alcohol. Since they started that way it's reasonable to conclude they continue that way.

2. They mention flaming the liquid. It's practically impossible to flame alcohol that's too dilute (pure wine or liquor will flame, diluted booze will flame, but diluted wine won't) or in a deep pan. So this implies a saute pan.

3. Then they talk about simmering or baking for up to 2.5 hrs. While you can bake in a saute pan, a pot is more likely. Further, you need the depth of a pot to simmer for as long as 2.5 hrs - the liquid in a shallow pan would have burned off long since.

Taken together, I get the picture of a mixture of methods. The flaming in a saute pan, the rest in a pot. Clearly we need more exact methodology and the details. Maybe we can get Cook's Illustrated interested.

Re: point of detail

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Heck, I don't know. But the important point is that one should not depend on cooking or baking to remove alcohol.

[fsf-rapier.livejournal.com]

Of course it does David! You LIVE to pick nits! -then again, so do I- ;-)

The same argument can be made when dealing with people that are vegans because they "don't support feeding off of death". Every breath kills millions of microbes, every spoonful of grain comes from a field that millions of insects were killed on to allow the grain to grow. Every morsel of grain eaten kills the living plant that the grain came from. In fact, the "unborn" plant is the morsel of grain that is being eaten. Bread kills yeast when it rises. Yogurt consumers are killing cultures every time they finish their healthy snack.

People proclaiming "not feeding off death" should be careful.; even the labs of 50 years ago were accurate enough to find the life forms killed evey day by zealous vegans. *chuckle*

[azurelunatic]

If it involved grapes or strawberries or any of the forbidden fruits at any point, hcolleen could have none, as she's allergic enough that she needs to avoid as much as possible that could set her off. It's not quite to the point where we need to boil things, but we have no desire to expose her enough that it gets to that point.

[paraventur.livejournal.com]

funny - I am the only person who just doesn't like the taste - for me it is the fastest way to ruin a good desert. I like mixed drinks just fine, but I have a friend who doesn't like the taste period.

[leeble.livejournal.com]

newer research -

"A 2003 study by the USDA’s Nutrient Data Laboratory shows that the amount of alcohol retained in food can range from 5 to 85 percent, depending on the preparation method. For baked or simmered dishes with alcohol mixed in, after 2 1/2 hours of cooking time, 5 percent of the original amount of alcohol is left. But when the alcohol is added to a boiling liquid and then removed from the heat, 85 percent of the alcohol remains."

http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=9448