Shapes matter: Why foods are shaped the way they are

By: Levina Soetyono

There are so many types of pasta – fusilli, spaghetti, linguini – each with their own distinct shape. Of course, each shape serves its master with a purpose. The familiar long, cylindrical spaghetti pairs perfectly with light sauces and can twirl around one’s fork with ease, while the fusilli’s corkscrew like shape traps chunky meat sauces, indulging the taster with a perfect ratio of noodle to sauce at all times. Shapes affects not just a food’s visual aesthetic, but also its function.

Just like pasta, the shape of an innocent chocolate chip plays a role not just on its aesthetic, but also its functionality and behavior. A typical chocolate chip stands tall with a tear drop shape on its flat base, usually around 10 mm in diameter (“Chocolate and Cocoa Size and Color Comparison,” n.d.). Like pasta, chocolate chips today is marketed in different shapes and sizes – mini, oversize “super,” morsels, and chunks (“Dark Chocolate Chips,” 2018). Bakers, both professional and amateur, will usually make a pick depending on how they want to use the chips.

The story of chocolate chips began when Ruth Wakefield, the madam of Toll House Inn at Plymouth County, Massachusetts, first published her cookie recipe in her 1931 cookbook, “Ruth Wakefield’s Tried and True Recipes” (Roberts, 2018). The cookie recipe then made another appearance on The Boston Herald, and earned a feature on a radio program hosted by Marjorie Husted, who portrayed Betty Crocker. According to the recipe, two 7.0 oz Nestle’s Semi Sweet Economy Bars are cut into the size of a pea before being mixed into the dough that makes 100 cookies. In 1939, rights to reprint Wakefield’s recipe in its product packaging was sold to Nestle. For ease of use, Nestle began to pre-cut their chocolate bars and the Nestlé Toll House Real Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels, later known as chocolate chips, was born.

To the surprise of many, the pea-sized chocolates in the cookies did not melt when baked in a 375F oven. The sentence, “Every one will be surprised and delighted to find that the chocolate does not melt,” was included in The Boston Herald’s reprinted edition of the recipe. But why did it not melt in the heat? Is Nestle a chocolate sorcerer?

It turns out, the chocolates do melt. However, their small size allows them to be evenly dispersed throughout the cookie dough. The dough wraps around each chip, acting as an insulator as it bakes, thus preventing the chocolate chips to mix with one another and create a brown puddle of sweet mess.

Other factors play a role in the meltability of chocolates too. The amount of fat, cocoa and other additives added all have a play in the melting point and mouthfeel of chocolates.

Today, innovative food designers are taking into account the shape of foods to create a pleasurable experience with food. Recently, Dandelion Chocolate, an artisan chocolate manufacturer based in San Francisco, released their version of a chocolate chip.

Source: Dandelion Chocolate

With square edges and faceted pyramid shape, this is not the average chocolate chip we know. Designed by Tesla’s Senior Designer Remy Labesque, this quarter-sized chocolate squares have a broader surface area to maximize taste, and two thin edges and two thick edges for texture (Zimberoff, 2020).

Unlike Ruth Wakefield’s pea-sized chocolates that (not so) surprisingly holds its shape when baked, Labesque’s futuristic chocolates’ two thick edges create a thick center that gets soft when baked, creating luxurious chocolate pools on your chocolate chip cookies, while its two thin edges are designed to be sturdy enough to hold its shape as it allows a blanket of cookie dough to surround it (Zimberoff, 2020).

Food design has a lot more in common with architecture than one might think. Both requires its artist to be well-versed in the principles of design and construction (McClements, 2019). Instead of cement, bricks and tiles, edible building blocks like fat, protein and carbohydrates construct the structure of food. As architecture continues to evolve, so does food – from knife cut morsels of chocolates, to industrialized perfectly pipette chips of chocolate, and later a pyramid-esque chocolate discs.

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References:

Chocolate and Cocoa Size and Color Comparison. (n.d.). Santa Barbara Chocolate. Retrieved September 20, 2020 from https://www.santabarbarachocolate.com/chocolate-and-cocoa-size-and-color-comparison/

Dark Chocolate Chips. (2018). Cook’s Illustrated. Retrieved September 20, 2020 from https://www.cooksillustrated.com/taste_tests/1844-dark-chocolate-chips

McClements, D. (2019). Future Foods: How Modern Science Is Transforming the Way We Eat. Copernicus.

Roberts, S. (2018). Overlooked No More: Ruth Wakefield, Who Invented the Chocolate Chip Cookie. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/obituaries/overlooked-ruth-wakefield.html

Zimberoff, L. (2020). A Tesla Designer Reengineers the Chocolate Chip. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-24/tesla-designer-re-engineers-the-chocolate-chip-for-dandelion-sf