Science of Cooking – An interdisciplinary approach to teaching a non‐science majors lab and lecture course

Teaching non‐science major courses is a particularly important and a concomitantly challenging task. Cooking is one of the oldest applications of biology and chemistry and can provide an interesting vehicle to attract students to science in a meaningful way. Science of Cooking is an interdisciplinary course taught to 150 liberal studies students each semester. The course includes both in‐class and take‐home laboratory experiences, negating a requirement for multiple lab sections making the course more efficient in terms of faculty load. Course content is designed around foods and cooking and the appropriate chemistry, biochemistry and physics is introduced as needed to explain what is happening in the kitchen. Topics include making cheese, hot sauce and salsa, what is taste, and wine & beer. This poster will present the course, laboratory experiments and the many in‐class demonstrations created to address this critical need. Assessment of student learning and attitudes toward science from students in this course (n>425) will be presented. Finally, a proposed textbook supporting future similar courses will be shared.