Living · 6 pages · 12 min
Why a broken sauce looks oily
Fat droplets have merged, so the oil is no longer hidden inside.
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From the opening
A broken sauce looks oily because an emulsion has failed and fat droplets have merged into pools you can see. While the sauce held, those droplets were dispersed in water and hidden; coalescence lets the fat become a continuous oily phase again. The opening covers droplets merge into visible oil, emulsifiers coat the droplet surface, and heat or drying can destroy the coat.
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Inside
- Droplets merge into visible oil
- Emulsifiers coat the droplet surface
- Heat or drying can destroy the coat
- Curdled protein is a different break
- Where the idea stops applying
- A distinction worth keeping
Sources
- Coalescence in a failed oil-in-water emulsion
- Lecithin and proteins at the surface of sauce droplets