Down Side: It Must Fall

Appears in
On Food and Cooking

By Harold McGee

Published 2004

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Charles’s law also means that what must go up in the oven must come down at the table. A balloon expands as its temperature rises, but shrinks again if its temperature falls. Of course a soufflé must be taken out of the oven to be served, and from that moment on it loses heat. As the soufflé bubbles cool, the air they contain contracts in volume, and the vapor that came from liquid water in the mix condenses back into liquid.