Have you ever cooked an entire meal on your own? Maybe you've baked some cookies or a cake. Perhaps you've prepared something simple such as an ice cream sundae or a pitcher of lemonade. Chances are that you were doing mathematics without even realizing it! The mathematics of cooking goes far beyond counting the quantities of ingredients that you need to add.
Suppose that you begin a recipe only to realize that you don't have enough flour to add what the recipe calls for. You decide that you'll continue with the recipe and end up with a smaller amount of final product. But wait! If the amount of flour is smaller, the amounts of all the other ingredients have to be smaller too, otherwise you risk turning your yummy treats into inedible garbage. In this instance, you can use ratios to look at the proportions of ingredients to each other. For instance, if you originally needed 2 cups of flour and 4 eggs but you only have 1 cup of flour, then you will only need 2 eggs. 2/4 = 1/2.
What if you have an amazing recipe you want to try for a party, but the yield is not as large as you need it to be? Maybe the recipe yields 5 servings, but you need for there to be 20 servings. Since 5 x 4 = 20, you need to multiply all of your ingredient quantities by 4. This is another example of using proportions in cooking.
This link provides further explanation as well as more examples if you'd like to learn more.
Now that's my kind of math! This happens more frequently than not, either running out of something or wanting to make a larger portion. I usually ask my 9 year old to help. He loves to cook, so it's a great math lesson. He's just starting fractions and division, so we actually made homemade waffles the other day just to "trick" him into doing some math.
ReplyDeleteI saw a very interesting poster in a math teacher's room when I was proctoring the ASHGE on Monday. It was a chart with about 100 occupations on the top and the types of math on the side. It was very telling! Every one of them required some form of math.
Thanks for sharing!
Great way to keep kids interested in a project, Working with math and creating something you can eat. My students have a difficult time when presented with problems involving fractions. They still do not understand the concept when I try to relate the problem to some activity that would use a similar fraction. Most understand fractions with the same denominator, but different denominators and I am asking them to do something impossible. I hope to continue to address their weakness by bringing in real life examples. Cooking is a really great way to do that.
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