Tasty, airy baked goods with culinary foam made from peas | Hacker News Reader

Tasty, airy baked goods with culinary foam made from peas

phys.org

22 pointsPaulHoule27 comments

This was cool to read about but the article is sort of lacking links to any kind of detailed report, and when I look for more elsewhere I can't find anything.

Also, it's sort of strange there's no mention of aquafaba, even though it seems like the same basic idea. Do the products they're testing taste different, or bake differently, or are otherwise more stable?

I guess I was happy to read about it but wanted more information.

Wondering the same. Aquafaba is now a staple of vegan recipes and already popular exactly for this use case.

I kept waiting for the mention of how this compares to aquafaba, and since the article never mentions it, I became skeptical of the whole thing. I mean, "a legume-based substitute for egg whites" that fails to mention the popular legume-based substitute for egg whites that has been used in vegan recipes for many years?

They do mention they use pea protein isolate, so maybe it’s got better nutritional value than aquafaba? Though this type of thing doesn’t have much to begin with since it’s mostly air.

I see air more as a density thing than a quantity thing : the (debatable) nutritious value of a cotton candy is roughly the same as a small, dense candy. Air is a problem for storage space but not nutrition! Like water which also influence the weight.

Whatever dessert or baked good you use this in, this is not going to move the needle much on nutrition either way. This kind of product is what makes cakes and cookies fluffy (because of the air) but in products like those most of the calories are coming from the flour, not the whipped egg whites or peas or what have you.

> when I look for more elsewhere I can't find anything.

The project's official sites:

https://www.ivlv.org/en/project/legufoam/

https://www.ivv.fraunhofer.de/en/food/pastries/project-leguf...

Strangely, no mention of aquafaba anywhere.

> When processed the right way, peas are very neutral in flavor

I remain skeptical until shown otherwise. IME, pea protein isolate has a very noticeable, unpleasant flavor compared to other proteins like whey/caseine isolates or egg whites.

Eating a lot of textured pea protein, I can attest the base taste is not always as noticeable depending on the brands (but never neutral). Anyway the textures proteins aren’t supposed to be eaten alone and "sponge" the taste of what is cooked with, making them an easy ingredient for almost everything and dont taste peas anymore.

Dont work in shakers through (I use untextured soy for that).

"More and more people are consciously maintaining a healthy diet and also looking for ethical, unproblematic vegan products.

Introducing our eight stage process that uses more energy and generates more waste and is less nutritionally complete than what nature has made better already.

Shipped across the continent via Freight to your local Whole foods for $12.99 / pound."

Do you realise how much more energy is required for commercial egg production compared to peas? Plus peas aren't given antibiotics. And whisking an egg is also a processing stage.

https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

Consider a kg of eggs is substantially more nutritionally dense than peas and has nearly double the calories.

Enjoy your processed pea foam baked goods, I'll stick with eggs.

Enjoy your eggs as you wish, but consider your first argumentation also involved ethics and waste management. Pees doesnt pee (sorry couldn’t resist).

Eggs are used in the same way (whipped egg whites) but the amount of egg white used in a whole cake or bread or whatever is so small it’s not a meaningful contribution to the nutrition.

The vast majority of people can meet all their nutritional needs with peas & other vegan foods. Plus, the extra calories & cholesterol in eggs is actually detrimental to many people's health. Peas also have beneficial nutrients like fibre which is absent in eggs.

It just reminds of Dr Raven Sable's food in Good Omens.

“indistinguishable from any other [food] except for […] the nutritional content, which was roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman. It didn’t matter how much you ate, you lost weight. […] And hair. And skin tone. And, if you ate enough of it long enough, vital signs”

How does this not mention aquafaba?

I think that's the context yes

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquafaba

Oh wow, I didn’t realize that aquafaba was only discovered in 2014. I always assumed that it was much older.

Having prepared a lot of beans it doesn't surprise me at all.

I would like someone to look into this further, the earliest mention I could find of someone saying they made a meringue out of chickpea foam is from May 29, 2012 at 16:29 at this link: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/8041/should-i-re...

It's very clear that it wasn't common knowledge on the internet until 2015-2016.

I grow more and more I am concerned about how much raw data has been lost... when you factor in context even more so.

Obvious downside - it's yet another ultra-processed food. Vs. Ms. Cluck's eggs are unprocessed.

Aquafaba is also an existing vegan alternative that is barely processed since it’s just the water from boiling chickpeas.

Is that an issue here? There's processing, and then there's processing. I read it as - proteins are isolated and perhaps broken down (as does saliva and the GI tract). Then they are modified mechanistically, basically whipped into a foam (probably similar to what happens to egg whites).

Yet another reason why ultra processed food categorization is unhelpful.

I also deplore UPF but:

- "yet" sound like "again" in my ears. If that was the meaning consider you are on HN and what you see here had a selection bias for scientific or technical stuff. Once in a while there’s also breakthrough on genetic crops. Not much grandma stew receipe but I bet many likes it, it’s just not the typical subject here.

- many people choose not to eat egg for their own reasons. They may agree UPF being bad but that won't change what their position on other stuff. You’re free to give you opinion but it probably won’t change any needle in their view

- raw eggs are unprocessed in certain countries, but in others they are washed with water, then a detergent and then a sanitizer. That may not have health effect but questions the "processing" overall. This treatment make required a cooled-regulated temperature who add to the energy bill all along until eaten. Which the foam probably need too :)

- raw eggs eating isn’t frequent, people cook them at least. But the vast majority of consumed eggs is processed within various sweet or salty foods.

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