The Start of Research! (Week 1+2)

And so it begins!! Heyaaa, Zara here. It's my turn to write the blog post this week, so let's get you guys all caught up on what we've been doing.

A brief overview

It's been two weeks since our last post, and since then, our TUP OneNote has been slowly filling up with sources and research notes on the science of gingerbread house making. Hannah's been focused on icing, I've been focused on the gingerbread itself.

Now you may ask, 'why are you guys so focused on the research end of things? Just make the god damn gingerbread already!' Yes, yes, yes, we would love to start making delicious MDZS gingerbread but:

1. We are STEM students, and therefore very interested in the physics and chemistry behind all of this gingerbread house malarky.

2. We are currently doing a lot of uni application stuff, which means the time to actually be in the kitchen and testing gingerbread and icing recipes is very limited. So we've taken to doing research in our free periods at school. (Shh, it's not procrastination if it's science).

3. Our blog is literally about MDZS and food science, so yeah, research is gonna have to come into this.

But if you don't care that much about the science behind all this and just wanna see some MDZS content, not to fear!! Hannah has been an absolute angel and started putting together mood-boards and character lists, so you can begin to see our vision for this gingerbread universe.

All sources are cited at the bottom of the post and on the resources section of the website.

Gingerbread

Okkkk, so as we know, the MDZS/Untamed architecture is all inspired by various ancient Chinese architecture styles. With sweeping, multi-inclined roofs, and open courtyards. Not your typical western gingerbread housing...

So when it came to my research, I started my focus on the structural properties of gingerbread - as well as delving into the history of old Chinese architecture. And I came out with some pretty interesting initial findings.

First I looked at Mercedes Duifhuis and Sean Heisler's paper on the 'Structural Analysis of Gingerbread' [1]. Yes... someone has already done this. The internet really is an amazing place.

Anyway, they put their own gingerbread recipe through a variety of structural experiments, varying the type of fat used, and tested on these three properties:

• Tensile strength per density via tensile tests.

• Cantilever / shear stress per density via three-point bending tests.

• Compressive Strength via compression tests.

Keeping every ingredient constant, they varied the type of fat (margarine, butter and shortening) and found that shortening to be the best fat for architectural gingerbread.

In fig.11 [1] it's clear that shortening performed the best under those three structural tests. Btw.. the y-axis on the graph is in the units KPa. Am I salty that Seam and Mercedes didn't make that explicit - a tad.

However,,, I'm hesitant to rely on this paper too much (apologies Sean and Mercedes). They didn't attach their exact recipes in the paper, which made me very sad. And whilst it may be true that shortening can withstand greater loads and stresses - I think Hannah and I should definitely try and replicate this data to see how accurate it is (although it will probably be quantitative data as opposed to Sean and Mercedes quantitive data). Also will using shortening as a fat even taste good? This is definitely something we'll explore later on in the project.

Then I explored some more sources!! In UCLA's Food Science blog [2] there was an article discussing 'Engineering the Perfect Gingerbread House'. From this basic summary of properties to look for in architectural gingerbread, the author discussed how the gingerbread should be 'sturdy but also demonstrate elasticity' so a dough with a 'tough, springy consistency and decreased moisture content' is ideal. This is because typically you want your gingerbread walls to be able to withstand stress from the roofs.

Now that's all well and good. 'But how do you get said tough, springy dough with decreased moisture content Zara??' you may be asking. Well the author to this blog post (Catherine Hu) says the secret is using flour with a high protein content (like bread flour). As they contain more glutenin and gliadin proteins which can create a springy gluten network that gives dough elastic properties. Do I know what glutenin and gliadin is? Imma be honest with ya'll, not really. So I'm going to look more into the chemistry of that in the coming weeks.

So conclusion to gingerbread findings? Shortening as a good structural fat and bread flour to give you those springy elastic properties. Something we can definitely explore further.

Icing

Now for Hannah's epic research journey in icing. So icing is eventually what is going to have to hold our gingerbread masterpieces together. Overall pretty important stuff.

So what property do we want in our gingerbread icing? Stickiness. We want icing that is good at making things stick together. So Hannah looked to the chemistry of gelling agents - the so called 'glue' of our project.

Royal icing is the typical icing used in gingerbread house making. Egg whites is the common gelling agent used. But what about ingredients other than egg whites? In 'The Science of Sugar Confectionary' [3] the chemical properties of a variety of gelling agents were investigated - as shown in table.3.9 [3].

When it comes to our eventual practical testing, we plan to take a base royal icing recipe and sub in a variety of gelling agents. We'll then see which performs better.

Currently we're planning to test:

• Gelatine (Thermoreversible gelling agent)

• Agar Agar (Vegan thermoreversible gelling agent)

• Egg Albumen [aka. Egg White] (Whipping agent and irreversible gelling agent)

• Xanthum Gum (Thickener)

Now how good are these gonna taste compared to typical egg whites?? Who the hell knows!! Stick around and we'll tell you once we've tested it. There may be a few kitchen disasters in the future. But all in the name of science!

Hannah has also been doing some research into Maillard reactions. Helping with the coagulation of proteins, the Maillard reaction is a reaction of amino acids and simple sugars with heat. Royal icing includes protein, so the Maillard reaction could - in theory - make the icing more sticky. However, heating also denatures proteins, which could possibly negate the coagulation effects of the Maillard reaction. Again, this will have be something we need to test in the coming weeks.

Finally, molasses and treacle. They have a possible ability to make sugar even stickier. But, we'll need to investigate if they still have those effects when combined with other ingredients (aka. in a recipe).

Historical Architecture

I also did a quick delve into historical Chinese architecture [4]. Turns out wood was commonly used in buildings back then. This is because people focused on the idea that life should connect with nature and things that have 'life'. (Which was why stone was avoided like the plague, and why it was typically used to house the dead.

As a consequence, large structural timbers were used as primary support structures for the building. So instead of the walls holding up the roof, structural beams did that instead. Which is pretty darn interesting - as that's exactly the opposite of gingerbread houses. Gingerbread houses focus on load bearing walls. So it could be fun to look into using structural beams for gingerbread houses? Although my current thought is that it might be too brittle. But hey, we don't know until we try!

Now onto roofs. The curved roofs that are prominent in Chinese architecture are supported by aforementioned structural beams. They are either 'multi incline', which has multiple sections of inclined roof on the building (as shown in the diagram above); or 'sweeping' which is typical single curved roof. When it comes to our gingerbread houses, we're gonna have to test out different methods of replicating these curved roofs. Yay for a fun engineering challenge!

Finally, I quickly looked at structural connections. Turns out rather than using nails and glue, Chinese architecture heavily relied on joinery and dowelling instead (as shown in the picture to the right). Again, an interesting find when you put it to the context of gingerbread. If we are able to connect all our pieces through joinery - we might not need icing at all!!

But realistically, joinery is a highly accurate, precision art. Which may be difficult for gingerbread due to its brittle and oily nature. It is definitely something I want to look more into though!

Having historical context to out designs will help make our MDZS universe more accurate and more epic! So this will not be the only research we do into historical architecture.

Moodboards

Now for all those MDZS fans, if you've made it past all that science, congratulations!! Here are Hannah's beautiful mood-boards to give us inspiration on the coming weeks when it comes to designing the gingerbread buildings.

The plan going forward

These first weeks have been amazing fun - as well as incredibly research focused. Now that our UCAS applications are mostly done, we'll be able to focus more on TUP. Although my Physics coursework starts in October (T-T) which means I won't be able to contribute as much as I wish I could.

Now for these next two weeks: Hannah's going to be doing more researching into architecture and MDZS in general, and I'll be starting initial sketches for our MDZS building designs. So hopefully you can read all about our progress with designing this gingerbread universe in Hannah's blog post in two weeks time.

Thank you guys for joining us on this ridiculous journey!! And see you in a fortnight :))

Sources

[1]Mercedes Duifhuis and Sean Heisler 'Structural Analysis of Gingerbread' 2009

[2]Catherine Hu 'Engineering the Perfect Gingerbread House' 2014

[3]William P Edwards 'The Science of Sugar Confectionery: Edition 2' 2018

[4]Wikipedia 'Chinese Architecture' Accessed Sep 2020