Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Maillard Reaction along with all the Maillard Reaction containing recipes presented on this site, with 35 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Maillard Reaction recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Maillard Reaction as a major wild food ingredient.

The Maillard Reaction is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars to create melanoidins, the compounds which give browned food its distinctive flavour. Seared steaks, fried dumplings, cookies and other kinds of biscuits, breads, toasted marshmallows, and many other foods undergo this reaction. It is named after French chemist Louis Camille Maillard, who first described it in 1912 while attempting to reproduce biological protein synthesis.

The reaction is a form of non-enzymatic browning which typically proceeds rapidly from around 140 to 165°C (280 to 330°F). Many recipes call for an oven temperature high enough to ensure that a Maillard reaction occurs. At higher temperatures, caramelization (the browning of sugars, a distinct process) and subsequently pyrolysis (final breakdown leading to burning and the development of acrid flavours) become more pronounced.

Chemically, in the Maillard Reaction, the reactive carbonyl group of the sugar reacts with the nucleophilic amino group of the amino acid and forms a complex mixture of poorly characterized molecules responsible for a range of aromas and flavours. This process is accelerated in an alkaline environment (e.g., lye applied to darken pretzels), as the amino groups (RNH⁺₃ → RNH₂) are deprotonated, and hence have an increased nucleophilicity. This reaction is the basis for many of the flavouring industry's recipes. At high temperatures, a probable carcinogen, acrylamide, can form. This can be discouraged by heating at a lower temperature, adding asparaginase, or injecting carbon dioxide.

In the cooking process, Maillard reactions can produce hundreds of different flavour compounds depending on the chemical constituents in the food, the temperature, the cooking time, and the presence of air. These compounds, in turn, often break down to form yet more flavor compounds. Flavour scientists have used the Maillard reaction over the years to make artificial flavours.