(splashing) (happy light-hearted music)
- [Narrator] (humming) Milk, good old-fashioned milk
in your cereal, in your coffee, in your glass.
Calcium!
But the best use for milk: dunking cookies.
I mean, who doesn't love a cookie dipped in milk?
But why?
Turns out it's because science says so.
But before we get into it,
let's take a quick look back in time.
(striving dramatic orchestral music)
It's 10,000 BCE.
The agricultural revolution occurs,
animals are domesticated, (mooing)
and animals are milked.
(ding) Great!
(whooshing) A lot of time goes by.
(whooshing)
Hey, guess what?
It's 1862.
Louis Pasteur modernizes milk safety,
the term pasteurize is born.
Get it? (clinking)
Maybe no?!
Who cares!
(whooshing) Moving on.
It's 1884! (click)
Milk is bottled up. (splashing)
The milkman became a thing, yada, yada, yada.
1994, Got Milk? ads swept the nation.
Everyone's got a milk mustache, great!
Now that's over.
Why the H E double hockey sticks
do we dunk our cookies into milk?
(light bouncy orchestral music)
- [Man] When you dip cookies into milk,
you change a number of things about those cookies
that completely alters your eating experience.
(shuffling)
- [Narrator] By alters, Matt means, oh wait.
Let me introduce you to Matt.
- [Matt] Hi, my name is Matt Hartings,
and I am a Professor of Chemistry.
And I teach a class on cooking chemistry
Here at American University.
(scraping)
- [Narrator] But back to it.
By alters, Matt means when you dip cookies into milk,
not only does the texture and flavor change,
but the chemical composition does as well,
which is what makes scientists go wild.
(moves into mysterious music)
- [Matt] Chemists are fascinated in how taste works
and how all of the molecules that you're experiencing
when you're eating food, how they all work together
and lead to one thought in your brain.
- [Narrator] But how?
- [Matt] There are specific ways to measure food chemistry,
things like an MS-Nose that tries
to break down food aromas into their individual parts.
- [Narrator] The MS-Nose is a tool
that helps scientists understand
how complex molecules come together to make flavor.
(happy bouncy music)
So what does all this fancy technology tell us
when you dunk that cookie?
- [Matt] You add a creaminess to your cookie,
and that makes your cookie taste completely different.
We will dampen some of the flavors
that are naturally sharp in a chocolate chip cookie.
It will soak up liquids.
- [Narrator] So we can universally agree,
dunking chocolate chip cookies
into milk is the best thing ever?
- [Matt] Speaking to my own experience,
I am not a big dipper.
(record scratching)
- [Narrator] Wait, what?
- [Matt] I take a bite of my cookie
and then have a drink of milk.
- [Narrator] You just had to be different, didn't you?!
Still sounds delicious to me.
(echoing beep)