Food & Drink: Tenderness in the Kitchen

FOOD & DRINK

Any housewife knows that she can get a tender steak by paying the butcher a small fortune for a fork-soft filet. She can also buy cheap bottom round and use a chemical to undermine its resistance. Chemically tenderized meats are now standard in restaurants and on many home dinner tables, but few chefs or housewives realize that the harmless industrial enzymes that make their meat tender—many of them now marketed in powder form for home use—rank with the subtlest tricks of modern chemistry.

Enzymes are nature’s chemical tools; every living cell is stuffed with thousands of them, and every part of living organisms was manufactured by them. They act as organic catalysts that speed up chemical changes in cells without taking part in the change themselves. In the case of an enzyme-treated cut of meat, the enzyme simply begins to digest the meat, making it tenderer and saving part of the labor of the enzymes present in everyone’s digestive juices. Enzymes, in fact.

preside over all organic changes—growth and reproduction, death and decay. Modern industry uses more of them every year, and there seem to be few limits to what they can do.

Up from the Dogs. Primitive industries used enzymes without even recognizing their existence. Leather was once processed by soaking untanned skins in a solution of dog manure. No one enjoyed using this offensive reagent, and tanners rejoiced when its action was traced to enzymes that could be supplied from pleasanter sources. Fermentation of beer and wine is caused by enzymes secreted by yeast cells, and cheese gets its texture and flavor from other microbial enzymes. But most industrial enzyme users shy away from living ferments, which are hard to control. The modern method is to use comparatively pure enzymes that have been separated from the living organisms that produced them. A leading practitioner of this delicate art is the Wallerstein Co. of Staten Island, N.Y., a division of Baxter Laboratories, which brews enzymes that do everything from removing grease spots to cleaning polluted rivers.

Unlike such muscular reagents as acids and alkalis, an enzyme system does its job with no fuss and at room temperature. And, says Dr. Edward Beckhorn, Wallerstein’s director of research, it does nothing but its job; if other delicate compounds are present, it leaves them strictly alone. Most Wallerstein enzymes are made by specially nourished cultures of bacteria or fungi. Today they treat skins in place of dog manure, keep bottled beer from looking cloudy by digesting the haze of protein that forms when it is chilled. But newer uses are constantly developing. Dr. Beckhorn is working on enzymes to turn cornstarch into syrups specially suited for baking or candy making, and on enzymes that can be injected by multiple hypodermic needles into whole sides of beef, the dose carefully calculated to bring each cut of meat to ideal tenderness.

Perfumes & Canapes. Dr. Beckhorn looks at the enzyme future with what amounts to biochemical ecstasy. There is no good reason, he says, why enzymes cannot be found to dispose of any kind of organic offal, from deposits in household cesspools to the industrial discharges that turn rivers into sewers. They can make nutritious and palatable cattle feed out of fish offal or cannery wastes. Some time in the future they will probably move into the great petrochemical business, replacing the clumsy high-temperature processes that are used now. Petroleum is organic, says Beckhorn, and a natural prey for enzymes. It should be fairly simple to find special enzymes to turn petroleum into perfume, plastic or cocktail canapes.