The world's lightest dessert with 96% air, the rest weighing only 1 gram

Artists at London-based Bompass & Parr design studio have teamed up with scientists at the Aerogelex lab in Hamburg, Germany, to turn the properties of the world's lightest solid material into a dessert. mouth can eat.

Aerogel was invented in 1931, by American chemist Samuel Kistler in a bet with his colleague Charles Learned that "a non-liquid gel exists".

With an air content of 95% - 99.8%, Aerogel is recognized as the lightest solid in the world, so it makes sense that the designers at Bompass & Parr tried and simulated the process of creating Aerogel. to create the world's lightest dessert.

Aerogel is recognized as the lightest solid in the world.

Aerogel can be made using a variety of materials, but for this particular project, Bompas & Parr focuses on albuminoids, the spherical proteins found in egg whites.

They intended to make a meringue, but in fact they did it a little differently than usual.

They started by creating a hydrogel of egg whites that were then molded in molds before adding them to calcium chloride and water.

Meringue gel liquids are replaced with liquid carbon dioxide, which can turn into gaseous form during a drying process.

In this particular case, the final product, called the meringue dumplings, consists of 96% air and weighs only a gram.

Dubbed the lightest dessert in the world, this egg meringue was displayed at the King Abdulaziz World Cultural Center (Ithra) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia on October 10-26, 2019.

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