On Food and Cooking

varieties of corn whose seeds contain little or
no amylose and are nearly all amylopectin,
which doesn’t form networks as readily as
amylose. Waxy starches therefore make
sauces and gels that resist congealing and
separation into a firm solid phase and watery
residue, a problem to which high-amylose
starches are prone.
Ingredient manufacturers also use physical
and chemical treatments to modify the starch
molecules from standard plant varieties. They
precook and dry starches in various ways to
produce powders or granules that readily
absorb cold water or disperse in and thicken
liquids without requiring cooking. And they
alter them with chemicals — cross-linking
chains to each other, or oxidizing them, or
substituting fat-soluble side groups along the
chain — to make them less prone to
breakdown during cooking, to make them
more effective emulsion stabilizers, and to
give them other qualities that “native”