Colour Changes in Salmon, Prawns and Steaks

When you cook prawns they turn red, ready orange. And when you cook a steak it starts off really orange and it turns sort of a grey brown colour. This is down to a series of reactions initially described as the Mayard reaction. It was discovered by French chemist Louis Cammy Mayard in 1912. He originally described this reaction so that there was something happening between amino acids. So these are the little building blocks that make up the proteins in this case, steak and sugar. We now understand that we create new compounds which generate this colour and this flavour.