The Maillard Reaction: Complete Chemistry

The Maillard reaction — named for French chemist Louis-Camille Maillard who first described it in 1912 — is the chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that produces the hundreds of flavour compounds, brown colours, and aromatic molecules that define roasted, grilled, baked, and sautéed food. It is not caramelisation (which involves only sugars) and it is not simply browning (which is the visual result, not the mechanism). Understanding its precise conditions — temperature, moisture, pH, time — gives a cook control over the most flavour-productive reaction in cooking.

• Wok hei — the "breath of the wok" in Chinese cooking — is Maillard reaction at extremely high temperatures producing volatile pyrazines that coat the food briefly and then dissipate
• The Chinese technique of smoking meat with spices exploits Maillard-adjacent pyrolysis reactions at even higher temperatures