Re: Cooking and azeotropes

> Knowing that ethanol is azeotropic with water at 95%, does water 
> evaporate first until we finally get a sauce containing 95% alcohol?

Good question!

Alas, real life is not as simple as they make it look in chemistry class!

Actually some scientists have actually investigated this question, and 
published their results.

The citation for the paper is:

Agustin, et al. 1990.  Alcohol retention in food preparation.  Journal of 
the American Dietetic Association vol 92(4) pg 486-488.

This paper was also summarized in the Tufts Diet and Nutrition Newsletter 
Vol 8(4), June 1990, and featured in the NY Times Science Q&A Column of 
February 27, 1997.

Basically the authors found that alcohol containing dishes retained 
between 5 and 85 percent of the added alcohol depending on the type of 
alcohol used (wine cooks off faster than hard liquor) and how long the 
dish was heated.