【英语时差8,16】急速冷冻

Have you ever noticed how frozen vegetables bought at a supermarket tend to cook up like fresh ones; retaining much of their firmness, while cooked home frozen veggies tend to be softer and mushier? Well, this difference is due to the different freezing processes the veggies undergo at home, and before arriving at your local supermarket. Vegetables contain a lot of water, for example about 95 percent of your average tomato is water, and when we say that a vegetable is frozen what we really mean is that all the water it contains is frozen. Frozen water itself is made up of countless¹ minute crystals. But as minute as they are, their size differs greatly depending on how fast the water is frozen; the faster the freeze, the smaller the crystals. It takes at least thirty minutes to freeze a fresh vegetable in your home freezer at about zero degrees Fahrenheit², and so the crystals in the frozen water your veggie carries are quite large. Those large crystals form in or near individual cells in the vegetable, and often rupture³ or completely destroy them. When the veggie is thawed⁴, and then cooked, it has lost much of its structure the cells provided, and so, too, much of its firmness. On the other hand, a frozen veggie you buy from the supermarket is initially⁵ frozen very quickly, in about three minutes and at a temperature of at most minus four degrees Fahrenheit. The crystals which form in the water it carries are small enough not to damage too many of the veggie’s cells, and so the cooked veggie retains much of its structure and firmness.

1 countless   

adj.无数的，多得不计其数的

参考例句：

• In the war countless innocent people lost their lives.在这场战争中无数无辜的人丧失了性命。
• I've told you countless times.我已经告诉你无数遍了。

2 Fahrenheit   

n./adj.华氏温度；华氏温度计(的)

参考例句：

• He was asked for the boiling point of water in Fahrenheit.他被问到水的沸点是华氏多少度。
• The thermometer reads 80 degrees Fahrenheit.寒暑表指出华氏80度。

3 rupture   

n.破裂；(关系的)决裂；v.(使)破裂

参考例句：

• I can rupture a rule for a friend.我可以为朋友破一次例。
• The rupture of a blood vessel usually cause the mark of a bruise.血管的突然破裂往往会造成外伤的痕迹。

4 thawed   

解冻

参考例句：

• The little girl's smile thawed the angry old man. 小姑娘的微笑使发怒的老头缓和下来。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He thawed after sitting at a fire for a while. 在火堆旁坐了一会儿，他觉得暖和起来了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。