[foobarian]

I've been contemplating using a pipe-bomb shaped vessel to cook things in super-heated water, which would require very high pressures. Imagine getting water to 400F and how golden brown and moist things would be that cook that way! It would be like deep frying food in water.

[jonah-archive]

Dave Arnold tried this and was not impressed: https://cookingissues.com/2009/06/11/maillard-pipe-potatoes/

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As you can see from the photo, the potato turns a dark mahogany all the way through (cause it is 355° all the way through). Even the water turns mahogany.

This experiment taught me that not all Maillard reactions produce good flavors. The Maillard pipe potato tastes awful and smells acrid. Damn it’s bad—but it’s instructive.

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[wahern]

Looking at the temperature/pressure chart on the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_cooking) any plant or animal tissue, perhaps even bone, would maybe be reduced to a thin sludge long before reaching 400F.

The Wikipedia page mentions pressure ovens, though, which seem designed to achieve the effect you're looking for--fast cooking with browning (Maillard reaction). Personally, this is why I love the Kuhn Rikon fry pan pressure cooker. It has a tri-ply, dimpled bottom for excellent browning; then you can just deglaze, add remaining ingredients, and slap a lid on for pressure cooking. It only holds 2.5L, though, so in practice limited to dishes of about 8-10 servings at the very most (typically more like 4-8 servings).