Carrot Top

Gosh, guys. I hope that in this Brave New World of science and numbers that there will still be room for intuition. . .intuition used to create good things to eat. . . based on foods that have been held in one's hands, caressed with one's eyes and tasted on one's tongue. Can science do it all? Is it all encompassing, even in ways of determination of new creations. . .what would "work" and what would not? Is math, finally, the only way to an across-the-board appreciation of things? Paradoxical, if true, that these pure, cold, stripped down things would lead to the best sorts of pleasures for humans. And a surprise, too, to those in all fields that have created all sorts of things in the past without considering these subjects (in their formal form) while creating. Personally, it is my sense that most things that have been created in the world, whether "emerging food style" or whether some other thing that pushes boundaries, have been created through intuition and through knowledge of the metier worked in. Not through the more formal approach of measurement and analysis, but through inspiration and desire to "play" in the metier. That there may be some access of sorts (again, intuitively) to the rules of mathematics and science that determine balance during these creative moments, I won't argue. There must be. But finally I must stand firmly on the side of intuition backed by knowledge, rather than science playing footsies in other fields. Tough job, but someone's gotta do it. (And since I lack the scientific mind, it might as well be me! )

Ah. How simple haycorns are, and honey and thistle. How wonderfully simple. You reminded me that I have two books on my bookshelf (unread yet, a gift from a friend) on Pooh. "The Pooh Perplex" by Frederick C. Crews which includes such chapters as "Winnie and the Cultural Stream" or "A.A. Milne's Honey-Balloon-Pit-Gun-Tail- Bathtubcomplex" and then another book; "Postmodern Pooh" by the same author with chapters such as "The Fissured Subtext: Historical Problematics, the Absolute Cause, Transcoded Contradictions, and Late-Captitalist Metanarrative (in Pooh), or yet another "The Courage to Squeal". (Yes, apparently, thank goodness, they are satire.) And there is always "The Tao of Pooh" which is a rather nice little book, too. Pooh rules.

Well, as usual I got geographically confused about where Raleigh is and thought I was driving to Winston-Salem. Only a difference of two and a half extra hours or so. Nevertheless, we'll start out the day before with the pastries in a cooler in the car. . .which will then be popped into a fridge in the hotel in Greensboro where we'll stay on Saturday in order to do the Water Park. Naturally my thoughts will be on all of you struggling in the heat of the kitchen preparing wonderful things, and I won't enjoy a moment of it. I hope you will all take pity on me, acting like an etranger, a auslander, a furriner. . .bringing along Viennese thingies to eat, and that you will take a bite or two of them. The True Southerners can avert their eyes whilst this occurs if they wish. So far the list is chocolate-cherry torte (it has a layer of marzipan "built in" for those who care ); nusstorte layered with apricot filling; and a linzertorte. Mostly because those are things I can almost make in my sleep. I do hope you will have some schlag around for the linzertorte. . But here is my question: What time should late arrivals like me and mine be planning to arrive at this hoedown?

I feel as if I should be putting on a fluffy 1950's party dress with some high heels and a bouffant hairdo when I say this. . .but anyway. . . (I've wracked my brain and can come up with no other answer, Rogov) A smile. The universal language. ( )

Wow. Sandra, I am curious. What sort of school is this? The schools that I have seen are so overburdened even when running on a good budget base that the idea of a teacher taking time to check all their student's foods for "healthiness" would simply never, ever, happen. Karen

Interesting response, tfa. (Hope you don't mind my giving you a nickname there ) It might be quite an fascinating story to ask your Mum about what and how she ate while growing up, someday. These stories are full of tidbits of good things to muse over. . . Anyway. The yin and the yang of what gives impetus in life. They are both useful!

Good taste? I don't know. Beauty? Perhaps! Maybe there's an underlying mathematical logic to good food that has yet to be identified. ← Wow. Very interesting link. Hmmm. They've done it to the human face. . . but finding the underlying mathematic logic to good food?! Phew. Very fun stuff here. I wonder how a link could be made between the idea of the Golden Rectangle and food though. The balance on the plate, as Jack says, the uneven number that often just makes the whole seem "right", yes. But taste. . .how could they measure taste? I bet they (you know "they". . ."those people". . .the Unidentified Intelligent Ones ) could break foods down and measure the chemical components and study that to see if there were some sort of mathematic balance. I wonder.

Well, Rogov. . .it is possible that I might have a "mathematical bent" in ways, but it's never been indulged. The part of my brain that would do "symbolic reasoning" has simply never been used. . .it is totally flat-line, nothing there. . .but the few times I have tried it. . .(as in a recent course I took in "Language and Logic") well. . .I must tell you, it made me quite giddy in a very strange way. It made me laugh with delight, as if being tickled. It was pure clear pleasure, rather like being on a picnic on a perfect day where there were no bugs around and an excellent bottle of champagne to drink under a tree. Thank goodness the professor shared my delight in the subject she taught and understood my laughter. I really had fears at first that I would be kicked out of class for whenever she explained something well my head had a spinning sensation and I just had to giggle quietly in the back of the classroom while the other students firmly kept their eyes averted. . . So I can understand the common appreciation of it as a language. It is a lovely language and someday maybe I'll find time to learn it. If I tried to do it now, the children would likely end up waiting hours for their supper while they listened to me alternately roaring with laughter and groaning with that stupid feeling one has when the brain is totally recalcitrant. But where on earth do you manage to find studies that detail which concepts have triggered aesthetic satisfaction across the centuries? I am curious. . . The columns you wrote on the Larousse classics must have been wonderful. Your readers are very lucky! Hmmm. Living in Appalachia as I do now, I might be able to persuade a chicken farmer to provide me with some cockscombs. That would be an adventure! Maybe an adventure worthy for one of those eGullet weekly foodblogs, hmm? "Seeking the Cockscomb in America" or something of that nature. . .if that happens, I will definitely seek your cockscombs-cooking advice!

Well said, Doctor Paul, and fair enough. The problem is that restaurants do not have a standard rule of practice that is mandated. Each one is different. . .each one operates as best it can within its budget and profit constraints to try to survive. And often those profit margins are not terrific, particularly for small independent-type places. I am sure that someone here can supply the number percentage of how many new restaurants opened go out of business in the first year. It would be interesting to see if there are other "professions" that have the same percentage. I am not saying "aye" or "nay" to what you suggest. . .just saying that the restaurant business can not be compared in many ways to "other professions". Perhaps, if it does become more professionalized in terms of requiring formal educational credentials from all that work there. . .and pay good wages with benefits to all that work there. . .and put in more controls and assurances and mandates. . .it would become more like other professions, and then of course the costs of everyone's meals would go up. But then again, many well-regarded corporations have been outsourcing and going to part-time employees in the past ten or fifteen years anyway, just to survive (supposedly) and they do not have the same precipitous situation as many restaurants. To my mind, asking that the corner restaurant do this is rather like taking the tack that as far as buying, say, clothing goes. . .that one would only want to buy if assured that the clothing were sweat-shop free, etc etc. This is a wonderful idea. But to really do it, and insist upon it. . .would certainly be difficult for both the buyer and the industry. It is just plain complicated. Taking this idea a bit further, it must be said that restaurants are in one of the larger categories of employers for workers "without" formal skills. In the US, we have a lot of immigrants that would be out of work if the situation developed so that everyone who worked at a restaurant needed credentials or formal education. There will always be people in the world "just starting out", there will always be those who need a very basic sort of job. . .and this industry provides that living for many people. Although it is not the ultimately best thing in the world, in my opinion, it needs to be there, this opportunity. That. . .is one of the things that has made this country a wonderful place. . .the fact that one can "start from nothing". What would be interesting to see. . .just for comparison purposes. . .is a budget from an average independent restaurant. . .one that did not make a ton of money, but that did manage to survive, in the usual way that restaurants do. Take that budget and re-do it including good wages and professional level compensation for all of the staff. Then figure out what the average cost per meal would be. Then figure out whether the customer would pay for it. Ultimately, this is what it comes down to. ....................................................................... On the other hand, most "businesses" do not allow access to their operating budgets unless they are a publicly owned company and even then there is only the simplest of records provided to the public. Why should restaurants have to do this? They are there to provide food and service. Any critical response should really be to that food and service, not to their internal financial operations. Again, unless they are a publicly-held restaurant. Really, there has to be some line drawn as to what people (as customers) are allowed and encouraged to poke their noses into in this world. The focus of the business should be able to be on providing the best product they can, not on explaining "how things work" for anyone who happens to be curious, or for anyone who wants to be "persuaded" to spend their money at a certain place. It is very easy, though, to vote with one's feet if the food or the service does not meet one's standards in a restaurant. . .so that option is always there. And the option is always there for businesses to explain how they work, if they wish to. But they should not "have to" unless the consumer's physical or mental health is at stake (and this is covered in restaurants by extensive health code laws)(at least the physical part, who knows about the mental part. . .sometimes the way people relate to food is somewhat nutty ); or if the consumer's pocketbook is directly tied to the operation, as it would be if they were stockholders. Let the restaurants concentrate on doing what it is they set out to do. Provide their customers with a great meal and great service. There are textbooks than can be referred to on this subject for anyone who wishes to understand the underlying stuff better.

Still wordless, I can only offer what Dorothy Sayer writes of your subject, Maggie: "I have never regretted Paradise Lost since I discovered it contained no eggs-and-bacon."

Mmm. I remember reading of these garnishes in Larousse when I first started cooking. How I longed to make that strange thing! I even went into some butcher shops and asked if they could get cockscombs. Well. That made their day. Interesting that it ended up in what you call aspirational English cooking. I wonder if that is what is happening with us here in the US in ways. Derivations of fine things watered down to terrible parodies of the original, in the ways of middle-class convenience foods.

My first thought was that your trifle recipe sounded very sexy, Adam. But why, when I reached the second line, did I start thinking you sounded like my Jewish grandmother? Sorry. It must have been Rogov's math post that made me this way. P.S. Actually, yes. It would be nice to see the recipe for chicken with sweet custard sauce if you find time to post it! Thanks!

Really, Rogov. What the heck indeed. Some nice line drawings there, but it might have been better to try to speak Zulu to me. Mathematics is not my forte. . .and this is a good thing, for it allows me to consistently misunderstand my bank account, which then allows me to try to emulate Oscar Wilde in always being satisfied with the best. So. . ."good taste" can only be defined mathematically? Pah. C'mon, try a translation. Words, please.

He did have a way with words, didn't he. What wonderful nonsense. Especially the first one.

Yes, I'd forgotten that! I do love that line you wrote, though. Quite poetic. Almost Shakespearean, really.

I wonder. . .it would be interesting to try to come up with a list of things that would define "good taste" across a variety of cultures and time. Not a list of characteristics that would define "good taste" in a specific sense for specific things, for as you say that is certainly often temporal and geographic, but a list of characteristics that might be global or beyond time constraints. A list of classic things that would define "good taste" beyond all boundaries. I do think there are similarities in how all (or most) people(s) or cultures have defined this as much as there are similarities in all (or most) other classic rules of life. I think we are basically more alike than we are different, and it does seems that there are classic things that should hold true in a "global" sense (using the word not only in its geographic meaning). A classic definition of good taste. The examples of "trickle-down" that you gave with the 60-year lag were good examples of migration down a class slope. I wonder. . .did industry in the form of any sort of possible mechanization of any of the parts of the making of the dish occur in these examples? It is a bit of a stretch to think of "mechanization" during the Renaissance, but it could be that a new sort of tortellini press was developed that was affordable and available to the everyday person in the case of the Pasticcio de Tortellini. . .and maybe with the spiced cakes there was some sort of availability of spices made to the public through better trade routes through political negotiation or better built ships that lowered the prices? It is interesting to think of these things, isn't it. The Trifle I can't figure out at all. . because all of those ingredients were probably available to the "common folk" weren't they. Hmm. Maybe the invention of a better eggbeater/ mechanical whisk that would beat the cream faster than the older version? Or maybe something to do with refrigeration that would allow it to "hold" better than lugging in iceblocks to the icehouse? Ah, well. Who knows. Maybe it is all more arbitrary than that. The duck confit, though. I think of that as a peasant dish that was originally created to preserve the duck meat through the winter rather than trying to keep the ducks alive (heh heh, they would have been "fresh-frozen" then, no?). So I can't put it in the trickle-down theory but rather in the cultural-exchange group, with a hint of something else added. . .I don't exactly know how to phrase it. . .reverse-snottery perhaps? Fun stuff, Adam.

". . .an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can reasonably be expected of it." (Henry James)

"How long does getting thin take? Pooh asked anxiously."

Since reading this earlier, I keep trying to find some neat thing to say that would amuse, but no cute lines are coming from me. The original thought remains stuck firmly in my mind and will not be pried out by any other words. Lovely. Just lovely, Maggie. In the hugest and best sense of the word.

Ah. You've opened the door to think of literary muses. . .then I would have to add MFK Fisher. And in a different category, Larousse Gastronomique. (What it lacks in warm personality it makes up for in bulk ).

eewwww! ← no fair ridiculing people in this thread ← Actually, I've seen that stuff for sale both in health food stores and in the Amish store I used to go to. . .so he is in very good company!

This is a very funny story, Arey. I really do hope you will write back in when (if?) the B* M* C* place opens to let us know who the greeter at the door is there! With a building that has a history like that, I can not but imagine that it will be yet another in this continuing line of characters that is standing near the door to make one "welcome". ( )

Great line, Rogov. That strips it down to what matters, doesn't it. It reminded me of something I'd read, so I looked it up: "We plan, we toil, we suffer - in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol's eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The Empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake up just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs. And, again I cry, how rarely it happens! But when it does happen - then what a moment, what a morning, what a delight!" J.B. Priestly Yes. . .how rarely it happens. . . and what a delight when it does!

In regards to the Apple Caviar and its ilk. . .and the fact that these sorts of things end up first and sometimes only on the tables of the wealthy. . .whether the wealthy be from Ancient Rome or from current-day Manhattan. . . to my mind that is because of the ability that wealth allows for one to play with the food. Most people in other categories of financial status are more interested in just getting the food on the table somehow. To my mind, it seems that we now have an enormous group of people being more interested in creative ways with food not only because of the fact that travel and therefore exchange of ideas in food has become more common but also that we have a much larger upper-middle class than ever before in history (that I am aware of, though please correct me if I am wrong. It would be interesting to know of this and of the things that happened in a similar food/economic/political culture). Having money frees up people to be able to play. Now as to Jack's point, that the very wealthy are often not so imaginative with their food choices, I would agree. . .but with a stipulation. The very wealthy who are accustomed to being very wealthy are not often so imaginative. But "new money" people more often are. Again, same thing. When one has the chance, the opportunity, to play, to buy creativity, to be something "different" than before due to lack of funds, it often takes the shape of trying on food styles. Old money has often had the chance to taste it all and has settled into its (or their) own style. Nonetheless, this style still is often more "haute" than "peasant". From what I've seen, anyway. Your "trickle-down" theory is interesting. . .I hadn't thought of that. Can you give us some examples? I can't think of anything in particular of this sort in today's world. . .unless it is something like Knorr's Bearnaise Sauce . Now. . .has there ever been a diner with an individual palate or intellect? Honey, I gotta tell you. Be a chef for one day, and you will find out just how amazingly individual people are about their food. Or instead, just line up ten people in a row and ask them what they think about a particular dish you've served them. . .and insist that they be honest (as honest as they would be if they had to pay for it! ) Oooooh boy. You will definitely see individuality.

Maybe Alice was into Feng Shui? It's good to stir the spirits in the right direction, you know. Don't want to upset things.