MaxH

Yes, that was the handy trick I needed. Thanks!

A minor technical question. (I added a couple of articles on subjects spotted on the "Wanted" list, for which I have both authoritative sources and practical experience -- Demi-glace, Liqueur -- the latter article by the way includes an important secondary meaning long missing, at last check, from Wikipedia's version.) In the Demi-glace article, for two basic definitions, I cited the same book source. The Wiki properly inserted sequential endnote citation links in the text body (superscripts "1," "2"), but they link to nearly duplicate entries in the reference list (originally they were exact duplicates until I added further pinpoint details at the end of each). This raises a general question -- I could not find information to answer these in the existing WikiGullet tutorial info: With, say, five text citations to one broad source in the reference list at the end (which inevitably comes up sometimes in writing like this), is it necessary to have five duplicated entries in the ref list? Or is it possible either to re-use the same citation superscript five times (1,1,1,1,1) pointing to a single ref-list entry, or else use different citation numbers (1,4,5,8,12) all linked to one single reference entry? In some scholarly-writing reference lists it's common to spell out the full reference at first appearance and later refer back to that entry within the same reference list, in shorthand form, like this: 4. Escoffier, Le Guide Culinaire, ... ..., p.12 ... 7. Escoffier [ref. 4], p. 44 Any of these options would avoid ungainly ref. lists in articles that repeatedly cite the same source either identically or with small variations.

You make some reasoned points, mcohen, but then -- Did you not read the refutations that already appeared above to this apparently personal assumption? You were asked for any evidence, but have answered with none. (One refuter here self-identified as Chinese, and I happen to know many Chinese people, both Chinese-born and ethnically Chinese, and it's from within that population, in California, that I have heard most grass-roots protest against current fin shearing practice.) Was any of that conceivably unclear? If not, why do you insist on repeating this unsupported and apparently discredited point?

I was surprised to see it characterized here as a California issue because (though indeed this particular legislation is in California) shark-fin shearing (accurately and gruesomely described upthread) has been internationally controversial for many years; this was merely one local reaction to it. First, the initial premise above is completely wrong (here in California, even some non-endangered animals are banned or effectively unavailable for food use, a matter of fashionable sentiment as much as of the animals' reality; ironically shark fins happens to be one instance with strong widely recognized objective basis). Second, hunting some creatures -- whales, elephants just for their ivory tusks -- has long been internationally illegal and shunned for obvious reasons, seldom characterized as racism against the various few cultures that persisted in these practices. Third, I wonder if it's really necessary to read some personal interpretation into this widely-acknowledged situation (local ban supporters whom I know are mainly Chinese) and post it as a pure assertion? Where's the evidence, if any?

I saw JAZ clarify a preference for American forms. But (reading emannths's full query) I was unsure if that was the full scope of what emannths meant by "handling localization." emannths, could you say a little more? In my experience of online food postings (including Wikipedia), a big localisms issue has been that people use them without knowing it, therefore can't even add clarifications or alternatives. Not just with spelling. (E.g., both US and Britain have "Porterhouse steaks," but they're different cuts, and readers from the other culture may never spot or correct the ambiguity, they just understand it differently from the writer's intent. Another situation is names that are highly regional, but meaningless elsewhere: "half and half" and "Graham crackers" regularly mystify non-American readers, but a US writer often won't know that.)

Very possibly, though I'm just getting acquainted with WikiGullet, its relationship to Wikipedia, etc. But please don't be distracted by the particular form my offhand example took with an "I." That's distinct from my point, that when giving useful or important factoids, it's no harder to acknowledge some as tentative or from memory than to pretend they're established reality. That choice is inherent in this kind of nonfiction writing, and should not warrant any fear of 100-times drop in contributions.

I don't follow you, Chris, so maybe I expressed the last point badly. It's about as easy to write, say, I recall a book on it by James Beard as to write James Beard wrote a book on it, but it's more honest. And looks better, when the book turns out to be by Richard Olney. Writers make this choice constantly anyway, I'm only pointing it out, and it should have no effect on the number of contributions anyone makes. (The first form above will be instinctive anyway to people who've written for fact- or libel-conscious media.)

It's an important point, and I've been there too. FWIW, a suggestion that's easy, yet safe enough even for hardcore scholarship or journalism, takes to heart the principle of expressing as facts only what you can back up. If your evidence is a recollection or conviction, report that fact ("I have often seen Z," "Contributor xx recalls Z") rather then just representing Z as true. Add an obvious call for a reference, and you've handled this issue as constructively as I can imagine. Bad gaffes on Wikipedia (I can even think of whole articles, though not about food) often reflect someone with a firm notion (who maybe reads only other people sharing that notion) casting it on Wikipedia as a reality, not a belief. That's already pretentious, but the problem is when notions come from something much more nebulous than Mjx's first-hand memories of experience. Worse, when easy-to-get authoritative sources contradict those notions. So Wikipedia's misinformation that I criticize here is both easy enough to avoid, and always under the authors' control.

A core difference between encyclopedias and research papers bears on that example. Wikipedia is explicitly a secondary or tertiary reference, meant to collect or summarize information already public in "reliable sources." Thus citations, i.e. pointers to the existing information, are unusually important. One of Wikipedia's basic standards is "No original research." For that reason, writing that a professor calls unoriginal could be ideal for Wikipedia (where the writer's contributions of investigation and original wording are valued).

I have to assume that the people who claim to rely on Yelp (which often surfaces when this subject's discussed online, in my experience) simply have not yet noticed the side of it that I and 6ppc have identified as harmful. The side that demonstrates concretely, to almost anyone, that "some" information is not always better than no information, if it's badly misleading. You notice this mainly when examining comments about a restaurant that you know extremely well (i.e., better than the commentators) so that you are actually appraising the commentators, against a known reference point. That was my whole introduction to Yelp, years ago, when people pointed out that an independent local restaurant, which we all knew intimately, was accumulating wildly misleading and unrepresentative comments. Content contrary to the implied purpose of restaurant criticism to usefully inform and advise. Unfortunately this hasn't changed, I continue to see the same thing when I track restaurants that I know well enough to be able to judge their commentators. ETA:Last night a restaurateur said, unsolicited, that he'd been offered the privilege to "edit" reviews of his restaurant for $1000 a month. That's the latest of many pay-to-play reports I've heard for years from restaurateurs. I guess this might help with the misleading-comments problem, but it introduces another one.

Thanks JAZ. If I understand right, focus of WikiGullet is on cooking, recipes, procedures, flavors in contrast to ingredient background and history (which is more what I see on Wikipedia). If that, or some other terse distinction, fits its creators' vision, I suggest putting it right out front and obvious, such as on the WikiGullet home page, for newcomers who may well (like me) wonder how this relates to Wikipedia. Mjx, that's what happens after someone "catches" a problem as I described. But people like The Old Foodie in Australia, and me, and others I know who read widely on food history, cookbooks, etc. and have large collections of print sources, notice far too many gaffes not yet flagged, and as the Old Foodie put it, you'd need a full-time staff to clean it up. That's where Wikipedia compares poorly to reference sources by professionals, or at least people conscious of an obligation to accuracy when representing information to the public as factual. That distinction is at the core of accurate nonfiction reporting, which implicitly asks how fundamentally do you "know?" Basically because you can show it; but many people assert (even believe) things when they can't. Citing real evidence is a small trouble compared to the payoff in credibility. If you're already sure the Danish information is on food packaging, you're almost "there." A little searching of trade Web sites or Danish food forums, or maybe a phone call to the nearest consulate (this is part of what consulates are for) will forever distinguish your contribution from all the heartfelt online misinformation and bar talk around.

I had some basic, maybe philosophical, questions. I haven't spotted these addressed in the discussion or in the project's intro sections that I checked. 1) Wikipedia of course aims to be a collaborative encyclopedia too, and has food content. What's the vision here on the relationship, or contrast, of WikiGullet to Wikipedia? On strictly food topics, what's the objective argument for someone to choose to post on WikiGullet rather than Wikipedia? 2) For food topics, Wikipedia is somewhat notorious, including Here on eGullet, for misinformation. It's good at conveying what its contributors believe. Yet without violating any guidelines, people have been willing to post notions there without undertaking even basic fact-checks in easy reliable sources. That leads to misinformation that was easily avoidable, but can endure for years and even spread (when quoted) until someone else catches it. Any thoughts on avoiding that Wiki-weakness here?

Those situations (I've seen plenty) are actually counterproductive, perverse, for the reader-consumer. They might make money for the Website owner (which has tried to sell advertising whenever restaurarateurs I know complained of misleading comments there), but a reader actually has a clearer picture of the establishment _without_ seeing the "stars" or even some of the comments, Such sites seem to draw out the least useful commentators. With chips on their shoulders, or personality disorders, or who actually, seriously, judge a whole restaurant on some stupid little detail like those 6ppc quoted (I've seen plenty of that). Their comments end up communicating about themselves and nothing, or less than nothing, about the restaurant.

Great data, techno, thanks! This goes deeper than the usual rudiments I find in the standard public advisory sources and books. Water removal to prevent growth of Claustridia in garlic is a new angle here. I'd mentioned 250°F oil processing only from the consideration of spore destruction, and responding to a long context, not limited at all to eGullet, of writers seeming to confuse cooking-medium temperature with cooking-food temperature. As if hot oil or an oven at 350°F, for example, implied temperature at or in the garlic of 350°F over the same interval. That overlooks water's vaporization enthalpy (Lvap) tending to limit temperatures to 212 °F until most of the water is expelled. (A secondary point was the practical difficulty of instrumenting a garlic clove to measure internal temperatures undistorted by surrounding cooking oil. Maybe someone already has done that measurement rigorously, it would be great to find a report.)

"People expect experts to be confident," says Prof. Tormala, but more is going on in restaurant criticism than the linked interview ever mentions. Readers know that critics draw a picture from limited experience of a restaurant. Readers also want useful information (helping to predict their own reactions there). It's not clear to me, from the interview, that the uncertain pro reviews had more impact because of the rather general "interpersonal dynamics" of "expectancy violations" that interest Tormala, or because their tentativeness cued readers that they were reading a careful reporter. -- Because "tastes and attitudes" notwithstanding, good restaurant critics also report a lot of facts and observations, and give basis for conclusions. That may be humble but it's also writerly prudence, not pretending omniscience or overreaching your real data. Contrast the hokiest restaurant critiques you've seen (and that some Web sites seem almost to encourage). Conclusions without basis; wide generalizations from a single (sometimes no) experience of the restaurant. Little uncertainty there. But I'm considering only the "pro" review results, and it's hard to understand any of the results deeply without knowing the literal texts that the subjects saw.

Again BadRabbit you cite valid information, but a selective, rhetorical picture. And again, I'm not arguing that anyone is going to get botulism, rather to be aware of risks and precautions. Sensible precautions that many of us have found easy to incorporate reduce the small chance to essentially zero which (since you like such numbers) constitutes a near-infinite risk reduction ratio. I've noticed for years that public information on any aspect of this topic on any food form, even with far narrower and more moderate information than in this thread, always generates responses confidently rationalizing familiar practices. Fine, that's individual choice. But make it an informed choice, and be aware that all of the episodes I know in detail of US botulism outbreaks were first-time surprises to people who previously "did it this way many times" without problems. Historically, botulism has been a threat as long as people have canned foods and it was a major factor in the popularization of "salt" (i.e. nitrite or nitrate, which is a nitrite precursor in this application) curing of meats hundreds of years ago. Until dedicated home pressure cookers were available, people were much more selective about what and how they preserved foods! Countless fruits and many vegetables (I mentioned pesto sauce as possibly another case) were empirically known safe to can with only boiling-water sterilization. I have more cookbooks than most people reading this, and as already mentioned in this or a related thread, the point about selective home canning has been explicit in cookbooks for generations. The situation is different now, when it's fashionable to store things like garlic or duck under fat, without the nitrite or extremely heavy saline preservatives common in old traditional confit recipes. The internet now carries some recipes much riskier than anything I've seen on eG, posted by people who appear utterly unaware of any food safety issues at all and it's those recipes that spur threads like this one.

andiesnji, you can also do this reliably and rapidly in the type of pressure cooker designed for home-canning botulism prevention. Same type used routinely for safe canning of non-acid foods. It's distinct from the more common home pressure cookers that simply speed up ordinary boiling or steaming. Friends have been doing this, and are happy with the flavors. Your thermometer method may achieve the result, but only if the garlic loses all its moisture. As I mentioned after your earlier posting on this, the thermodynamically powerful self-regulation that water imposes prevents food from reliably going above 212°F, regardless of cooking method, at normal atmospheric pressure until all water is expelled. Raising the pressure gets around this problem. Though I've not seen your set-up, as a longtime user of many kinds of thermometers for sometimes critical technical measurements, and for cooking, I'm concerned that a reassuring reading of probed garlic could possibly do what I've seen food thermometers do in some other situations: conduct heat to the actual sensor point from parts of the probe outside the garlic. In other words, the spot in the clove where the thermometer is may be reliably 250 °F (120 °C) but the thermometer probe itself distorts this picture, and other garlic cloves remain below 250. That (which by the way has counterparts in all sorts of other temperature measurement situations) is difficult to rule out, unless it's a small point probe enclosed entirely within the garlic, connected only by well thermally-insulated wires to the rest of the electronics in the thermometer. As a consulting engineer I could not conscientiously "sign off" to the system as described, which is not to say it may not still work with luck. I'm confident of the pressure cookers though, that's also how commercial canners routinely prevent botulism.

Actually they are correct ... (If a person has not been drinking heavily) ermintrude: Whole context of my comment that you quoted was specifically the perennial armchair advice to use acetaminophen ("APAP") after heavy drinking. You can find this in past eG "hangover cure" discussions if you look. APAP as a "cure" for heavy drinking is one of those persistent misinformation points (often shortly before New Year's Eve) despite ample public cautions, obvious e.g. on googling word pair acetaminophen + alcohol. Two accomplished (and food-engaged) professor friends, a biochemist in the US Northeast whose textbook you might know, and an organic chemist in the Midwest, have joined me in posting warnings in past Decembers to US food-drink Web sites (and newspaper food editors). Further from the same biochemist: The lethal dose of a drug divided by its effective therapeutic dose is the Therapeutic Index (formerly Therapeutic Ratio). We are happy if that number is something like 1000. We are not happy if it's 2 or less, a narrow T.R. means people are going to get hurt. With Acetaminophen, if someone has a bit of liver impairment, the T.R. can approach 1. Drinking uses up certain cofactors in the liver and makes the problem worse. I've almost completely stopped taking Tylenol because of the probable temporal proximity to alcohol. / In fact I wrote a rather strongly worded Q and A in the Companion book ... On some food-drink sites I added background on the further issue of the controversially uniform alcohol warnings that US FDA added to NSAID labeling in 1998 (21 CFR Part 201, all public in the US Federal Register): A number of comments said the established risks of acetaminophen use by heavy alcohol users far outweigh the risks of aspirin use by the same consumers. One comment submitted data from a comparative risk analysis of aspirin and acetaminophen (Ref. 66). Based on this analysis, the comment maintained that the number of expected deaths from acetaminophen toxicity when used for the short-term treatment of fever and pain is 12 times higher than that expected with aspirin. / Several comments complained that despite the much greater risk for acetaminophen, the proposed alcohol warning conveys the impression that for heavy alcohol users, the hazards of acetaminophen use and aspirin (or NSAID) use is essentially the same. Thus, consumers may be led to believe that they face a comparable risk with either analgesic. The comments said the proposed warning minimizes the essential messages. I'm responding to your remarks here, ermintrude, but please start a separate thread (and first review past eG discussions in the Spirits forum) if you wish to pursue this side topic further.

Taking some recent points in order (I split off ermintrude's in a separate posting): BadRabbit raised excellent point (going way beyond botulism, by the way) of reasonable response to unlikely risks. I've confronted these too. E.g., driving over steep hills to the ocean for waveriding in Northern California where Great White sharks attack rarely but occasionally, our talk is of those -- not the far more frequent violent crashes on the highway we're driving, with mountain-clueless drivers demonstrating reckless behavior daily. Yet we recognize both perils, and avoid needless risks with either. IMO the question was never whether to "worry about" anything. It's whether to follow safe practices already mandatory for US restaurants (flowing from updated FDA "Food Code") after garlic-in-oil moved from a niche to a frequent restaurant practice, and botulism cases followed. BadRabbit cited botulism infrequency, not mentioning that those are numbers with enforcement of the same food-prep regulations that BadRabbit prefers to overlook. (Also I don't run into any problem myself making fresh batches as needed, and freezing extra, which also inhibits hazards as described upthread, and I've done it anyway for many years simply to preserve flavors.) Also, please read practical details in related Pickles thread re actual taste of acid level pH 4.6 which inhibits C. bot. A food pH of 4.6 is only slightly into perceptible sour range. Quantitatively equivalent to 400:1 dilution of pH 2.0 lemon juice, about one lemon's juice (50ml) in five gallons (20 liters) water, or around "100x less acid than the market-leading Cola drink" [dougal]. This acid level occurs naturally in many foods (including, I'm guessing, many pestos with fresh basil). Commercial products strongly over-acidify for large safety margin -- again a separate issue, which shouldn't distort our notions of how "sour" these foods actually need to be for safety.

Just spotted this thread. I've used Champagnes and other sparkling wines in home cooking for decades (in lucky times, the price range of inexpensive French Champagnes overlaps the price range of good US sparkling wines and since Champagnes last for some years, well stored, I buy them at such times and use them later). Laurent-Perrier, Domain Louis Roederer (DLR), and Lanson are all well-known Chmpagne labels that periodically have offered excellent entry-level wines. Non-Champagne sparkling-wine regions in France (Côtes du Jura, the crèmants of Burgundy) can be even better values; many people outside France do not realize they are closely related wines minus the C-word cachet, therefore prices are disproportionately low. Living in northern California with a wide choice of US alternatives, if not actually using Champagne I generally use the US-made Roederer Estate (RE, separate subsidiary of DLR), an extremely Champagne-like California wine fastidiously made with methods imported from Champagne itself. Either joesan and I have had different experience, or I hang out with too many cooks, because many people I know not only discern wines in cooking, but if they're avid cooks, they can identify the wines rather specifically. (One chef friend, now in Savannah GA, complains loudly about things like simple French- or Italian-style country stews "ruined" because they tasted like the cheap wine thoughtlessly used in them.) Dishes I've used sparkling wines for include Champagne Risotto which, I'm told, is popular in northern Italy. Just substitute Champagne for say half the meat broth in a typical risotto recipe: cook Arborio or other thick-grained rice in the broth (either ritualistically like the purists insist, or like regular rice but with generous liquid, if purists aren't watching -- I've never seen them spot the difference in the result!) and when cooked, stir in freshly grated Reggiano Parmesan. Simple, delicious, elegant. Champagne choucroute (Alsatian cooking) is an outstanding meal-in-a-pot use, I originally learned it 25 years ago from Cronin and Palais' wonderful little book Champagne. You rinse some sauerkraut (the German word equiv. to Fr. choucroute) to remove excess salt, then stew slowly with mixed Champagne and chicken broth, apples, chopped onions, mixed meats (usually I combine pork loin or delicate ham, some sausages, US "hot Italian-style" turkey sausages give a very interesting result; other meats if handy, like fresh poultry) and some of the typical seasonings of such dishes, dried juniper berries, a few whole cloves maybe. Simmer it all gently until the flavors develop, an hour or two. Serve with something starchy, rice, French bread, etc. A real crowd pleaser!

No, I haven't swung by the distributor (Sunnyvale's Lab-Pro) yet to look at them. Coincidentally, a winemaker friend swears by a Hanna Instruments handheld unit (description closely fits what I got from lab-Pro above) and uses it heavily, mainly in the pH 3-5 range, for wine, periodically checking it both with calibration specimens and with separate tests on the wine. He said he needs a new sensor head after using the current one for a few years (per above). I believe that this 3-5 pH range in winemaking is exactly the range needed to verify that food is acid enough to reliably prevent anaerobic spore germination.

John Rosevear and budrichard make excellent points above, I can see that they've been around a bit on this subject. Thirty years ago I might have suggested inexpensive reds, but today it would be either a good Pinot Noir (most of which, of course, come from Burgundy even at the lower prices) or a good Riesling and -- my real addition to this thread -- the Riesling need not be bone-dry. A sort of underground insight among experienced US wine fanatics (starting now to appear in popular media), picked up from European Riesling fans, is that the sweet-acid balance of classic German-style Rieslings pairs exquisitely with things like roast Turkey, smoked fish, pulled pork, or cheeses. The acid is an essential part of this. I gave my dentist a bottle of fairly heavy (Spätlese or Auslese weight) artisanal German Riesling of this kind for a smoked-turkey dinner a few years ago, to frank skepticism, rescinded enthusiastically in a follow-up phone call about how the combination "blew away" the host and the guests. Another convert! German Rieslings of the great M-S-R and Rheingau regions have been consistently undervalued in world markets and I've bought hundreds of them of quality, in the US, below $20 and even $10. (The US makes Rieslings too, in increasing numbers, but they remain a novelty in that industry, and handicapped by the too-hot growing region problem that translates into distractingly higher alcohols than their German prototypes.) For specific labels, advice from across continents is not the way to go. Find your local wine merchant who is knowledgeable about European Rieslings and you will get useful advice about wines locally available. There are thousands of individual labels of modest production volume, and their US availability varies even more widely than for other good-value European wines.

I can enthusiastically support that accolade as leading source of quality white truffles (partly reflecting the species, Tuber magnatum pico here -- central to truffle quality). Some experts writing in the food literatures of the last two centuries go further, describing the best white truffles from there as surpassing the best black truffles (T. melanosporum) which however are more abundant (and take to cooking, unlike the Piemontese whites, so are usually used differently). I'd have skipped those last aromatic comparisons because they're absurd: truffles are unique, and smell like truffles -- as for instance garlic is unique, and its aroma can't be evoked in words to someone who hasn't smelled it. Imagine that garlic were suddenly 1000 times as expensive, and you have the situation of classic truffles. This picture, which was clear and widely understood (and supplemented by interesting comparisons of other truffle species and regions) until recently, is lately clouded because prices make traditional species inaccessible to most cooks (which was not always true). That has opened marketing opportunities for secondary or "minor" truffle species and new geographical sources. Some sellers of these secondary truffles (much less expensive, generally also much less flavorful or aromatic) have aggressively promoted them and occasionally taken pains (I have specific examples) to mislead naïve consumers into assuming that they're the same white or black "truffles" cited in 99.8% of the Western cooking writing that mentions truffles. They're not; that's sleazy fraud, preventable by consumer self-education; but some of the new truffles are good when approached on their own merits, rather than as fake classic truffles. Five years ago I put a brief broad truffle tutorial (including some history, botany, species examples, and why prices rose so much -- lots of info that mainstream journalists never seem to mention) on several food and wine Web sites, which apparently didn't include this one, but some of today's "truffle hustles" have appeared here in other threads, search under "truffle" for more. That journalists and editors and some readers might initially believe an erroneous price in the millions reflects how out-of-sight these underground mushrooms have unfortunately become. Even the corrected price bespeaks novelty or status-symbol appeal. The Romanée-Conti syndrome.

Tough though it is to follow the amazing Liberace appliance, due diligence demands reporting a friend's complaint of deluge advertising from her local Olive Garden chain restaurant for "Lasagna Fritta:" It's as if those battered and deep-fried Twinkies and Mars Bars emerging from Scotland some years ago (to join the existing rancid-deep-fat food stalls at US beach boardwalks) are moving toward "the middle of the plate."

Growing up in a household where smoked fish in general was popular, I got a taste for tinned kippered (i.e., smoked and salted) Herring, commonly "kippers," which my father often served in weekend breakfasts. (He may have acquired the taste while living in Britain in the 1940s.) I later learned that smoked fish in general are traditional and popular in Northwest Europe (Britain, Scandinavia). Mention of (German-based US specialty grocer chain) Trader Joe's reminded me that they often feature German tinned fish products from Appel Feinkost, which is well worth knowing about. That superb German firm markets internationally a huge range of quality tinned smoked and non-smoked fish (fresh and salt water), including delicate unsmoked salmon filets (which Trader Joe's here alas stopped carrying some years ago) and both unsmoked and lightly smoked trout filets (which I believe TJ still sells). A much wider selection of Appel Feinkost products surfaces at German delicatessen shops (like the famous Dittmer's here in silicon valley). ("Feinkost," literally fine-taste, is an idiom meaning a delicatessen in German.)