MaxH

These things do happen. As when people in the US without much mathematical training began (in the 1980s) saying parameters "when they meant perimeters but were trying to be hip," as one professional writer complained publicly then; and despite continued advice from other literate writers, competent guidebooks, and everyone who knows what a parameter really is. Lately they've been doing it again, with "nonlinear." These things happen.

Brad, I've been seeing people write this online lately who are English-speakers, particularly in the US. But I've been going to Vienna restaurants and wine bars and ordering GV off and on for at least 20 years, where the wine is mainstream, and I have never noticed anyone in that town, in my experience for what it's worth, stress any but the first syllable of VELTliner. (It's a mild stress too.) Maybe the organizers of this site could consider a moratorium on mentions of pronunciations of Reims (spelled Rheims in English traditionally BTW), or put the words into the filter list for automatic censorship, or, of course, an FAQ list. (It's among the most notorious prununciations in French and without action, we are doomed to repetitions of the issue every dew screenfulls, by newbies who don't read back enough.)-- Max

Background info, tongue-in-cheek type, already pretty well known by everyone here anyway, I assume. Don’t Call it Frisco was the 1953 Doubleday book by late local columnist-laureate Herb Caen, I just looked at my copy. (Caen was from Sacramento and did not move to SF until 1936, but was otherwise genuinely local.) To say “Frisco” in the region is of course to mark oneself as an out-of-towner, possibly but not certainly redeemable. Equivalent to, in Oregon, pronouncing “William-ette” when you read Willamette; or pronouncing the state OreGON, like polygon. (As a sometimes Oregon resident I never heard anyone from there say that, anyway.) I think that saying “Avenue of the Americas” for 6th is almost as taboo, though I’ve heard the occasional New Yorker do so. (None of these shibboleths is in the same category as mispronouncing Scheveningen, which under some circumstances in the past would actually get you shot.)

I second this and I thank artisan02 also for distinguishing what are, essentially, two separate restaurants on the two floors of The House At 1517 Shattuck. (Lately, some people have been from arriving out of town, even posting notes about the place, without knowing that.) Both are notably moderately priced for their quality level. (Downstairs is the restaurant, upstairs the Café. In French terms -- as used in France rather than the US -- I think the former might be called a bistro or auberge, the latter more like a brasserie.) Chez Panisse (the restaurant), 510-548-5525, was for many years the French Laundry of its day in the sense of being the hip restaurant that "you can't get into." The style however is very different from FL, it always aimed at something like a country-inn style, but emphasizing fresh and intense ingredients. Whence the journalistic term "California Cuisine." By the way, in the 1980s a number of New Yorkers arrived there owing to the buzz, found that they couldn't order cocktails or caviare, and then boasted that they saw through its reputation. (I'd mentioned that online in years past.) This site has lots of recent reporting about CP and CPC if you search.

That's good data, and also contradicts Breaux's general comments in print that I cited above. If you know of enough such comparisons to present not just a testimonial anecdote but a representative picture on the point I raised of flavors of 100-year-old vs. reproduced absinthes, I think that would be important information that you might wish to consider for your FAQ. Against Beaux's principle that the contents of 100-year-old distillates evolves radically. (Otherwise, others acquainted with that principle may continue to wonder at the existing comment that I pointed out from your FAQ.) Just a thought. Cheers -- Max -------- The eccentricities of the Jura streams are vertical as well as horizontal. They have a disconcerting habit of suddenly disappearing into sinkholes ... and at last, when the ground drops away, of gushing forth again from the side of a cliff in what is known as a resurgence... This phenomenon was dramatized in 1901 when dwellers near the “source” of the Loue were delighted to discover that it seemed to have turned to absinthe -- weak in flavor, but nevertheless quite palatable. Two days before, the Pernod factory at Pontarlier, where absinthe was made, had burned down, and some 200,000 gallons of it had poured into the Doubs. It was therefore deduced that the Loue was a resurgence of part of the waters of the Doubs. Waverly Root, The Food of France, Knopf, 1958 (LCC 57-10310)

I'd agree with that statement with particular reference to product formulations and modern commercial products; also that many individuals know much more about absinthe now than they did a couple of years ago. A point of mine though is that the basics, the FAQ-type information, have been widely public for much longer, for anyone who cared to read them. Such seminal popular US sources as Conrad's 1989 book spurred renewed interest in absinthe, and paved the way for later activities like the Fee Verte forum and your own site (even if a random newcomer has no clue of this). "It is not as bitter as its century-old reputation suggests, and never has been, as can be attested by those who have tasted pre-ban absinthe." A tiny point: I support "not as bitter as its century-old reputation suggests" (that was a Breaux point in print, by 2002). But another of Breaux's messages, at that time, was that pre-ban absinthe, tasted today at age 100 or so, bore little relation to pre-ban absinthe freshly re-created. (Breaux's point, not mine.) I wondered therefore at pre-ban absinthe as a reference point for flavor, that's all. But here's something more important: In defense of Café Brûlot I didn't mean to suggest that Larousse Gastronomique was a necessary or unique source on the subject. Café Brûlot has been a regional US icon for generations, and an old-fashioned cliché of elegant dining (like silver toast racks or midnight Champagne suppers). It is all over the place in mainstream 20th-century US cookbooks. At a glance just now I found it in the US Regional Cook Book (1947), de Gouy's Gold Cook Book (1948, including many variations), the Gourmet Cookbook (1950), the Fannie Farmer Cookbook (1965), and Kenneth Davids' influential Coffee (1987, ISBN 0892862750, probably into a later edition by now). Any book on coffee probably has it. Thus I believe this is not one of those cases of cocktail names and histories being tangled. Café Brûlot probably belongs culturally to the world of coffee, rather than cocktails.Your good health -- Max

Agreed! I looked at the wormwoodsociety.org site and it seems to me thoughtful with good graphics, photos and reviews of current products, good basic FAQ touching on main points of interest, and pointer to www.feeverte.net, a focal point of the growing online discussion of absinthe in recent years. (I have not been active on feeverte.net but had cordial exchanges with its founder.) The online search picture on absinthe was wholly different just four years ago, when I posted comments on amazon.com about Conrad’s classic US absinthe book (I think I still have the search results from then and earlier). I don’t recall feeverte.net in those days, and NIC public record shows the domain name registered later, December 17, 2001. Relevant to the wormwoodsociety.org information (and this forum) are two details there that I noticed. First and narrowest concerns flavor of pre-ban absinthe. Before Ted Breaux opened his Louisiana plant, his new absinthe venture received local publicity including 2002 articles in New Orleans by Mark Miester. One point was that the several herbal components in classic absinthe decay over time with different time constants or “half-lives,” so that a bottle of absinthe 100 years old has very different makeup from the original. Breaux, a chemist, undertook to “reverse-engineer” this process by accounting for the different decay rates and interactions, thus inferring a classic fresh absinthe formulation. (I mention this because the wormwoodsociety.org information includes comments on flavor of pre-ban absinthe re the bitterness issue, and does not seem to me to make clear that current tastes of pre-ban absinthe relate only very indirectly to the original.) Second, Café Brûlot is rendered “Brulée” in the Web site. This flamed spiced coffee beverage (also by the way “a typical drink of Louisiana,” says the second French source below) has a long and colorful history. Just as one example, in the 1944 Warners classic film The Mask of Dimitrios with Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, in the “Belgrade 1926” sequence, when the naive civil servant Bulic is being led down the path of perdition by Dimitrios, the camera lingers meaningfully on a flaming cauldron of Café Brulot in a restaurant scene. For more general info in English, check the adjective “Brûlot” in the 1961 or 1988 Crown editions of Larousse Gastronomique. The former also includes, in classic early-Larousse tone, the sweeping judgment “True lovers of coffee and gastronomes do not like brûlot much; they prefer to drink the liqueur separately.” And the latter edition says, besides the coffee beverage, “Brûlot in France is a familiar term for a sugar lump soaked in alcohol, held in a spoon over a cup of coffee, and flamed before being dropped into the coffee.” Which leads to my favorite line in www.wormwoodsociety.org: Friends Don't Let Friends Burn Absinthe. Your health! -- Max (max@tdl.com)

I'm pleased to hear that there's now an "absinthe community." Surely that reflects the newfound fashion for the subject. (In contrast, five years ago there was very little online indeed on this subject, compared to other beverages; the most substantive thing online was Baggott's UCSF compendium.) The Baggott document I refer to (and earlier in this thread) was not I think the "1993 FAQ" but his collection of pharmaceutical references and sources, which had serious depth (more anyway than what I've seen online since). Though surely not the last word it was a pioneering online resource on the subject. (Maybe that is equivalent to "old news.") (By the way the first absinthe query I answered publicly on the Internet was in 1987 or 88. The first commercial absinthe I tried, in the early 80s as mentioned on amazon, was from Portuguese Macao and may have been opiated. And yes, I was in my 20s at the time. ) I don't understand this in the context of the salvanol equivalence that I cited. No one ever said anything wasn't poisonous in large quantities. The point I made (actually Barnaby Conrad made it, in 1989, and he was citing chemists, and Baggott's compendium explored it further) is that thujone is established as the same terpenoid that is a major principle in sage. On this basis, whatever arguments apply to Thujone apply to sage, and vice versa. Sage is not widely considered "poisonous." Is anything wrong with this reasoning?

Greetings Hiram, since you are familiar with the subject then you will likely have read the following from Conrad’s Appendix (1997 reissue edition, ISBN 0811816508): The theme was developed further in Baggott's compendium that I mentioned earlier (the main substantive online source on the subject as of 2000, or at least the one with the most links and hits, though various colorful sites have sprouted since on this indeed fashionable topic). Baggott pointed out that sage, a common cooking herb, is Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS). If Thujone and Salvanol are indeed the same, this has rendered the magnitude of Thujone content a non-issue, except legally, since 1963.

No such intent, Carolyn, I guess you know. A pet peeve came into play. (I had a little screed in print in 1999 -- this was some time before the advent of eGullet, I think -- "Why does the public think the Internet is a new phenomenon?" -- after a technical writer garbled Internet history by 20 years. (The very worst misinformation today, by the way, is in "Internet History" offerings online, which spring up daily, and diligently plagiarize each others' misinformation, adding their own distortions for a whiff of originality.) Drink deep, or taste not ... Your health -- Max -- "The WWW world consists of documents, and links. . . . Making a web is as simple as writing a few SGML files which point to your existing data. -- Tim Berners-Lee, Message-ID: <6487@cernvax.cern.ch>, 6 Aug 91 16:00:12 GMT, Subject: WorldWideWeb: Summary. [First announcement of "Web" online and by the way, a professional editor would of course have changed Berners-Lee's "which" to "that," and with reason. Pitfalls of "self-publishing." --MH]

Small historical digression: It was available, more or less -- not just 10, but 20+ years ago. (Internet public forums widely accessible in the US and Europe.) Here are An example from 1983 answering a query on wine books, and Another from 1987. Public then, public now.However, not everyone was doing it then. (Those who weren't will sometimes describe that as the Internet "not existing.") Not only must the technical capability be there, it also must be popular. As now. Good one, Tana. All who've suffered at one time or another at the whims of illiterate editors are with you on that.

It's a good point, and please note that it's largely the James Bond of the movie adaptations associated with the shaking-not-stirring. In the original 1953 novel, the character orders a fussy personal Martini (made with Gordons and vodka in 3:1 mixture, and Kina Lillet) and later names it the Vesper. Otherwise he mainly consumes vodka neat (maybe with some black pepper to carry the fusel oil out of solution, he says), various Bourbons, and Taittinger Champagne, again in the books. The film character is more generic and less human.

Well, to pick a nit, I love the formula (2:1 or 1:1 with a dash of orange bitters), but I always stir my martini as I don't like it to be cloudy. Besides, I am given to understand that, if you use cracked ice, the drink actually comes out colder if you stir rather than shake. There's room for all kinds of variations, of course. Cheers -- Max -- (Check out today's Sunday New York Times, Section T (style magazine), Page 87 -- Surfing Foodies.)

THERE we go. Thank you, thank you. That is a classic martini at least by the history I've read. Not too dry, hints of citrus flavor -- even a drop of Grand Marnier or other orange presence will do in a pinch, scientific tests have shown -- and of course lemon peel. (Pickled vegetables of whatever kind appeared way later -- 1925? -- surely the true start of the variations and corruptions now branded "Fauxtini.") I hope that y'all who opine on the history have read, or at least will read, Conrad's Book, published 1995 at or before the beginning of the martini revival. Which is not that old -- the drink was well out of style for a while, underscored in a 1990 novel, which I mentioned in the amazon.com comments under the link. Paraphrasing Hugh Johnson and Bob Thompson in the closing line of The California Wine Book (New York: William Morrow, 1976; ISBN 0688030874)" "I do not believe I ever have heard anyone speak of a vodka martini." Prosit -- Max

That's what I understand. A few years ago, maybe around when eGullet started, an article appeared elsewhere explaining (as I recall) the absinthe prohibition under the food-safety (rather than the drug) portions of the US food and drug laws, and another article reported a willingness at US-FDA to revisit that ban, if full safety tests could be made. Which presumably is expensive and may not be justified by a niche product. (Whose appeal might well fall anyway if it's less "forbidden.") All of that is from memory with the usual cautions. Note that the absinthe prohibition is country-specific and absent in those European countries that did not have a heavy history of use and controversy over it. The vigorous temperance/prohibition movement of the 19th century seized on absinthe as its poster beverage (Conrad's book reproduces gothic anti-absinthe propaganda, as well as advertising posters). That movement was notably successful in France, Switzerland and the US. (A particular murder was highlighted as part of the campaign -- the murderer had consumed some gallons of alcoholic drinks before turning on his family in a rage, and among the drinks was a shot or two of absinthe, precipitating choruses of j'accuse!) Much has changed in understanding absinthe since those wild days. Thujone, the active wormwood terpenoid, was identified in 1963 by German chemists as identical to Salvanol, a main principle principle in sage leaves, and as Baggott has pointed out online for many years, sage is Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS). The other herbs in the liquor are used elsewhere in food. Some of the health problems associated with absinthe in France (where it was something of a first truly popular distilled spirit) have since been attributed to such problems as poorly distilled starting spirits containing poisonous methanol etc. But traditional absinthe is still strong liquor at circa 70 percent pure alcohol. That makes it a hazardous drug and requires respect (no less than a dangerous chemical or powerful machine). Such respect isn't always in good supply among some of the same people in the US now fascinated with absinthe (judging from the accounts of fatal binge drinking, "party schools," etc.)

I think that's true. They have some spicy-garlicky grilled shrimps served over artichoke bottoms, and other specialties, that may be worth a detour, as the Michelin puts it. We once met a man there from Montreal who was devouring some oysters as a preliminary and said that he traveled to New Orleans periodically just to eat at Uglesich's. Even for sandwiches and other specialties containing fried oysters, they shuck to order. Funky little place and unless you get there at 11:30 you have to wait forever in a line with lots of tourists with guidebooks in hand (sometimes even medical-conference attendees with attitudes, who put their empty glasses on your table). Also, it is said to be closing "for good" this year (not to forget that it's said to be closing most years at this time).

Not only serendipitous but great values in my opinion. I don't know the middle title, but my copies of Sahni's Indian cookbook and McNair's little pizza book are worn from use, ever since they appeared (late 1980s I think). And while I'm on the subject of proven cookbooks that deliver the goods, here's something I put out recently elsewhere, in a discussion of the useful and citrusy "Szechuan peppercorn." One particular Chinese cookbook I have has some of the most rewarding spicy stews and similar dishes, some of which (like the simply named "red cooked beef with noodles") exquisitely use Szechuan peppercorns. (In that case, with lots of of scallions, ginger and whole garlic cloves.) This book has spoken for most of those peppercorns that I used in recent years. (Including when they were "banned" locally, yet available by asking around.) The book transcribes oral recipes from a Chinese cook who came to live with husband-and-wife US writers after they studied in China. Schrecker and Schrecker, Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook, Harper and Row, 1976, reissued 1987. ISBN 006015828X for the reissue. Readily available on the used market and probably some libraries. amazon.com [April 16] lists 44 copies available, starting at $4.07 . Another great value, in my opinion.

This introduction of flames and cigarette lighters suggests still harder drugs. Maybe that's why people do it. Surely absinthe would have less appeal without the extra sweetness of forbidden fruit. Bits about traditional absinthe and its rituals appeared, scattered in all sorts of writing and images, for decades before new mainstream interest in this subject crystallized in the US and elsewhere just a few years ago. Conrad's 1989 book, which preceded that new interest, collected many images and stories and is valuable reading if you are interested in the history and rituals. The common ritual according to these sources was to put some absinthe in a distinctive stemmed glass, place a slotted flat absinthe spoon over the top, put a long flat sugar cube over the spoon, and drizzle water through the sugar into the liquor which (like many liquors containing dissolved oils) turned cloudy. (No flames.) The Old Absinthe House in New Orleans, Louisiana was one of the bars equipped with drip faucets for this ritual. Saintsbury in his Notes on a Cellar-Book (the classic introduction to wine, which most serious wine enthusiasts relish sooner or later) describes a variation with rich imagery -- from the 19th or early 20th century when absinthe had yet not been restricted. The classy 1956 movie Lust for Life, the biodrama on Vincent van Gogh, has various scenes with the distinctive stemmed glasses and pale-green contents. Another film, with lurid representation of absinthe, is the 1966 US remake with Lana Turner of the perennial stage melodrama Madame X. Conrad's book includes a photo from the old Pernod Fils absinthe works showing wooden shipping cartons marked for destinations around the world. These include Saigon, Tahiti, Montreal, Cayenne, New Orleans, and San Francisco. -- Max -------- The eccentricities of the Jura streams are vertical as well as horizontal. They have a disconcerting habit of suddenly disappearing into sinkholes ... and at last, when the ground drops away, of gushing forth again from the side of a cliff in what is known as a resurgence... This phenomenon was dramatized in 1901 when dwellers near the “source” of the Loue were delighted to discover that it seemed to have turned to absinthe -- weak in flavor, but nevertheless quite palatable. Two days before, the Pernod factory at Pontarlier, where absinthe was made, had burned down, and some 200,000 gallons of it had poured into the Doubs. It was therefore deduced that the Loue was a resurgence of part of the waters of the Doubs. Waverly Root, The Food of France, Knopf, 1958 (LCC 57-10310)

This is a wine forum rather than a region forum, but I ought to mention this because it's relevant (and came up recently in a conversation over some good GV). Grüner Veltliner plays a particular cross-over role in Vienna. It is ubiquitous in the wine bars and goes well with small savories such as open-faced sandwiches that are popular. You find it both in the big cheap restaurants and cellars (next to lesser or seasonal wines), and also in the more elegant places like the Schwartzen Kameel where diplomats and journalists and winemakers hang out. When people order the house GV there, they might get it in wine glasses ("eighths," 125 ml.) while in grill restaurants it's more common in mugs ("quarters," 250 ml.) accompanying perhaps a crispy Schnitzel (with a wedge of lemon and the inevitable cold vegetable salad). -- Max

By the way, for anyone who isn't familiar with the following, that stuff is all relatively new to the history of Oakville Grocery and is kind of a shock to some longer-term customers including me, who remember 10 or 15 years with just the two or three little locations, packed to the ceiling with specialty items, astute product buyers like Hans Plesman ferreting out things hard to find elsewhere. Did this business get "born again" and suddenly decide to emulate Starbucks?

That may even understate the longer-term trend. I mean that 40 years ago -- before anyone had heard of the current SF Chron restaurant critic, or the three preceding him -- it was usual for people in the many surrounding towns (which SF serves as a "de-facto downtown" to quote a good observation) to go into the City for fine dining. That was changing in the 1960s, more rapidly after about 1970. (People in Palo Alto remarked publicly a few months ago that that town, until fairly recently, lacked restaurants of note, despite favorable demographics and in contrast to Berkeley; my response was that Berkeley lacked restaurants of note too, for most of its history.) So the presence of prominent restaurants outside of SF proper is an important trend (even in longer historical terms). -- M

Could have had an additional 10,000 (but I've got too many already). So could you. One of the major US cookbook collections, which some people here will certainly have heard of in the past, is for sale at the moment, intact -- some 10,000 volumes, exceeding the Bitting collection, which I believe started the US Library of Congress cookbook section in 1946. This has nothing to do with me except that I‘d bought books from the owner before. I thought it was an event of possible interest to eG readers. (I posted details on several online forums in late March but have not heard back from the forum host on this one, whom I queried on the subject and was told the posting must go to committee first.) Max Hauser

I think wine geek is a useful name, by the way; anyway it serves a need. My parents, who were sort of cooking-obsessed (and whom I and my brother served as prep cooks to chop the vegetables etc.), used to enjoy good wine, but as a child and teen-ager I did not like it. We kids would ask sometimes to try it, but as kids, we were more in tune with sweet flavors. In my late teens I found that I started to appreciate wine, and then to appreciate some of it a LOT. And alsoy learned that the pirce, and how much I and others liked it, were poorly correlated. This was educational, personally, and led to doing some homework (theoretical) and tasting (practical) and listening to the advice of people who had been wine enthusiasts for a long time. Which was often shared (then, as now). That was all a while ago.

As pointed out already here, some saint-making or hagiography is associated with her, accelerating lately. (People employ her picture as talisman; official Relics can be seen at the Copia museum.) Even saints start human. She got criticism for faux-pas here and there. (The "housewife with a hobby" criticism came actually after she was well established, and tried to teach French cooking to the French public, to a cool reception). Which fills out the picture (at least the human one), and doesn’t alter her charm or inimitable flippant style (and enjoyably imitable voice). These factors helped her demystifying role (also mentioned in this thread). Another part of understanding her real contributions, I think, is appreciating that there were good, competing sources in book form for US home cooks interested in the sort of cooking that JC’s book taught in 1961. (I just glanced at some of them.) Some were deeper, some were wider-ranging, some were around longer. What Child did that they didn’t was to go onto television, and into people’s living rooms. That was new. At first briefly, to promote her book; but she was effective, and she stayed. She came into my family’s living room in black-and-white on the US TV network then called NET (National Educational Television). “This is Julia Child. Bon appétit!”

Here are some notes I wrote elsewhere, for what they're worth on this subject. (I have not yet gotten far into the new edition.) Matt Kramer's second edition on California (New California Wine, ISBN 0762419644): The new book begins by explaining that when his previous version appeared in 1992, “the now-famous `explosion’ in prices and marketing -- the invention of `cult’ Cabernets; the proliferation of tiny labels selling for $50 to $100 a bottle -- had not yet occurred.” There is crucial history in a nutshell -- often overlooked by people who came to wine during the same period that Kramer cites. Before association with Wine Spectator, Matt Kramer was known in the Pacific Northwestern US as a precocious young Portland-area dining critic of sharp standards and wit. I still have some of that writing on file, but don't need to look it up. Who could possibly forget Kramer's exasperation with pieces of beef filet "mounted on the seemingly inevitable slice of soggy bread" and sauces again and again "so heavily floured, if it were baked, it might have become bread." (These two clichés of his reflected no dislike of baking, that I know.) But he saved his best offense for pretence. He accused one restaurant of knowing no French but placing fake French on the menu. "Like an adolescent trying to appear suave, nothing is more pitiable ..." In another situation, a restaurateur with multiple sites where Kramer consistently found show rather than go, he described waiting in an entryway with a display of bottles on their sides; on inspection the bottles were empty, the capsules carefully replaced. "This row of empty bottles, slyly pretending to greater riches than actually lie within, captures the spirit of Horst Mager's Coach Street Fish House." [Quotations from memory with the usual hazards therefore. Originals published late 1970s.] At the same time, Kramer published recipes and celebrations of food, and taught the region how to make a traditional (almond-milk) Blancmange, updated from Carême (no more isinglass). I used that recipe again recently with good success.