Wilfrid

Thanks, guys, for some very interesting points. I think, as Bux implied, my writing skills are more likely to be at fault on this occasion than my palate. For example, I agree that grouse gets bitter when overcooked, but the gamy flavour I described as "liverish" is certainly there when the bird is rare - I am probably using a bad word to describe it. Similarly with the squab - if it doesn't sound like squab, I'm describing it badly. I've eaten a million squab, and it was very much like squab. I did look up the season to check my facts, and like Adam, I found December 10 as the closing date (I knew it was before Christmas). I honestly don't know how long grouse can be hung, especially using the Lespinasse methods Steven described (it wasn't Lespinasse). The effect of hanging, however, is usually that it promotes a gamy flavor; and this "grouse" wasn't very "grousy" at all. Let me confirm that, had I been presented with grouse instead of pheasant, I would have been delighted - I much prefer it. My best estimate is that I have been cooking grouse, or eating it in restaurants, usually several times during the brief season, since 1988, so I feel pretty confident of my judgments on it. But then there's the bullet (or small round piece of shot to be accurate), and I sort of suspected that people aren't going around shooting squab in the States. If there wasn't such a lot of circumstantial evidence against it being grouse, I would probably just conclude that my palate had gone mad. But taking the grouse season point together with my gustatory reaction, leaves me thinking it was something else. I should've smuggled a bit out, shouldn't I? Addition: Just re-read the posts, and Adam made another good point. Grouse meat does become paler when cooked (even lightly cooked). These breasts were dark, dark red - just like rare squab or pigeon. (Edited by Wilfrid at 10:58 am on Feb. 1, 2002)

You jogged my memory about shameful sandwiches, Celine. I too like either bologna or liverwurst on white bread with mayo. In England, I'll take with sliced cucumber too. I used to have a passion for roast chicken sandwiches on white bread with extra mayo (no salad), but I could sort of feel my blood circulation slwoing down as I ate them.

Oh, her. That was well worth a Google; the search led to some interesting black and white portraits of her, which I have seen before somewhere or other - but I never knew she was Mrs Rushdie. Phew. Move over Jaqui Malouf. Here's a nice pic of Padma, tame enough to post: http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/jul/06lak1.jpg

Okay, I'll bite. Who's Padma?

I couldn't agree more, Steven, and in fact I recall being spurred to think about arguments against moral relativism when it was necessary to stand up for Salman Rushdie's right to publish novels, however unreadable and offensive, without getting death threats. The important thing is that we come up with good reasons for denying people the right to place widows in chafing dishes.* It is more than just a gut reaction on our parts which we couldn't rationally justify (although the gut reaction features too). The widow-burners might come up with reasons for what they're doing, but I expect they'd be bad ones. There would be a debate (and maybe some ass-kicking); what I am unable to make philosophical sense of is the concept that there's something beyond our community's notions of good and bad, developed through debate and discussion over many years, that we can point to in order to demonstrate that widow-burning is wrong. There are, if you like, no facts extraneous to our own conceptions of morality which we can use to prove our point. Just like there aren't any facts extraneous to the evaluative consideration of cuisine by human eaters over the years which demonstrate that one cuisine is better than another. *Yes, I had a glass of wine with lunch.

I have just been reading yet another discussion about private parts on the Foods of Fear thread (in which Adam is involved), and what is the first thing I read here? Anyway, Adam, I am inclined to agree with you. The breasts were a little too large and too mild for wood pigeon. It was more like squab than anything else, but I didn't think anyone shot squab - maybe I'm just plain wrong about that. I did consider for a while the possibility that the chef had inserted the bullet in order to add plausibility to his grouse claim - but then that's just too many Nero Wolfe repeats again.

I ate dinner in a well known Manhattan restaurant last night. I ordered one of the specials: roast pheasant with black truffles. When the waiter lifted the cloche, I found myself presented with two plump, dark brown breast fillets, oozing a little blood, generously drssed with shaved black truffles and encircled by whipped celeriac. "Flummery?" I asked myself, having watched too many Nero Wolfe repeats. I tasted the bird, then summoned the Captain. "This is very nice," I said, "But it's not pheasant is it?" Now, the honest answer would have been, "No, obviously it's not, we just took you for a jackass and now we're embarrassed." But he went for the much safer: "Let me go and ask the chef." Back he came. "Sorry, sir, the chef had run out of pheasant, but has replaced it with fresh Scottish grouse." "That surprises me," I said, because the Scottish grouse season starts on August 12 and ends long before Christmas, and I don't think this bird has been hung for six weeks. Could it be frozen grouse?" "Let me ask the chef." In the meantime, I continued tasting. Grouse, of course, has perhaps the most distinctive flavor of all game birds - sour, earthy, strongly liverish, and quite delicious. It also has fairly small breast fillets, which is why its common (although not universal) practice to serve the whole bird. This, to me, looked and tasted like, and had the texture of, plump squab. Back came the Captain. "Sir, the chef assures me that the bird is fresh." I had no disgareement with that fact. "Okay, I said, then I guess it was shot illegally, but that's not my problem." He offered to replace the dish, but in fact the dish was perfectly acceptable. I only wanted to know what it was. The mystery deepened as I continued eating. I had tentatively concluded that, having run out of pheasant, the kitchen had substituted squab, then come up with a spur of the moment impulse to make it sound glamorous by calling it grouse - not knowing that their customer was a difficult, argumentative, egullet food geek. But then I found the bullet. Always a good sign with game, because it confirms it was actually hunted rather than farmed. So, not farmed squab then. A wild pigeon? Wood pigeon? Quite possibly (and why not say so?). Now, I am fallible, and I suppose, even after all these years, I might not know grouse when I'm eating it, but as I said - if it was fresh Scottish grouse, then it was poached, and I am amazed that exporting poached Scottish grouse to New York, then selling it at the same price as pheasant, is a very viable business. I was going to identify the restuarant in this post, but they were sufficiently red-faced to buy me two generous glasses of dessert wine and the dessert itself; and the meal was absolutely fine. A three pipe problem. I would be interested if anyone has a better explanation for these events. I thought of sending the bullet to a lab for analysis, then I decided debating metaphysics with Mr Plotnicki on another thread had sent me mad. But the story's true.

Michelin guides. So that's where it all started. No, of course some things are natural. I would agree that if someone liked the taste of soap, they probably have something physiologically wrong with either their olfactory equipment or their brain. But a "naturalist" explanation of critical and aesthetic judgment has to develop some plausible account of why people with the same "natural" structure disagree. Interestingly, the "naturalist" approach was attacked by Husserl because he thought it sacrificed objectivity. In his day, the theory was abroad that the validity of judgments could indeed be explained by natural facts about human psychology, and Husserl was horrified by the idea that if these natural facts changed, or turned out to vary between human beings, objective truth would vanish. But that's a long story. Mr Shaw, to try to put my defence against relativism in a nutshell: I have tried to emphasise that I think all reasonable judgments are made against a background of criteria which are more or less agreed upon by whatever the interested community is. When people disagree about a critical judgment, it is possible to test their views against these criteria. So - if someone says Richard Foreman writes better plays than Shakespeare, you can test that against what our shared criteria for great drama are, and provide a reasoned account of why they are wrong. Everyone's opinion is not just of the same value and equally right; we have rational ways of evaluating opinions. Very truncated, and therefore probably unclear, but that's how I argue against out and out relativism. Listen, I don't want to bore people, and I am happy to declare a truce on this and move on. Up to the other participants.

Rather than being "chicken or egg", or a pointless dispute bewteen two equally plausible explanations of a phenomenon, I would contend that my model can explain not only how such judgments come about, but also the possibility of disagreements arising and being resolved. It also accords pretty well with what we observe critical communities actually doing, not least here on egullet. If your model - a natural occurrence model - was sound, one would expect everyone to share the same opinions - which they evidently don't. I suppose the most obvious move would be to say that people who disagree with a statement like "roses are beautiful" are suffering from some disability in their natural faculties. But then either you can identify the pathology involved, or you are going to be hard put to demonstrate on which side the disability lies. I think I have pointed out some quite tricky dilemmas which arise from your approach, but I am not sure I have noticed any telling criticisms of mine. I therefore commend my position to anyone still reading this as the most reasonable to adopt.

If I am right in thinking that "sophomoric" is equivalent to a second year undergraduate in the UK, I think you are about right, although a lot of second years I taught would have lost the plot way back. if we get into Husserl, then I think we are post-grad. Steve Plotnicki: No, no, no, no, no. Swapping the example doesn't help you a bit. We can compare two novels, a novel and an article, or two articles. I picked Moby Dick because it was a nice example of something the critical view of which has changed over time. My challenge to you is: whence do you derive objectivity. In your last post, you imply you derive it from "commonly held criteria" - but that looks like my position, and I have no dispute with it. That brings us back to a point where I thought we had some common ground, namely: there's a bunch of criteria for haute cuisine, a bunch of criteria for good ol' Syrian cooking, and drawing up common criteria which would embrace all cuisines might be impracticable, and is a bit much to expect of Michelin. If you are deriving objectivity from anywhere other than the ongoing critical debate among a community of interested parties, I think you need to tell me where. As I said, Plato and a whole bunch of other people have offered answers to that: all fallacious, I think. (Of course, if you;re bored and want to stop, say so too, but I had the impression you wanted to pursue it further...)

Just rub the magic lamp! First of all, who let the bears out? Let's make this clear: I am not claiming that works of art (or other objects of critical judgment) do not exist unless perceived by humans. I am claiming that they have no critical value in and of themselves except as judged by humans (or Vulcans, or whatever). Now, if anyone wants to disagree with that, I think they have to come up with an account of two things: 1. How these objects (make it works of art, cuisines, whatever) come to be good, bad or indifferent, without reference to human opinions. 2. What criteria we have for telling that a judgment is right or wrong (since it originates somewhere - the answer to 1. will tell us where - outside of the sphere of human judgment). Let me give you a new example to chew over. Some works of art are perceived at different times as being of different quality. Melville's Moby-Dick was rejected by public and critics as windy nonsense when it came out (and one can see why - that wasn't an insane judgment at the time). In this century it has come to be regarded as perhaps The Great American Novel. It is perfectly possible that, one hundred years from now, Americans involved with literature (if any) will have such different interests and perceptions that Moby-Dick will be regarded as an irrelevant historical curio. Now according to the Plotnicki analysis, one of these judgments (or perhaps some other judgment) is correct, has always been correct, and always will be correct. Steve - how can we ever, even in principle, know which one? Finally, at the risk of repetition, I have tried to explain that total relativism, where every opinion is equally valid, does not follow from my position: I have saved objectivity in the only way I know how, by proposing that communities evolve and (more or less) agree sets of rational criteria for critical judgments. P.S. I utterly failed to make the analogy with religion clear, so I'll drop that for now.

Lipstick Traces is hardcore. I had suspected Bourdain was posing, but if he knows about that book, he has some street cred. (Guralnick's work is magnificent too; add in his two volume bio of Presley!). glad someone else said Jackie Malouf is sexy. I was too shy.

I used to know someone who would go to Hooters for the food. Very sad. Have we reached bedrock, Mr P? I am mystified by the idea that aesthetic judgments have a reality independent of human existence - not least because I can't understand how we would know what such aesthetic judgments were! It's analogous to a logical problem in deriving ethical judgments from religious beliefs: if an action is wrong because God said so, fair enough - but how do I found out what God said? Oh, okay, a number of people are prepared to tell me they're privy to what God said. Trouble is, they disagree. I think you're aesthetic judgments end up with the same dilemma: if I tell you it's evident to me that Andy Warhol was a greater artist than Da Vinci, all you can do is say you have had a different revelation. In short, I can see no way to mediate aesthetic disagreements from your point of view. But, let's be fair, Plato would certainly have agreed with you, and many others would too. And I could tell you how Plato (and Husserl) would attempt to solve the dilemma I pointed out. But maybe that's for tomorrow. Plato was wrong about a lot of things.

Yes, Plato thought a rich diet was causing a decline in the moral fibre of Athens; Nietzsche has foul recommendatioons on food in Ecce Homo; and Wittgenstein memorably said, "I don't care what I eat as long as it's always the same." Steve P: A thought experiment to give you a sleepless night. Let's say all conscious life vanishes overnight. Are the works of art hanging in galleries still of aesthetic value, in and of themselves? (And you're not allowed to refer to people potentially coming back and looking at them again - people are out of the game!). I am sure your answer is going to be "Yes", but I can't see any basis for it. Without people applying value judgments, its just paint and canvas. And remember, my position is not that greatness in art (or cuisine) is "merely a matter of opinion" - in the sense that if anyone says Hooters has better food than Gramercy Tavern, there's no disputing their claim. Objectivity is secured by shared, rational criteria. (Sorry this is all a bit abrupt, but I find to my outrage that I have other things to do!)

I went there once and it was good, but very very very expensive. I think the bill went over two hundred pounds, and with only one bottle of wine.

Okay, Steve, let me try a bit harder now I have a few minutes. Just to try and focus the music example, I think the point I was trying to make was that there are passages in, for example, Indian music which would be "out of tune" if they turned up in a Western European piece. But let's stick to American/Western European musical culture (and I am not a musicologist, so I stand open to correction on my examples). Aren't there numerous musical pieces which contain "out of tune" elements, but which nonetheless seem successful to a lot of people? Some of Ornette Coleman's free jazz work; John Cage and his treated pianos; numerous rock pieces which incorporation distortion and feedback... And picking up your Stones example: I know music will often sound "happy" or "evil" or "sad" within a cultural community - but is there any guarantee that it will evoke the same reactions across cultures? We may be getting into just an example/counter-example rut here, so let me get to the point: As a matter of empirical fact, there is nothing to a work of art except tones, or ink marks, or suqiggly lines. It may be uncontroversial that Beethoven's symphonies are better than Bruckner's, but you can look forever at the score without discovering an empirical fact which makes that so. If a well-tuned piano sounds "better" than an out-of-tune one, that is not a fact about the universe. These value judgments are what we bring to the works of art, and I have already argued that value judgments always have a context, involving comparisons with other works in the same genre, based on agreed (or potentially agreeable) criteria. I think for each example you can give, I would be able either to give an actual counter-example, or just state that it's not logically impossible that a cultural community could come up with a set of criteria which contradict your views. Finally, and I'll try to state this without sounding arrogant: from a philosophical point of view, I find it hard to deal with terms like "magical" - or "spiritual" or "numinous". I like to think that, in my life, I am not unreceptive to what such terms connote. It's just that I don't think they provide explanations. I think the concept of public, debatable criteria in the hands of cultural communities does a lot to explain how judgments about art are essentially derived from human experience without relativism automatically being implied.* I can't see the explanatory value of "magical"; what's to stop me from finding magic in an out-of-tune piano (and believe me, I have some really discordant stuff in my CD collection!)? This site certainly provides some variety: one minute I am recommending places to buy pig rectums, the next I am participating in a philosophy seminar! *Not that I invented it. The more I state it, the more it sounds to me like an extension of Habermas's ideas about rationality.

Gourmet magazine had a brief complimentary note about Comerc 24, near the Museo Picasso, featuring the cooking of an E Bulli alumnus, Carlos Abellan. I wonder if anyone has been there and has a view? Thank you, and if the restaurant has been mentioned already on another thread, I apologise for my memory.

I have just been reading Culture and Cuisine by Jean-Francois Revel - an interesting, but unashamedly Francocentric history of food. He has this to say: "(W)ine has become the only alcoholic drink to have spread to every corner of the globe and to be produced in very different forms, for distilled alcoholcs are drunk all over the world but each type is more or less uniform, and other fermented drinks are at most popular refrshments, closely linked with local conditions. Despite differences...differences that fans of beer maintain that they can detect in various versions of this drink - it must be admitted that its range of flavours is rather limited." (page 76 of the English translation) Well, I suggest we conduct the following tasting for Monsieur Revel: a bottle of Rolling Rock; an ice cold can of VB from down under; some Carlsberg Special Brew; a pint of McEwan's heavy; some Fullers' ESB; a pint of whichever small batch real ale is current CAMRA champion; a bottle of Newcastle Brown; a half of Guinness; some Belgian kriek; a Mackeson; and a Russian Imperial Stout. We can then finish off with a nip of barley wine, take his car keys off him, and let him weave his way unsteadily into the night. He might not like any of those flavours, but if he thinks the range is limited, he has got a wonky palate.

Steve, I will try to give this more thought later - today looks like a busy day. But just to chew on: different cultures do have different musical scales, some of which sound out of tune to me. Later!

I am not going to get into a discussion of tobacco litigation, because the thread may start to rival A Balic's biography, but let me make a couple of points and then retire: 1. The "addictive" properties of nicotine have been widely known for most of the century, and smokers assumed the risk of becoming addictive as well as the risk of smoking-related diseases. 2. Whatever the whistle blowers say, no-one has been able to identify a method by which the tobacco companies have manipulated nitocine (don't forget the generous libel settlement Philip Morris achieved when 60 Minutes were unable to substantiate that claim). 3. The tobacco companies have won by far the majority of the cases against them which went to trial. There are a number of reasons they settled with the States, not the least of which was that they weren't going to gamble that a rogue jury somewhere wouldn't bankcrupt them. And I don't see Ron's point about how harmful boiling water can be. If I poured the tea I make at home in my lap, sure it would cause injury - but I always make my tea with boiling water nevertheless - doesn't everyone?

Andy, I think you'll find Joe Brown spelt his "Bruvvers" thus. "Hermen" I assume is a typo. But more importantly, I think you are absolutely right about the Beatles. Their importance has been vastly overstated because of their sales. For every Crowded House (who do a very nice improved Beatles sound, especially on 'Woodface'), there are a hundred successful bands who learnt more from Led Zeppelin, the Yardbirds, Cream, and dare I say it The Stooges, than they did from the Fab Four. And I am not a heavy metal fan.

I thought you'd be more upset by his dismissal of the Dave Clark Five - well known Spurs supporters. Altogether now, "Glad all over, yes baby I'm " THUD THUD "glad all over..."

Yvonne - I seem to recall that Flowers of the Field, weeded away as the song says, refers to the young men who fell at Flodden. Or at one of the fields where the English gave you a doubtless much-deserved hammering;) Okay, please put that knife down. Steve P.: Yes, I think we have hit basement level. Neither of us will convince the other they're wrong about the metaphysics - I don't think there are arguments to be laid out there; I would just end up repeating "But I can't see any basis for that!" and you would say, "Use your eyes, it's obvious!" But I think we have clarified the issue considerably, which is the important thing. And I think we agreed (at some point) about where Michelin are coming from, and the impracticality of their Guide being all things to all people. As for me, my best dance move is the pogo, but it's becoming increasingly dangerous at my age.

I am going to try that when I get home. Leave it on the stove for about a week, right?

I agree with your conclusion, and actually have never seen a tobacco-related law suit that had any merit - but would contend that it's going to be much much harder to show a connection between junk food and the alleged injury than between smoking and (at least) certain types of lung cancer. In the latter cases, smoking was often far and away the most likely cause of the injury; whereas for an obesity-related disease, how do you know if it was the hamburgers, the lack of exercise, the hypertension which runs in the family, etc, etc. By the way, tobacco cases generally have no merit, not on medical grounds, but because the risks are known and assumed, and no-one can agree how to make cigarettes safer. The great achievement of the plaintiffs bar has been to obscure those two issues.