3 Most Important Elements of a Plate...

[Craig Camp]

At Suba, they do a dinner in the dark. "The theory is that without the sense of sight, our senses of smell and taste are more astute. 'Studies have shown that directing your attention toward a weak stimulus makes it more likely you will detect it,' says Barry Green, a Yale University neuroscientist who specializes in taste research. 'Dining in the dark may therefore make it easier to notice subtleties of flavor that would otherwise be missed.' " The full article can be found at: http://eatdrink.timeoutny.com/articles/378...78.eat.feat.php

I think it might be interesting to test the theory of just how much sight, visual clues and  presentation influences the dining experience.

For the interested go to: http://www.cosmoparty.com/

The event:

Tuesday

April 15th

7:30 PM   The Dinner in the Dark @ Suba! - NYC's food craze!

Type of Event: Cosmo Blind  

Theme: NYC's newest food craze

Where: Suba

Who: Food Gastronomes and all Curious New Yorkers

Age Group: 25-45

The Venue   Sign Up!   Get Together!

This is like looking at the Mona Lisa in the dark to see what it smells like.

[Wilfrid]

I understand Lizziee. I, too, often resort to my fingers.

[Jonathan Day]

Before its incorrect use gets too deeply embedded in this thread let me point out that economic externalities are secondary or unintended consequences of the actions of one person (producer or consumer) on the economic outcomes of another. So if you improve your house and the value of my house is thereby enhanced, that's a positive externality. If you pollute the air and hence reduce my income or the value of my assets, that's a negative externality. Externalities, as economists use the term, have nothing to do with "external" influences on a judgement or "the placement of different components of a plate".

I suppose you could take the Suba approach to an extreme: put the diner in a sensory deprivation tank and spoon-feed the items to be judged, changing the names to avoid cognitive biases: "You are now about to taste snerbles with fleegreep sauce", or eliminating the names altogether.

Or you could serve the same dish in different settings: elegant, minimalist, cheap, etc. -- or with different noise levels -- and see how perceptions changed.

My guess, though, is that it is the quest for "purely objective" taste is futile; even an attempt to get close to it may be time wasted, because contextual effects are everywhere. In the simplest case, the diner may be more or less hungry, or feeling hot or cold, or energised or worn out. The diner might have just consumed a hot chilli pepper or eaten several cloves of raw garlic, and therefore be less able to perceive subtle taste differences.

Even if you could stipulate a diner in a certain physical condition, with a carefuly cleansed palate, interpretation is hard to avoid. I sit down in a restaurant and the waiter announces that the next dish to be served is ris de veau financière. That sets up a whole network of expectations: it's a French preparation, the sweetbreads will have a certain texture, the pastry another, offal is involved, it's a savoury dish, and so on. How can the most diligently analytical critic get beyond this?

Edited April 2, 2003 by Jonathan Day (log)

[Wilfrid]

You are very persuasive, Jonathan. At the risk of repeating myself, putting the diner in a sensory deprivation tank, or indeed in any strange and unfamiliar surroundings, is likely to distort rather than clean up your results; which is why scientists try to avoid it.

Although there are admittedly some strange and unfamiliar restaurant environments out there.

[Fat Guy]

It's a simple question of tasting a steak and being able to say, hey, you know what, even though this restaurant is really nice this steak isn't any better than the one I'd get at the supermarket and cook myself. It's not so hard. It's not possible in every instance, and there are always, um, external forces acting to dilute one's clarity of perception, but to abandon the goal is to cede the issue of quality -- which I'm not willing to do. And I doubt anyone here really is either.

[oraklet]

My guess, though, is that it is the quest for "purely objective" taste is futile; even an attempt to get close to it may be time wasted, because contextual effects are everywhere. In the simplest case, the diner may be more or less hungry, or feeling hot or cold, or energised or worn out. The diner might have just consumed a hot chilli pepper or eaten several cloves of raw garlic, and therefore be less able to perceive subtle taste differences.

Even if you could stipulate a diner in a certain physical condition, with a carefuly cleansed palate, interpretation is hard to avoid. I sit down in a restaurant and the waiter announces that the next dish to be served is ris de veau financière. That sets up a whole network of expectations: it's a French preparation, the sweetbreads will have a certain texture, the pastry another, offal is involved, it's a savoury dish, and so on. How can the most diligently analytical critic get beyond this?

i think you're taking this too far. i mean, i'm able to do a fairly good portrait or nude or landscape drawing, just about any time. wake me up in the middle of the night, and i'll do it. let the kids tug at my legs, i'll do it. really, at any given time i'll be able to judge what's before my eyes in the same way: objectively, as a craftsman. this is the sort of craft that is similar to a cook's training: judging tastes and aromas objectively, inside a given framework of personal taste and ideas. and there's no reason that a diner should not posess the same ability, at least to some extent (he might be a trained cook himself!).

two persons can disagree on the spacing of letters or the taste range of a dish, but if they master the craft, this discussion will be meaningfull because it deals with objective facts - they know what it's all about. and i'll have to stress this: they can make perfect sense under any normal circumstance.

[Steve Plotnicki]

My guess, though, is that it is the quest for "purely objective" taste is futile; even an attempt to get close to it may be time wasted, because contextual effects are everywhere. In the simplest case, the diner may be more or less hungry, or feeling hot or cold, or energised or worn out. The diner might have just consumed a hot chilli pepper or eaten several cloves of raw garlic, and therefore be less able to perceive subtle taste differences.

This is like saying that Beethoven's 3rd Symphony doesn't sound naturally best in E Flat because you have a cold, or you just heard music played in F Sharp so it needs to be played a half step higher in E for this performance. The example of salty soup not tasting salty without a dinner makes the same mistake IMO. Symmetry and harmony, and quality, is something that is unto an item without the need for anyone to declare it. A chair with one leg that is longer is lopsided without anyone sitting down. It can't ever be straight just because someone can declare it so. Same with the salty soup. The imbalance in the recipe exists independant of someone declaring it. All a diner does (if he is capable) is to notice it.

Problem is, we are not taught to appreciate food with specificity attached. The culture of food appreciation revolves around preference. And I think there is a tendancy to explain this flaw in how we learn about food by saying there is no objective standard. I think that's wrong. There is such a thing as harmony in food. It can be prepared "in the right key." But I think we try to reject that so we can self-servingly impose a subjective standard because we like the power of it, and it's easier and convenient for us.

[oraklet]

"Symmetry and harmony, and quality, is something that is unto an item without the need for anyone to declare it." (steve p)

wilfrid? please?

[jackal10]

I think your understanding of the basic physiology of taste perception is wrong

We are wired for AC, not DC. We are much better at percieving differences in taste, rather than absolutes. You can do simple experiments to show this: after tasting something with more salt the same solution will taste less salty.

Your salty soup may not be too salty in context. Different people like different amounts of salt (or anything else). Smokers often like more.

Like colour, although you can measure some absolute value, like mg/ltr for salt, or wavelength for colour its perception is relative and subjective. Hence the skill of the chef. Hence also why we might differ in which chef's food, or restaurant critics opinion we prefer.

Our perception of food is also cultural. I prefer nothern European foods: pig, smoke, dill, etc. My partner prefers the southern range of tastes: EVOO, garlic, tomato, marjoram. Makes menu planning difficult.

Maybe we can agree on execution of a particular dish: cassoulet rather than pork'n'beans. Maybe we should only judge on a complete meal.

Edited April 3, 2003 by jackal10 (log)

[Steve Plotnicki]

Your salty soup may not be too salty in context. Different people like different amounts of salt (or anything else). Smokers often like more

Yes but when is the recipe correct? Isn't that the standard? To say there is no correct recipe cannot possibly be true. That means I can add a half pound of salt to my scrambled eggs and it can be considered a successful dish.

And if there can be a wrong recipe, doesn't there mean there has to be a right one?

[jackal10]

To say there is no correct recipe cannot possibly be true. That means I can add a half pound of salt to my scrambled eggs and it can be considered a successful dish.

And if there can be a wrong recipe,  doesn't there mean there has to be a right one?

There may not be a single "correct" recipe, but rather a range of recipies. Half a pound of salt might always be wrong, just as no salt might be, but whether the correct amount is 1 tsp or 2 tsp can depend on context and personal taste.

Are ths scrambled eggs being served on toast? If so is the toast buttered, and is there salt in the butter? Is there a side of bacon. or smoked salmon? or a kipper? Is there a side salad? What is being drunk? What comes before, and after? Thus for absolute specificy you need to describe the complete meal, and possibly the one before as well. Even then you can only specify it for one person, and then only for one time. My physiology may need more salt than yours, since I just exercised and sweated a lot.

[Fat Guy]

I don't think it's necessary to settle the objectivity versus subjectivity question (which has been debated on the site ad nauseam, has never been and will never be settled, and has rarely even been defined in a meaningful way) to understand that, no matter how it's plated or decorated, the average serious gourmet can tell a good steak from a bad one according to the standards by which most of us here judge steak. Anybody who tries to use the fact that true objective observation is impossible as proof that there's no consistently perceivable difference between a good steak and a bad steak is over-intellectualizing it -- because we all know it's easy to tell a good steak from a bad one even if you're in a bad mood or there's a full moon or whatever. All you have to do is watch an expert sommelier at a blind tasting to know that an experienced taster can consistently and accurately derive a tremendous amount of factually verifiable information from perception -- and that, yes, it's of course possible to be fooled. But we don't abandon the enterprise of tasting just because we're fooled sometimes. For the most part, if we just look at this from the vantage-point of common sense, I can't really understand how anybody could think it's not possible to distinguish between cosmetic issues and the actual taste of food. We do it all the time. The site is full of reports that say, essentially, the food was really pretty but tasted like crap. The person who writes something like that isn't crazy.

[Steve Plotnicki]

There may not be a single "correct" recipe, but rather a range of recipies. Half a pound of salt might always be wrong, just as no salt might be, but whether the correct amount is 1 tsp or 2 tsp can depend on context and personal taste.

But just because the right answer is a range of 1-2 tsp, dosn't mean the answer is a matter of personal taste. Why have you flipped it from, there is a right answer to there is no right answer just because of a range?

Isn't this issue just a battle between diner and chef about who gets to dictate terms? Diners, having grown up in a culture where food is about things like sustenance and personal choice including service, are loath to give up control of the issue, including the language that describes the food. I can think of no other craft, and certainly not any art, where the user gets any say in the final outcome. All of this posturing of "it tastes good to me" or "in this context" is just about control.

I think this is most exposed when Fat Guy talks about eating something like a steak. There should be no dispute as to what great meat is. In fact the meat industry has set up objective standards for meat to be measured by. Yet you will still hear diners insist that inferior meat tastes better to them.

edited in after Fat Guy's last response

It seems to me that all the arguments made so far speak to the fallability of humans. Because FG is right, professionals like sommeliers do this every day. But it is also correct to say that they have off days where they miss. But can't we agree that fluctuations are a human flaw, and not to be blamed on whatever it is we are measuring?

[Lord Michael Lewis]

I can't really understand how anybody could think it's not possible to distinguish between cosmetic issues and the actual taste of food.

In many rspects it is the cosmetic element that distinguishes 'haute' from 'regional' food. So if you're stuck on the superiority of 'haute' then you'll naturally believe that presentation makes a fundamental difference in taste -- otherwise, how do you justify the prices?

[Steve Plotnicki]

You might be surprised to hear me agree with LML about haute cuisine and presentation. Except there is one extremely important point to add. In order to be able to plate the food better, or, represent simple food in a better aesthetic, it typically means they have to manipulate the texture of the food to force it into the shapes they want to use. So doing things like having meat perfectly trimmed or sliced, mincing, pureeing, etc., are all part and parcel of the process.

[Simon Majumdar]

I can think of no other craft, and certainly not any art, where the user gets any say in the final outcome.

While I agree with Steve to a large part in that the balance between chef and diner needs to be achieved, this statement really does not support that

Craft and art has always been a "victim" of patronage from the court musician to the furniture maker hired to make particular items. Even the Cistine chapel was repainted in places after criticism from the higher powers. It is a relatively recent development for artists of any type to have the freedom to work without purely commercial concerns and, even now it is rare.

It is wrong to see Chefs and their recipes in isolation from those who benefit from their "art"

So,you cannot as Steve would seem to be implying, hand back all power to the chef without reference to the paying customer

S

Edited April 3, 2003 by Simon Majumdar (log)

[Steve Plotnicki]

I agree with what Simon said. Artisans work their magic for paying customers. And the final outcome is intended to please them. What I am trying to do is exorcize petty and personal issues like I don't like a lot of salt in my food from the substantive issue of what is the approriate amount of salt to use in a dish.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

In order to be able to plate the food better, or, represent simple food in a better aesthetic, it typically means they have to manipulate the texture of the food to force it into the shapes they want to use. So doing things like having meat perfectly trimmed or sliced, mincing, pureeing, etc., are all part and parcel of the process.

Bear in mind that in the Paris of seventeenth century, the refined rich were accustomed to eating bread that had had the crust grated off in order to appear uniformly white.

What is hard to extricate is whether the processes described above are taste driven or presentation driven; that is something that can't be judged by appearance.

[Fat Guy]

In many rspects it is the cosmetic element that distinguishes 'haute' from 'regional' food.

Certainly, haute cuisine is on the whole more elaborately plated than home cooking, but that doesn't make it the important distinguishing element. It's just a consequence. The food itself is what's different. If you're ever in a haute cuisine restaurant and you find yourself saying, "This is just cassoulet that has been plated using a ring mold," you're getting ripped off! And of course people can tell that because their perceptions of taste are consistent enough to be useful. Otherwise we'd all just eat a big bag of oats every day in the hope that one of these days it might taste like a steak to us.

[jackal10]

"There should be no dispute as to what great meat is. In fact the meat industry has set up objective standards for meat to be measured by. Yet you will still hear diners insist that inferior meat tastes better to them. "

There is lots of debate as to what great meat is.

To take FG's example, I'm not sure we can, or should, all agree exactly what makes a great or even good steak. Yes, we can agree some parameters, like it should not give us food poisoning, but even then what is well hung to some is plain bad to others. Some like to see their raw meat bright red, others prefer an oxidised outer crust, indicative of long hanging.

I like my meat free-range and slow grown, and I'm prefer for it to be a little tougher because of that, and what I think is extra flavour. Others prefer their steak like butter, and don't mind the chemicals and growth promoters to make it so.

The meat industry's standards represent one set of choices, or maybe just parameters against which those choices can be made. I like my meat well marbled, others abhor any fat at all. Steak has lots of parameters: What cut? How well done? I like my steak blue, which puts me in the minority.

Presentation is also a matter of choice. Personally I prefer a great steak plain, well maybe some frites, and preferably outdoors, near the fire that cooked it in the evening of a perfect day. Others insist on sauces, garnishes, or half a pound of salad, and their ideal dining experience involves starched linen, Lous XV imitation chairs and candelabra. The ambience sets the context and expectation for the steak.

If we want to compare we need to narrow the parameters down.

[Fat Guy]

I like my meat . . .

That's all you need to say. That you like it any given way proves the point I'm trying to make. You agree that you can tell whether you like it or not, right? And that your like or dislike is based on the actual reality of the steak, right? And that putting it on a fancy plate or serving it with a smile doesn't affect its taste, right? That's what I consider to be the key point here.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Jackal - I think you last response just shows the type of insistance, to the point of desperation in other instances, that diners try and express in order to keep control of the issue. For example, to not like marbled meat is not a dispute about what the best meat is, it's an admission you don't like good meat. That is what is missing from your explanation, in fact, everyone's explanation which was most exagerrated by Jonathan. At what point is it the diner's fault? You have no contigency for that in your explantion.

Fat Guy - Did you mom put pineapple slice smiles on your plate or something when you were a kid? My mom never did that type of stuff. But Mrs. P does it for my kids.

Edited April 3, 2003 by Steve Plotnicki (log)

[jackal10]

If its served with too big a scowl, or the evironment is filthy, I may not return, no mater how great is the meat.

Also the way I like my meat is unlikely to be the way you like yours.

Edit to add Plotnicki point:

How can you claim that well marbled with a good strip of fat is the only true steak? That slim young thing that has come to the restaurant disagrees. For her its no visible fat that makes the ideal staek. We can disagree about her taste, but she has that right.

Edited April 3, 2003 by jackal10 (log)

[Fat Guy]

If its served with too big a scowl, or the evironment is filthy, I may not return, no mater how great is the meat.

But I'm sure you have no problem separating those issues. The construction of your sentence demonstrates that you understand the difference between great meat and how it's presented. I don't see this topic as being about the standards for great meat. We can grant that different people can have different standards. This is about whether an individual's standards of flavor are undermined by presentation.

[Fat Guy]

Fat Guy - Did you mom put pineapple slice smiles on your plate or something when you were a kid?

She used to write our names with pancake batter, yes. And I think you have to reach about age 7 before you realize it doesn't make them taste any different.