'Emerging food styles'

[Daniel Rogov]

...

So. . ."good taste" can only be defined mathematically? Pah.

Karen: A question (rhetorical perhaps but a question nevertheless - "Is there any standard accepted as universal other than mathematics?

Maybe there's an underlying mathematical logic to good food that has yet to be identified.

Esvoboda: Careme identified the underlying logic of the aesthetics of food as based on architecture; Escoffier relied heavily in his thinking on the rules of geometry and Alain Ducasse and Guy Savoy are both enamored of chaos theory - all forms and/or expressions of or relying on mathematics.

If anyone is now tempted to think that I moved from my accustomed role as curmudgeon to that of "Devil's advocate", not true. I am indeed not saying that good taste in food is based on mathematics. What I am saying is that there is no universal in defining good taste when it comes to matters in the culinary realm.

[jackal10]

Mathematics is just another language.

For the Golden Ratio people have believed, since ancient times that a the best looking proportion is is where the length of the smaller part compared to the larger part is the same proportion as the larger part to the whole. Thus a rectangle, such as a room, or a rectangular cake should have the longer side in the golden ratio compared to the length of the shorter side - about one and two thirds times as long/

Mathematics can be sued to describe other aesthetics: Why do odd number of things in a serving (3, 5,7) look better than even numbers?

[Carrot Top]

Karen, Hi.....

Well, I warned people with that link about having "a mathematical bent".  As close as I can come in words is the following definition:

A golden rectangle is a rectangle with dimensions which are of the Golden Ratio, 1 : φ (i.e., 1.6180339887498948...). It yields another rectangle with sides of the same proportions when sectioned in a particular manner. That is, sectioned into two shapes: firstly a square with one side being one of the lesser sides of the surrounding golden rectangle; and secondly a rectangle composed of the remainder. The new, smaller rectangle is thus a golden rectangle itself.

Wasn't saying that good taste can be defined mathematically, only that the only concept that seems to triggers aesthetic satisfaction across history and cultures (including in research done on children as young as three years old) is that of the golden rectangle. 

As to Oscar Wilde - indeed he had a way with words. After all, anyone who "dies as I lived ....beyond my means" can't be all bad.

With regard to cocks' combs...should you truly be in the market, try nearly any good poultry shop in France or Italy.  With further regard to those classic sauces and garnishes from Larousse.....agreed that these are dated and difficult.  Doesn't stop them from being delicious.  For nearly five years between 1990-1995 I had a regular weekly column in which some of those classics were presented, together with historical/mythological anecdotes as recipes.  Truth is I never dreamed anyone would prepare the dishes and no one was more surprised than me (well, perhaps my editor) when clubs formed in various cities of people who would prepare one of those recipes every week.

←

Well, Rogov. . .it is possible that I might have a "mathematical bent" in ways, but it's never been indulged. The part of my brain that would do "symbolic reasoning" has simply never been used. . .it is totally flat-line, nothing there. . .but the few times I have tried it. . .(as in a recent course I took in "Language and Logic") well. . .I must tell you, it made me quite giddy in a very strange way. It made me laugh with delight, as if being tickled. It was pure clear pleasure, rather like being on a picnic on a perfect day where there were no bugs around and an excellent bottle of champagne to drink under a tree.

Thank goodness the professor shared my delight in the subject she taught and understood my laughter. I really had fears at first that I would be kicked out of class for whenever she explained something well my head had a spinning sensation and I just had to giggle quietly in the back of the classroom while the other students firmly kept their eyes averted. . .

So I can understand the common appreciation of it as a language.

It is a lovely language and someday maybe I'll find time to learn it.

If I tried to do it now, the children would likely end up waiting hours for their supper while they listened to me alternately roaring with laughter and groaning with that stupid feeling one has when the brain is totally recalcitrant.

But where on earth do you manage to find studies that detail which concepts have triggered aesthetic satisfaction across the centuries? I am curious. . .

The columns you wrote on the Larousse classics must have been wonderful. Your readers are very lucky!

Hmmm. Living in Appalachia as I do now, I might be able to persuade a chicken farmer to provide me with some cockscombs. That would be an adventure! Maybe an adventure worthy for one of those eGullet weekly foodblogs, hmm? "Seeking the Cockscomb in America" or something of that nature. . .if that happens, I will definitely seek your cockscombs-cooking advice!

Edited August 20, 2005 by Carrot Top (log)

[Carrot Top]

...

So. . ."good taste" can only be defined mathematically? Pah.

...

←

Good taste? I don't know. Beauty? Perhaps!

Maybe there's an underlying mathematical logic to good food that has yet to be identified.

←

Wow. Very interesting link. Hmmm. They've done it to the human face. . . but finding the underlying mathematic logic to good food?!

Phew.

Very fun stuff here.

I wonder how a link could be made between the idea of the Golden Rectangle and food though. The balance on the plate, as Jack says, the uneven number that often just makes the whole seem "right", yes. But taste. . .how could they measure taste? I bet they (you know "they". . ."those people". . .the Unidentified Intelligent Ones ) could break foods down and measure the chemical components and study that to see if there were some sort of mathematic balance.

I wonder.

Edited August 20, 2005 by Carrot Top (log)

[Carrot Top]

Karen:  A question (rhetorical perhaps but a question nevertheless - "Is there any standard accepted as universal other than mathematics?

I feel as if I should be putting on a fluffy 1950's party dress with some high heels and a bouffant hairdo when I say this. . .but anyway. . .

(I've wracked my brain and can come up with no other answer, Rogov)

A smile.

The universal language.

( )

[jackal10]

But taste. . .how could they measure taste? I bet they (you know "they". . ."those people". . .the Unidentified Intelligent Ones  ) could break foods down and measure the chemical components and study that to see if there were some sort of mathematic balance.

I wonder.

←

Oh certainly, but more chemistry than Mathematics. Peter Barham and Heston Blumenthal looked at spectrogrphic analyses of foods to find ones with common components, and hence discovered new taste combinations, such as caviar/chocolate. They also found anti-taste pairs with few common flavour components, such as basil/coffee

Edited August 21, 2005 by jackal10 (log)

[anzu]

Oh certainly, but more chemistry than Mathematics. Peter Barham and Heston Blumenthal looked at spectrogrphic analyses of foods to find ones with common components, and hence discovered new taste combinations, such as caviar/chocolate. They also found anti-taste pairs with few common flavour components, such as basil/coffee

←

Damn. You mean that basil coffee I just bought won't taste any good?

[Behemoth]

A bit of consideration and what the heck, I find that I am indeed ready to post about what I find the one universal in determining "good taste".......and that is the Golden Rectangle.  Holds true throughout all of history and prehistory, all cultures and even all pre-cultures.....  Beyond that, I suspect we'll find not a single "universal".

If anyone is curious and of a slightly mathematical bent see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoldenRectangle.html

←

To paraphrase and thus associate myself with Mark Twain, Rumors of the significance of the Golden Ratio have been vastly exaggerated

(Sorry, you hit on a pet topic )

[Behemoth]

Alain Ducasse and Guy Savoy are both enamored of chaos theory - all forms and/or expressions of or relying on mathematics. 

They think small changes in spicing can cause large changes in final flavor?

Math I love. Pseudo-math, not so much.

[Behemoth]

Mathematics is just another language.

Yay, logic.

[Daniel Rogov]

To paraphrase and thus associate myself with Mark Twain, Rumors of the significance of the Golden Ratio have been vastly exaggerated

(Sorry, you hit on a pet topic  )

←

Thanks for the link to a really intgelligent article. I appreciate both Markowsky and Livio but as a formally acknowledged curmudgeon I reserve the right to disagree with them. And after all, is it not disagreement and not agreement that plants the seeds of new thoughts.....

[Carrot Top]

Gosh, guys. I hope that in this Brave New World of science and numbers that there will still be room for intuition. . .intuition used to create good things to eat. . . based on foods that have been held in one's hands, caressed with one's eyes and tasted on one's tongue.

Can science do it all? Is it all encompassing, even in ways of determination of new creations. . .what would "work" and what would not?

Is math, finally, the only way to an across-the-board appreciation of things?

Paradoxical, if true, that these pure, cold, stripped down things would lead to the best sorts of pleasures for humans.

And a surprise, too, to those in all fields that have created all sorts of things in the past without considering these subjects (in their formal form) while creating.

Personally, it is my sense that most things that have been created in the world, whether "emerging food style" or whether some other thing that pushes boundaries, have been created through intuition and through knowledge of the metier worked in. Not through the more formal approach of measurement and analysis, but through inspiration and desire to "play" in the metier.

That there may be some access of sorts (again, intuitively) to the rules of mathematics and science that determine balance during these creative moments, I won't argue. There must be.

But finally I must stand firmly on the side of intuition backed by knowledge, rather than science playing footsies in other fields.

Tough job, but someone's gotta do it. (And since I lack the scientific mind, it might as well be me! )

[Carrot Top]

Adam. . .if you could. . .I wonder if you would "re-start" us again on what the original question was.

I think that there are so many ways to "take" the question that you first posed (and I know that I certainly did take it so many ways. . .and we seem to be wandering all over the place, which is rather wonderful, but I'm not sure if it's "to your point"! )

[Behemoth]

Is math, finally, the only way to an across-the-board appreciation of things?

Paradoxical, if true, that these pure, cold, stripped down things would lead to the best sorts of pleasures for humans.

I think many people are initially drawn to mathematics because they are hard-wired to look for meaning in patterns, and to find beauty in symmetry. Similarly I have always suspected that people prefer 3 or 5 on a plate because tension is created when you can't pair things up. In other words I think that it is being human that is the common denominator for aesthetic preferences, not mathematics per se. Math is just a way of stripping out the extraneous stuff and explaining how the patterns work.

Having said that, I have a hard time explaining what makes an "elegant" solution so damned pleasing. Maybe at that level we really do start to leave our bodies behind. As much as I love eating I've never gotten that particular rush from food. Music gets a little closer -- actually, that might be where food and math have some real common ground. I think other people have made that connection.

[Carrot Top]

Very interesting response, Behemoth, and I find that I agree with you.

It was never the "eating", the "tasting" that gave me the rush with food, it was the creating of it. . .and possibly sensing the hints of underlying beauty. . .that was not just of the simplest external sort.

And probably that was the genesis of where my boredom with being a chef started, when I decided to leave the field. There was simply something "more" on a deeper level for me that was calling out for exploration. An alternate metier. The thread that ran through the seams of the thing.

Not that the study or creating of food is not as deep as any other metier. . I think it is possibly deeper than some, indeed, even moreso once you factor in the human connections that are so intense in the thinking of food and "what it is and does" beyond simply filling our tummies.

[Carrot Top]

Similarly I have always suspected that people prefer 3 or 5 on a plate because tension is created when you can't pair things up.

[. . .]

Music gets a little closer -- actually, that might be where food and math have some real common ground. I think other people have made that connection.

And it is tension that makes any story worth telling (or worth writing) worth hearing or reading, too.

Music and math. They both have ways of doing something with the area of the brain that measures or sorts out "time", don't they? And food. . .well. A meal is here just now, then gone. Poof!

[Daniel Rogov]

As for me, I can admire enormously the creation of a dish and that regardless of who prepares it, but the test and the "rush" come first in the anticipation and then in the the dining. Think of all of those ridiculous competitions in which judgements are rendered entirely on the basis of preparation methods, timing and physical appearance but in which no-one actually tastes the dishes in question. No rush there, none whatever, but indeed no less a rush for me on anticipating the flavors, sight and aromas of the dish that is about to be set before me and then, if it meets my standards, the enormous pleasure of appreciating that dish.

True, unlike nearly all other art forms, the appreciation of fine cuisine depends on the destruction (that is to say, the eating) of the finished work. No less rush there for me than in viewing a magnificent sunset, a well loved musical composition, the sight and texture (and perhaps even taste) of a sculpted work, a magnificent painting, a superbly performed opera. Speaking entirely on a personal level, if there was no "rush", I would have begun to ignore all of those art forms years ago.

Imagine if you will hearing a Debussy prelude once and once only. It will move you for years afterwards, perhaps for the rest of your life. The same for the dish of well prepared lobster quenelles in sauce Nantua!

Edited August 21, 2005 by Daniel Rogov (log)

[Carrot Top]

As for me, I can admire enormously the creation of a dish and that regardless of  who prepares it, but the test and the "rush" come first in the anticipation and then in the the dining.

Agreed with the idea of the memory being as valuable as the thing itself.

(Though God knows, memory is a strange and fidgety thing to count on. . )

..............................................................

As to your comment above. . .don't you think that the circumstances of the meal have as much to do with the experience of how the food is appreciated as the food on the plate itself? Granted, the food on the plate is the star of the show. . .but where would the star be without the surrounding bit players (so to speak). Up to and including the bit players that are such ethereal things as a "real" smile from the person at the door of the restaurant. . .and taking this further. . .even including whether or not one approaches the table in a mood of good anticipation or in a mood of wanting something proved to them about the experience?

Personally, and in the past in my role as chef, it always amazed me how much the personality and "mood" of the person that was dining had an affect on how the food really tasted to them. And how that stretch of measurement could be as wide as human nature is.

If that makes sense.

[Daniel Rogov]

. . .don't you think that the circumstances of the meal have as much to do with the experience of how the food is appreciated as the food on the plate itself?

We are in full agreement. The setting, the atmosphere, the service, the mood, the company, one's psychological and physiological conditions.... each and all in combination impact no less on the anticipation and enjoyment of a dish than do the qualities of the dish itself.

One note, however - for here we do have to consider the differences between the individual who comes to dine as a "normal" client and the one who comes as a critic, for one of the chores of the critic is separating these factors out, one from the other, in order to come up with an appropriate and accurate evaluation and analysis of each factor, only later summing up what we might think of as "the total" dining experience.

[Adam Balic]

Adam. . .if you could. . .I wonder if you would "re-start" us again on what the original question was.

I think that there are so many ways to "take" the question that you first posed (and I know that I certainly did take it so many ways. . .and we seem to be wandering all over the place, which is rather wonderful, but I'm not sure if it's "to your point"! )

←

Would you hold it against me if I said that I had been away for a week and have forgotten what my original point was (if there was one, I am often pointless).

[Carrot Top]

Not at all. Your forgetting your original point shows you to be a true intellectual, which I appreciate.

Looking forward to reading of your adventures on holiday, which I see are posted.