If cotton was the king of the antebellum South, rice was her queen

If cotton was the king of the antebellum South, rice was her queen for the three centuries of her engagement with slavery. With the revamp of Carolina Golden rice and other heirloom varieties and hybrids thereof, the narrative of rice in the South has been centred in the rebirth of one of its most important cash crops as a boutique ingredient.

M.W. Twitty, The cooking gene (2017), 241

When you see the words “delicious” and “polenta” in close proximity, you know the phrases “plenty of cheese” or “lashings of butter” can’t be far away

‘When you see the words “delicious” and “polenta” in close proximity, you know the phrases “plenty of cheese” or “lashings of butter” can’t be far away.’ Niki Segnit, author of Lateral Cooking, nails the simultaneous appeal and bemused distaste for polenta in one neat phrase. At its best, polenta is indescribably comforting, rich and naturally sweet, soft and luscious. At its worst, it’s lumpy, bland, claggy and, quite frankly, hard work. As so often is the case (and I think we can agree, I am entirely unbiased in this whole pursuit), the difference is butter.

O. Potts, Butter (2022), loc. 2,561

It is less that I have buttered bread to accompany a bowl of soup, and more that my soup is the accompaniment to the buttered bread

And then there’s soup. It is less that I have buttered bread to accompany a bowl of soup, and more that my soup is the accompaniment to the buttered bread. The simpler the soup the better, but it must be thick, and smooth, and terribly hot. There is nothing sadder than a lukewarm soup. The bread should be hearty (read: not white, and doorstep in size), the butter thick and opaque, and dunked with enough confidence that the hot soup is just starting to melt that slab of butter before wham you’ve eaten the whole thing.

O. Potts, Butter (2022), loc. 713

A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman who has lost an eye

I'm doing all of Brillat-Savarin's aphorisms together:

• A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman who has lost an eye. (p.22)
• Gastronomy rules all life, for the tears of the infant cry for the bosom of the nurse; the dying man receives with some degree of pleasure the last cooling drink, which, alas! he is unable to digest. (36)
• Which one of us, condemned to the fare of the fathers of the desert, would not have smiled at the idea of a well-carved chicken's wing, announcing his rapid rendition to civilized life? (49)
• Give the most hungry man you can meet with the richest possible food, he will eat with difficulty. Give him a glass of wine or of brandy, and at once he will find himself better. (79)
• I observe with pride, that gourmandise and coquettery, the two great modifications which society has effected in our imperious wants, are both of French origin. (87)
• Thousands of men, who, forty years ago would have passed their evenings in cabarets, now pass them at the theatres. Economy, certainly does not gain by this, but morality does. (138)
• Monsieur, said an old marquise to me one day, which do you like best, Burgundy or Bordeaux? Madame, said I, I have such a passion for examining into the matter, that I always postpone the decision a week. (166)
• Take a raisin-- No I thank you; I do not like wine in pills.(167)

J. Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825)

Mince Pies were Reliques of the Whore of Babylon

Plumb-pottage was mere Popery, that a Collar of Brawn was an abomination, that Roast Beef was Antichristian, that Mince Pies were Reliques of the Whore of Babylon, and a Goose, a Turkey, or a Capon, were marks of the Beast

John Taylor (1652) on Puritans. Cited in A. Gray, At Christmas we feast (2022), 56

I loved that primitive way of living which gave one back that hunger that transforms every morsel one puts under one’s tooth into solid satisfaction

Peter’s attitude was one of wonder at discovering the ways of the nomads, ways that are as old as the world. I, on the other hand, was going back to a chapter in my own history. In a sense I was only prolonging the journey I had made in Russian Turkestan. I was familiar with the smell of camels and of their fetid breathing as they ruminated. I had already joined in the halt at the watering-place, already seen the gathering of the dung for fuel. I knew the joy of drinking boiling tea, had assisted in the search for camels that strayed while grazing. I knew the silence at night, when one’s eyes are burning after marching against the wind all day. I loved that primitive way of living which gave one back that hunger that transforms every morsel one puts under one’s tooth into solid satisfaction; the healthy weariness that made sleep an incomparable voluptuousness; and the desire to get on that found realization in every step one took.

E. Maillart, Forbidden journey (1935), 104

Even Chinese food seems allied to the quality of the land

Even Chinese food seems allied to the quality of the land, It includes no bones, is prepared so as to be eaten with chopsticks, triturated, cooked for hours and hours in delicious sauces, and appears at last, looking like a variety of dumplings, served in little heaps in which nothing is whole and entire. Tou-fu, the sole diet of millions of peasants, is a kind of flabby, yellowish custard made with bean flour. 

E. Maillart, Forbidden journey (1935), 49

A good ice cream lulls in the mind in the same way, almost, and there is about it the sweet intoxication of virtue

The Islamic warriors did not see anything to enrage them. The bar did not exist. The women were not 'exposed'. There was just the mall itself, where I sat down at last to eat an ice cream under the smiles of the headscarfed girls who served them. Ice cream. Isn't ice cream always the substitution for a nice beer, from 'dry' Islamabad to 'dry' Ocean City, New Jersey?  A good ice cream lulls in the mind in the same way, almost, and there is about it the sweet intoxication of virtue.

L. Osborne, The wet and the dry (2013), 173-4

Of the estimated 30 billion food miles associated with UK consumed food, 82 per cent are generated within the country

Of the estimated 30 billion food miles associated with UK consumed food, 82 per cent are generated within the country, and over half of those in 2005 were simply due to trips by car from homes to local food shops. 

… 

Buying a locally reared Welsh lamb in the UK is worse for the environment than buying a frozen one. Indeed, lamb which is imported 11,000 miles from New Zealand is, somewhat surprisingly, better for the environment and has a lower carbon footprint. The impact of food transport can be offset, to some extent, if food production is more sustainable than local production methods.

T. Spector, Spoon fed (2020), 209-10

 

In France, raising your children as vegan is classed as criminal neglect

Studies have shown that children raised on a vegan diet are often smaller and have low levels of certain nutrients such as riboflavin and B12, which, when extreme has led to high-profile deaths. In France, raising your children as vegan is classed as criminal neglect.

T. Spector, Spoon fed (2020), 126-7

Soybeans have higher nutrient values than millet, but a lower rate of digestion

The Zhou people's tendency to boil everything would not be all that helpful with soybeans, and would lead to tasteless sludge. Soybeans have higher nutrient values than millet, but a lower rate of digestion, at 22 per cent if they are merely boiled, but rising to 65 per cent with fermentation. In other words, they can only come into their own with the introduction of more advanced technology for cooking and preparation. When they do, they offer the best yield per acre of protein, compared to the same land used for rearing milk, eggs, or meat.    

J. Clements, The Emperor's feast (2021), 28

Cod, haddock, tuna, salmon and prawns make up 60-70% of the seafood eaten in the UK

Despite its island credentials, Britain - bafflingly - is not known as a nation enamoured of fish, other than its favourite, battered, deep-fried 'fish and chips' form. Despite the variety found off our coasts, our consumption centres on only five main species: cod, haddock, tuna, salmon and prawns make up 60-70% of the seafood eaten in the UK.

J. Linford, The missing ingredient (2018), 64 

My nose lost track of honey and citrus, but still held a wisp of cool, clean peel, an ideal of sweetness, a thin hit of rose

I could say this quince smelled like roses and citrus and rich women's perfume, but that isn't quite true. I could call this fruit  "the stranger," based on what John Gardner called one of two possible plots in all of fiction - "a stranger comes to town." (man goes on a journey being the other.) Calling quince "the stranger" could be fitting for a tale about the fruit of rooted things written by a woman whose female forebears did not make journeys. ... I inhaled this stranger, my first quince, until my nose lost track of honey and citrus, but still held a wisp of cool, clean peel, an ideal of sweetness, a thin hit of rose. 

K. Lebo, The book of difficult fruit (2021), 219-20

The word "garnet" comes from "pomegranate," as does "grenade"

 The word "garnet" comes from "pomegranate," as does "grenade," so named for the way a shrapnel-scattering grenade imitates the seed-scattering explosion of a smashed pomegranate.

K. Lebo, The book of difficult fruit (2021), 210

Persian apples were peaches

A word of warning: in Greek the word ‘melon’ is always taken to mean apples, but ‘melon’ covers a number of other fruits including pomegranates: ‘Armenian apples’ were apricots, still grown on the northern side of Mount Ararat. ‘Cydonian apples’ were quinces. Cydonia was an ancient city state near Chania in Crete. Persian apples were peaches.

J. Crowden, Cider country (2021), 36

In Chinese, the word for animal is dong wu, meaning 'moving thing'

It was the sheer nonchalance of it, the way people scaled fish as though they were simply peeling potatoes, skinned live rabbits while smoking a cigarette, joking with a friend as the blood drained from the throat of a bewildered duck. They didn't kill animals before they cooked and ate them. They simply went about the process of preparing a creature for the pot and table, and at some random point it died. But there, perhaps, is the crux of the matter, embedded almost invisibly in those two sentences. In English, as in most European languages, the words for the living things we eat are mostly derived from the Latin anima, which means air, breath, life. 'Creature', from the Latin for 'created', seems to connect animals with us human beings in some divinely fashioned universe. We too are creatures, animated. In Chinese, the word for animal is dong wu, meaning 'moving thing'. Is it cruel to hurt something that (unless you are a fervent Buddhist) you see as simply a 'moving thing', scarcely even alive.

F. Dunlop, Shark's fin soup and Sichuan pepper (2008), 49

There is no conceptual divide between 'meat' and 'inedible rubbery bits' when butchering an animal carcass

 The Chinese don't generally divide the animal world into the separate realms of pets and edible creatures: unless you are a strict Buddhist (and bearing in mind certain regional preferences), you might as well eat them all. Likewise, there is no conceptual divide between 'meat' and 'inedible rubbery bits' when butchering an animal carcass: in China they traditionally favour the kind of nose-to-tail eating of which restaurateur Fergus Henderson, the notorious English purveyor of offal, could only dream. 

F. Dunlop, Shark's fin soup and Sichuan pepper (2008), 12

There are forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn

The great edifice of variety and choice that is an American supermarket turns out to rest on a remarkably narrow biological foundation comprised of a tiny group of plants that is dominated by a single species: Zea mays, the giant tropical grass most Americans know as corn.... There are forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn.

M. Pollan, The omnivore's dilemma (2006), 18-19

It takes the same number of eggs and the same amount of butter but it shows less respect

Hélène had her opinions, she did not for instance like Matisse. She said a frenchman should not stay unexpectedly to a meal particularly if he asked the servant beforehand what there was for dinner. She said foreigners had a perfect right to do these things but not a frenchman and Matisse had once done it. So when Miss Stein said to her, Monsieur Matisse is staying for dinner this evening, she would say, in that case I will not make an omelette but fry the eggs. It takes the same number of eggs and the same amount of butter but it shows less respect, and he will understand.

G. Stein, The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), 11

Poor women, frequently Irish, known as Shabbos-goyas or fire-goyas, acted as stokers to the Ghetto at twopence a hearth

There have always been ways of getting around the problem of lighting fires. It was common in the Oriental world for Muslims to go around the houses kindling fires and doing little jobs for the Jews. Israel Zangwill gives us an insight into turn-of-the-century London in his 1892 novel, Children of the Ghetto, where he writes, ‘The Rabbis had modified the Biblical prohibition against lighting any fire whatever, and allowed it to be kindled by non-Jews. Poor women, frequently Irish, known as Shabbos-goyas or fire-goyas, acted as stokers to the Ghetto at twopence a hearth. No Jew ever touched a match or a candle, or burnt a piece of paper, or even opened a letter. The Goyah, which is literally “heathen female”, did everything required on the Sabbath.’ Zangwill tells that, when the reb’s fire sank and he could not give direct orders to the shiksa (non-Jewish woman) to replenish it, he would rub his hands and remark casually (in her hearing), ‘Ah, how cold it is!’

C. Roden, The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand and Vilna to the Present Day (1996), Kindle loc. 705