Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (68 page)

^*
Though later, in Leviticus,
rules governing grain sacrifices are spelled out in detail; the commentaries suggest
such rituals allowed people who could not afford to sacrifice an animal to
nevertheless make an acceptable offering.

^*
In Greek thought, which
obsessively worries the distinctions between man and animal, “raw eater”
(omophagos) is a cutting epithet, bearing connotations of savagery. Cyclops commits
a double outrage against civilization when he eats Odysseus’ sailors without
cooking them first.

^*
Berna, Francesca, et al.,
“Microstratigraphic Evidence of In Situ Fire in the Acheulean Strata of
Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape Province, South Africa,”
Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences
109 No. 20 (May 15, 2012), E1215–20.

^*
Carmody, Rachel N., et al.
“Energetic Consequences of Thermal and Nonthermal Food Processing.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
108 No. 48 (November
2011): 19199–203.

^†
Ninety percent of a cooked egg
is digested, whereas only 65 percent of a raw egg is; by the same token, the rarer
the steak, or more al dente the pasta, the less of it will be absorbed. Dieters take
note.

^*
I’m not sure why he even
brings up water—perhaps because it is the enemy of fire? Or because it’s a
feminine principle and barbecue is a male domain?

^*
In 2011, Ed Mitchell left The
Pit, in a split with Greg Hatem’s restaurant group described in the press as
amicable. But Ed told me there had been battles over philosophy and economics and he
could “no longer put Ed Mitchell’s face and reputation on something
where I had no control.” Ed plans to open a new barbecue restaurant in Durham,
North Carolina.

^*
The name itself is a
mini-polemic about what barbecue is and is not. Since the word
“barbecue” is reserved for pork, that need not be mentioned; however,
the word may
not
be used to modify ribs or chicken, which, whatever else
they are, are not barbecue. At least here in North Carolina east of Lexington.

^*
Much the same can be said of
the Christian Eucharist, in which all communicants symbolically eat from the body
and blood of Christ.

^*
Marcella Hazan, the Italian
cookbook writer, was on the same page: “Water is the phantom ingredient in
much Italian cooking,” she wrote. “One of my students once protested,
‘When you add water, you add nothing!’ But that is precisely why we use
it. Italian cooking is the art of giving expression to the undisguised flavors of
its ingredients. In many circumstances, an overindulgence in stock, wine or other
flavored liquids would tinge the complexion of a dish with an artificial
glow.”

^*
MSG is a food additive
synthesized by microbes from various natural materials. Glutamate also finds its way
onto ingredient labels as “hydrolyzed vegetable protein,” “protein
isolate,” “yeast extract,” and “autolyzed yeast.”

^*
Though for married women who
don’t have jobs the amount of time spent cooking is greater: 58 minutes a day,
as compared with 36 for married women who do have jobs.

^*
Arlie Russell Hochschild,
Second Shift
(New York: Penguin Books, 1989).

^*
From the study: On an average
day during 2006–8, Americans age 15 and older spent 78 minutes in secondary eating
and drinking, that is, while doing something else considered to be the primary
activity. Secondary eating and drinking was reported as occurring in all 400-plus
detailed activities, except sleeping and primary eating and drinking. The two most
popular activities that accompanied secondary eating or drinking were watching
television and engaging in paid work. Travel related to work or travel related to
shopping was also a frequent activity that accompanied secondary eating and
drinking. (
How Much Time Do Americans Spend on Food?
, EIB-86, November
2011.)
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib-economic-information-bulletin/eib86.aspx
.

^*
Cutler, David M., et al.,
“Why Have Americans Become More Obese?,”
Journal of Economic
Perspectives
, 17 No. 3 (2003): 93–118.

^*
Haines, P. S., et al.,
“Eating Patterns and Energy and Nutrient Intakes of US Women,”
Journal of the American Dietetic Association
92 No. 6 (1992): 698–704,
707.

^†
Chia-Yu Chen, Rosalind, et
al., “Cooking Frequency May Enhance Survival in Taiwanese Elderly,”
Public Health Nutrition
15 (July 2012): 1142–49.

^*
Hammes, Walter P., et al.,
“Microbial Ecology of Cereal Fermentations,”
Trends in Food Science
& Technology
16 No. 1-3 (2005): 4–11.

^*
Sugihara, T. F., et al.,
“Microorganisms of the San Francisco Sour Dough Bread Process I. Yeasts
Responsible for the Leavening Action,”
Applied Microbiology
21 No. 3
(1971): 456–8. Kline, L., et al., “Microorganisms of the San Francisco Sour
Dough Bread Process II. Isolation and Characterization of the Undescribed Bacterial
Species Responsible for the Souring Activity,”
Applied Microbiology
21 No. 3 (1971): 459–65.

^†
Candida milleri
is sometimes also referred to as
Saccharomyces
exiguous
.

^*
I would learn later that the
dough at Tartine is even wetter than what the published recipe calls for; in the
book Robertson reduced the amount of water by 10 percent or so, fearing that home
bakers confronting a dough too wet to knead would “freak out.”

^*
What gluten offered human
wheat eaters is obvious enough, but what, if anything, did it offer the plant?
I’ve put this question to several wheat breeders and botanists, and the
consensus answer seems to be: nothing special. All seeds store proteins for the
future use of the new plant by locking up amino acids in stable chains called
polymers. The default storage protein in most grasses is globulin, over which
gliadin and glutenin offer no advantages—except, that is, for the one tremendous
advantage of happening to gratify the desires of an animal as well traveled and
influential as
Homo sapiens.

^†
In his book
1493,
Charles Mann suggests that the first bread wheat was planted in the New World in
Mexico, after Cortés found three kernels in a bag of rice sent from Spain. He
ordered the seeds planted in a plot by a chapel in Mexico City. Two of them took
and, according to a sixteenth-century account, “little by little there was
boundless wheat”—much to the delight of the clergy, who needed bread to
properly celebrate mass.

^*
Milton has a beautiful
passage in
Paradise Lost
in which he describes humankind’s inexorable
progress toward ever more ethereal types of nourishment, culminating in the bread of
Christ:

So from the root

Springs lighter the green stalk,
from thence the leaves

More airy, last the bright
consummate flow’r

Spirits odorous breathes:
flow’rs and their fruit.

Man’s nourishment, by gradual
scale sublimed,

To vital spirits aspire …

Time may come when men

With angels may participate, and
find

No inconvenient diet, nor too light
fare;

And from these corporal nutriments
perhaps

Your bodies may at last turn all to
spirit. …

^*
John Marchant, Bryan Reuben,
and Joan Alcock,
Bread: A Slice of History
(Charleston, SC: History Press,
2009).

^*
The epidemiologists correct
for the fact that, today, people who eat more whole grains also tend to be more
affluent and better educated and more health conscious in general.

^*
Jacobs, David R., and Lyn M.
Steffen, “Nutrients, Foods, and Dietary Patterns as Exposures in Research: A
Framework for Food Synergy,”
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
78 suppl. (2003): 508S–13S.

^*
Many products that call
themselves “whole grain” turn out to have white flour as their first
(and therefore biggest) ingredient. A product may use the Whole Grain Council stamp
even if it contains as much as 49 percent white flour. A bread, like Wonder
Bread’s Soft 100% Whole Wheat is not 100 percent whole wheat—only the part of
it that is wheat is, and much of it consists of other ingredients. The idea of whole
grain is evidently much more appealing to industry than the reality.

^*
In so-called baker’s
math, every ingredient in a recipe is expressed as a percentage of the weight of the
flour, which is always expressed as 100 percent. Thus 104 percent hydration means
that the dough contains slightly more water by weight than flour—a lot.

^*
Not that these terms are
ironclad guarantees: “Stone milled” is not a government-backed claim,
and whole grain, if it’s not stone milled, may or may not contain the
germ.

^*
I first encountered the term
in a fascinating article on the debate over raw-milk cheeses by MIT anthropologist
Heather Paxson: “Post-Pasteurian Cultures: The Microbiopolitics of Raw-Milk
Cheese in the United States,”
Cultural Anthropology
23 No. 1 (2008):
15–47.

^*
Lactobacillus
is a genus of common bacteria that convert sugars—including
lactose—into lactic acid. A “lactofermentation” is fermentation
conducted primarily by this type of bacteria.