[PREV - SHOPPING_WALT]    [TOP]

JONAH_UMAMI

                                                  February 6, 2012
Reviewing the chapter on Escoffier,
I find I agree with one of Engber's
complaints:
                                                       JONAHS_COOKIE
  Just going with details Lehrer
  sites: It's odd to spin Auguste
  Escoffier as some sort of
  progenitor/discoverer/codifier
  of umami-based cooking.
                                                
        The subject at hand is an                        
        investigation of a set of                        
        traditional cooking practices                    
        with beginnings lost to history.                 
                                                         
                                                        
  Just on the timeline, Escoffier is very late,
  only barely beating the scientific work:

  Escoffier's _Guide Culinaire_ was published in 1903.
  Kikune Ikeda discovers glutamate in 1907.



  But it is really interesting to hear
  story Kikune Ikeda's discovery of the
  role glutemates play in cuisine, and
  his invention of MSG.

  How was this "fifth flavor" ignored
  by western flavor scientists for so    Lehrer traces the four classic
  long?                                  flavors sweet, sour, salty and
                                         bitter back to Aristotle's _De
                                         Anima_.

                                                      A neo-Aristotelian
                                                      blindpot that hung
                                                      on even longer than
    And Lehrer's footnote on p. 59                    usual?
    is the very informative:

     "MSG is often blamed for the so-called Chinese
     Restaurant Syndrome, in which exposure to MSG is
     thought to cause headaches and migraines in
     certain individusals.  But as Jeffrey Steingarten
     has noted (_It Must've Been Something I Ate_, pp
     85-99), recent research has exonerated both
     chinese food and MSG.


--------
[NEXT - BROCKMANS_THIRD]