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Journal andrel's Journal: logarithms in julia's kitchen 2

Journal by andrel

On January second, after breakfast at Union Station with the usual suspects, Karen B and I wandered over to the Smithsonian to learn about the history of American mathematics education. With only one display cabinet the exhibit was disappointingly small. The exhibit in our lobby is significantly larger than what they had on display.

On the bright side, they did have a giant K+E demonstration rule hanging overhead. Though I wasn't allowed to touch it, I did use it to teach Karen how the thing works. It isn't everyday one gets to say "through the power of logarithms". (For several years I've been trying to find time to make a DIY slide-rule kit. After all, cardboard is easy to find and the postscript code for the rules shouldn't be hard to write. Turns out somebody else has recently made such a kit. You too can build your own slide rule.)

Since 10 minutes is about the maximum entertainment one can get out of the exhibit, we soon continued on in search of something else. Julia Child's kitchen is just around the corner. Child was the first TV chef and basically invented the whole cooking-show genre, recording many of the shows from her home kitchen.

The Child display was both inspiring and depressing. Inspiring because Child didn't get seriously interested in food until her mid thirties, and was already 37 when she enrolled in Cordon Bleu. It's not too late for me to become a great chef, or at least a decent cook!

Depressing because almost everybody at the exhibit was standing around the TV set instead of looking at all the cool kitchen gadgets on display. You can watch TV at home! My favorites were the six-burner stove and a branding iron known as "The Buffalo". The Buffalo is named after the man who invented it. Buffalo is heated on a burner, then shoved into the water pot just after food is added, almost instantly bringing the pot back to boiling, and presumably producing a satisfying amount of steam and hissing in the process. The sign didn't explain why it is so important to quickly get the water back to boiling.

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logarithms in julia's kitchen

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  • Well, with pasta, non-boiling water makes makes it stick together. I believe that's the main reason The Authorities encurage you to use a ridiculous amount of water in cooking pasta--that way, the water won't go below a boil when you put the noodles in.

    Or, it could be something else entirely.

    • I think it has to do with parboiling (blanching). Here's what Joy [amazon.com] (Child's favorite cookbook) has to say:

      Parboiling: This means that the food is plunged into a large quantity of rapidly boiling water --- a little at a time so as not to disturb the boiling [...] The purpose of this particular kind of blanching or parboiling may be to set color or --- by partial dehydration--- to help preserve nutrients and to firm the tissues of vegetables. [...] Blanching vegetables in this way preparatory to canning or freezing [...] Small amounts of the vegetable are plunged into boiling water just long enough to retard enzymatic action and to shrink the product for more economical packaging.

      And here's Fannie [amazon.com]:

      A wonderful way to cook many vegetables [...] is to give them a brief baptism in boiling water. Fresh natural flavors and bright colors intensify when vegetables are cooked briskly in an uncovered pot. [...] Use lots of water so that it returns quickly to a boil after the vegetables are added to the pot. Cook the vegetables as briefly as possible, just until they are tender-crisp.

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