December 29, 2008
Vestigial foodstuffs
Once upon a time, people enjoyed eating French onion soup so much and so frequently that they invented a dried, instant equivalent. Now those pouches are decorated with bowls of sour cream-based dip; one is hard-pressed to find the original purpose of the contents.
And British soldiers in colonial India would add a bit of gin to their quinine, to help the bitter anti-malarial down. Now quinine lurks in sweetened soda water to help dull the bite of Tanqueray.
I’m sure there are other foods or substances that have followed a similar evolution. This is a worthy topic for further study.
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Dang, Mike. Dang, Deron. Y’all got me to thinking, and — dang! There goes my evening. Between vestigial foodstuffs and events-indulged-in-but-once, my mind is reeling.
It would be sooo cool if I could comment but once on both posts. A vestigial foodstuff of which I partook but once for fear of heartbreak a second time around.
I don’t know if this is exactly the same, but Crisco started off as an industrial product, before the manufacturers realized they could sell tons of it by including recipes for its use in women’s magazines. (Wikipedia says that it was originally made as a replacement for candle wax, though my college history professor said it was an industrial lubricant.)
K
I can’t stop thinking about vestigial foodstuffs. Tarnation, Mike! You are a devil, a very devil.
Kevin, I was just reading about that in the new cookbook, Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes. The name was apparently derived from “crystallized cottonseed oil.” Industrial foodstuffs are a world unto themselves!
Re: fat. From a friend of a friend: “Grease is brainfood.”
Mike,
I hadn’t heard of that book, but now it’s on my wishlist.
I love fat. A tv-show cook once said “The fat is where the flavor is,” and it changed my whole world.
When I got back from a long work trip (7 weeks), my wife bought me a tub of lard as a welcome-back gift.
Popcorn is really good if you pop it in bacon grease instead of vegetable oil.
Back on topic: Hops was originally added to beer because it acted as a preservative. Now it’s added because it’s part of the flavor that we expect from beer.
K
Hops! I hadn’t even thought of that, and I love me some craft beer. Shoot, the India Pale Ale was originally a malty/hoppy concentrate brewed to survive the trip out to the colony and be reconstituted, but the officers higher up the pecking order developed a taste for the stuff undiluted, and a star was born.
Mixology is fertile ground for finding lost raisons d’etre. I really do wonder about the claims that old liqueurs medicinal and just happened to be, gee, delicious.
Mike. Knock out a proposal. Buttonhole an agent. Write a book.
Mike said
I really do wonder about the claims that old liqueurs medicinal and just happened to be, gee, delicious.
Or, in the case of Fernet-Branca, un-delicious, but still strangely compelling.
K
I think that there are probably quite a few condiments, spices, flavorings, etc. that fit into this category depending on where you draw the lines. Wasabi was originally, supposedly, eaten with raw fish because of its antibiotic properties where now the stuff most people eat is mainly mustard and/or horseradish with food coloring.