Food In The Fort

Last summer, I decided to share the pleasure of my required school reading with Leo by making him suffer through Freakonomics. Such a bad book. The problem is that it is so much fun when you’re reading it; but then if you stop and think about it… Anyway, turn about is fair play, so we followed this up with Joanne Chen’s The Taste of Sweet: Our Complicated Love Affair with Our Favorite Treats. Like Freakonomics, this book is breezy and enjoyably written but, happily, it lacks the chapters which cause me to go on rants about the author’s racism and deliberately deceptive use of statistics.

However, The Taste of Sweet does share a Freakonomical feature: both authors like to toss off assertions of dubious scientific accuracy. A case in point: when discussing the role of fiber in our diet, Chen quotes pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig who says that bacterial DNA found in stool samples of ancient humans proves that people used to eat about twenty to thirty times more fiber than we do today. This is given as evidence to support the idea that this is the ideal human diet, not just what those undoubtedly very regular people had available to eat.

Without a doubt, the chapter that both Leo and I found the most interesting was “The Real Taste of Strawberry” in which Chen describes how flavors change over time to adapt to current tastes. And she’s not just talking about artificial flavorings. Fruits and vegetables themselves are constantly being selected and manipulated in order to provide a more idealized taste: a more strawberry-flavored strawberry or sweeter sugar cane. As Chen notes, “Humans have been trying to have it their way with nature for a very long time,” and “Real flavors, in fact, aren’t any more consistent than fantasy ones.” And speaking of fantasies, apparently “healthy” tastes like raisins and spice, with a hint of creaminess, at least to food engineer Marie Wright who had embarked on a quest to create a “healthier” tasting oatmeal flavored cookie.

Overall, Leo and I enjoyed reading The Taste of Sweet, in spite of its problems. It’s readily apparent in the numerous interviews and history Chen cites that she has done her homework and the result is an easily digestible yet thought provoking book. However, Chen’s own conflicted relationship with sweet foods gives her analysis an unbalanced feel. Her celebration of the role of sweet foods in our culture is undercut by a generous helping of guilt. In this, Chen certainly parallels most Americans’ relationship with sweets. To paraphrase from her chapter “Guilty Pleasures,” we all have trust issues with delicious food and the more indulgent it seems, the more suspicious we think we should be.

Note: This review was co-authored with Leo.

I mentioned on the Cherry Clafouti recipe that I made for our book club’s dinner discussion of Sarah Vowell’s The Partly Cloudy Patriot that we met on Bastille Day (July 14th), thus the rustic French custard cake. Well, to tie in with the whole patriotic theme, Catherine made this red, white and blue jello that was absolutely the hit of the party. In fact, it’s safe to say that the jello, or rather the unmoulding of the jello, was the night’s entertainment. It stuck in the mould, so Catherine and our host Sophie tried running warm water over the mould, but to no avail. Then Sophie’s husband, the physicist, suggested strategically deforming the mould by squeezing on the edge. After much manipulation the bottom three layers disgorged themselves with a resounding plop!

I think it took another fifteen minutes for the final two layers to appear, but happily they all came out intact and more or less aligned with their recently liberated bretheren for Sophie and the rest of the guests to properly admire. Indeed, there was much ooh-ing and ah-ing over Catherine’s jiggly creation. It was quite the work of art. I’m sure Bill Cosby himself would have shed a tear at its sheer beauty.

While It’s hard to imagine the housewives of the ’50s and ’60s (when jello moulds were king) had this much fun, but it was worth the wait. And surprisingly delicious! The sour cream in the white layer made for a creamy, tangy counterpart to the sweet berry flavors. While I can’t see us making this very often, it was a thoroughly enjoyable creation. I know I have a lot more respect for gelatinous desserts after all this. Too bad we only have a crumby cell phone pic of the half-eaten jello to illustrate this recipe. Read the rest of this entry »