Showing posts with label abstract foods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abstract foods. Show all posts

Monday, June 20, 2016

Xenophiles Among Us


The potato is not indigenous to Ireland.

Just what you thought; almost all of our food comes from other places in the world. Here we find out that so many foods in the world are indigenous to somewhere else. I mean, you knew that already – tomatoes are not from Italy, and so on. Consider national identities via cuisine as similar to conceptions of self: you do not exist; you are instead a combination of others. What does it mean for a food to be Italian or Chinese. Ahh, to label and categorize.

Let us not forget that every atom in our little world was forged in a massive stellar furnace and propagated throughout the universe in a spacetime-crippling explosion. The very concepts of foreign, indigenous; of self and other; are all constructions of our minds, and like a rainbow that seems to get further away the closer we approach, they fall apart under increasing scrutiny.

phys.org, June 2016


Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Bacon

AKA The Food Network

Aldrich's Organoleptic Properties Index

There is only one chemical used to make the flavor of bacon.

This is "bacon", surrounded by all the other flavors that use that same chemical-flavor.

To put it another way: the chemical that is used to make 'bacon flavor' is also used to make 'vanilla', 'jasmine', and 'clove', among others (including whiskey, which for some reason is not showing up).

Take a minute to play with this network graph - a compendium of flavors and fragrances and the relationships between them, using Aldrich's catalog of over 1000 chemicals.

(check out a youtube tutorial on how to use the network graphs if it seems too confusing)

Aldrich's Organoleptic Properties Index