Science of cooking | Gherkins & Tomatoes

Reflections on a Green-Grape Tart

September 28, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Sugary milky sweetness, that first delicious taste, imprints itself on a baby’s tiny tongue, and seals forever a great love. From the very beginning of life, then, a yearning for that nectar haunts us forever and never leaves us in peace. This primal urge for sweetness led to the scourge of slavery and fuels the modern obesity epidemic. Imagine, for a moment, vast fields of sugar cane, saber-sharp green blades swaying under gentle tropical breezes, fed by the merciless sun […]

Categories: Africa, France, French Cooking, Grapes, Middle Ages, Science of cooking • Tags: Grapes, Paula Wolfert, Sidney Mintz, Slavery, Sweetness and Power

Preserved Lemons: The New French Staple?

January 23, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Meats preserved in wine become dry and nourishing: they dry out because of the wine; they are nourishing because of the flesh. Preserve din vinegar, they ferment less, because of the vinegar, and are quite nourishing. Meats preserved in salt are less nourishing, as salt deprives them of moisture, but they become lean, dry out, and are sufficiently laxative. Hippocrates, On Regimen in Acute Diseases A few days ago, contemplating some minutiae or other on French culinary history, I came across […]

Categories: Cooking, Food Science, France, French Cooking, Lemons, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Nutrition, Science of cooking • Tags: Culinary History, Food History, French Cooking, Kitty Morse, Lactic acid fermentation, Larousse Gastronomique, Lemons, Meyer lemons, Moroccan Cooking, Preserved Lemons

Is Cooking Necessary?*

October 4, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

No, it’s not. That’s your immediate answer, isn’t it? After all, you’ve got more important things to do, don’t you? Or do you? You can live your life without cooking. You can go to your nearest grocery store and bypass all the technology and knowledge that took your ancestors centuries to refine. You can buy all the ready-made food you could ever eat. You can eat plastic food. And you’d survive, too. But, in spite of all that, well, and […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cooking, Local foods, Locavores, Recipes, Science of cooking • Tags: Community, Cooking, Empowerment, Fast Food, Local foods, Locavores

Ats Jaar: A Little Taste of Southeast Asia in the Antebellum South

February 4, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A little prickle of recognition, a sense of déjà vu — that’s what happened when I turned to page 86 of A Colonial Plantation Cookbook: The Receipt Book of Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1770 (1984, edited by historian Richard J. Hooker*). There it was: “Ats Jaar, or Pucholilla.” My first thought was, “What is an Indian (as in India) pickle recipe doing in a cookbook from colonial South Carolina?” And then I read this, in a footnote provided by the editor: […]

Categories: Asia, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, India, Methods, Science of cooking, Southern Food • Tags: Colonial Plantation Cookbook, Fermentation, Hannah Glasse, Harriott Pinckney Horry, Pickling, Richard Briggs, Richard J. Hooker, Southern cooking

How Cooking Works: The Chemistry of the Matter

March 14, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Having trouble keeping your red cabbage red and your green leafies green? Although cooking IS an art, wielding a well-honed knife and calculating the cooking time for a roast require a certain basic understanding of the science side of the kitchen, too. Food science guru Shirley Corriher cooks up some lessons in this well-done video. [Note: I will be tied up with family arrangements for the next week or so; thus, blogs posts from now until then will necessarily be […]

Categories: American Cooking, Science of cooking • Tags: Cooking, Food Science, Shirley Corriher

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

Category Archives: Science of cooking

Reflections on a Green-Grape Tart

Preserved Lemons: The New French Staple?

Is Cooking Necessary?*

Ats Jaar: A Little Taste of Southeast Asia in the Antebellum South

How Cooking Works: The Chemistry of the Matter

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