Category
Food & taste
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Once you know how a food was produced, you cannot honestly taste it the same way
I grew up Jain, which means I have strong views on honey, onions and root vegetables, and I run a pharmacy where I think every week about animal testing. So this is not a neutral thesis for me, but I want to…
Started by Hetal Shah6 replies214 views -
Langar, the Shabbat table and Confucius’s sauce: what does eating together do?
On weekends I do seva in the langar at our gurdwara in Surrey. The idea goes back to Guru Nanak and was made central by the gurus who followed: a free kitchen where everyone, whatever their caste, faith or status, sits on…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal6 replies180 views -
Plato called my trade a knack. Why did philosophy decide taste and smell don’t count?
I have run kitchens for fifteen years and I've started reading the philosophers on food because I'm tired of being told it's ‘just subjective’ by people who have never had to fix a split sauce on a Friday night. What I found…
Started by Joel D'Souza6 replies264 views -
Nine countries in one kitchen and no agreement on salt: can food be judged like art?
I run a kitchen in Dubai with twenty-two cooks from nine countries. Every one of them arrived knowing exactly how much salt, sour and heat a dish needs, and every one of them knew something different. My Keralite cooks find the Lebanese…
Started by Joel D'Souza4 replies202 views -
Reading group: Brillat-Savarin’s Physiology of Taste, aphorisms and first meditations
I translate for a living and grew up an hour from Belley, where Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin was born, so this book has followed me around. Physiologie du goût appeared in 1825, a couple of months before he died. He was a lawyer…
Started by Claire Dubois5 replies114 views -
I judge wine for a living. Can someone be wrong about what tastes good?
I make small-batch wine in the Adelaide Hills and judge at regional shows, so this question pays my bills. Twice a year I sit at a table with three other judges and we give medals. Every year someone at the cellar door…
Started by Bec Doyle6 replies298 views -
Sancho’s kinsmen and the key on the leather thong: Hume’s taste essay from a wine judge
Hume's "Of the Standard of Taste" is pinned to my shed wall, mostly for one story he borrows from Don Quixote. Two of Sancho's kinsmen are asked to judge a hogshead of wine. One tastes it and says it would be good…
Started by Bec Doyle4 replies114 views -
What the tea room knows: Rikyū, wabi and taste as an aesthetic sense
European aesthetics long ranked taste below sight and hearing. A Japanese tea gathering suggests the ranking was answering the wrong question.
Started by Aiko Tanabe0 replies75 views