Food
Bee Wilson writes her last column
Published 24 March 2003
Some parting unscientific cookery tips in a final column after five years
It is often said that the way to extract maximum juice from a lemon is to roll it vigorously on a flat surface with the palm of your hand before juicing, to make the flesh more yielding. Another school of thought is that heating citrus fruit in a microwave for a minute or so will boost the juice.
These tips sound plausible enough - but do they really work? The chemist Robert L Wolke used 40 limes in some experiments and found that neither rolling nor microwaving prior to juicing made any appreciable difference to the yield. His "big surprise", however, was discovering that when he rolled the limes and then microwaved them, "they practically gushed juice", yielding 26 per cent more than for untreated fruit. Wow!
All manner of supposed kitchen tips break down like this when subjected to real science. Wolke is the author of What Einstein Told His Cook (W W Norton, £20.95), a myth-busting compendium of scientific answers to culinary problems. For example, many people think that adding raw potato to an over-salty soup will correct the seasoning by "absorbing" the excess salt. But Wolke proves this to be false, by tasting salty broths with and without potato added. The only way to rescue your salty soup is to dilute it.
Wolke's book also claims that it is superstitious to say that mushrooms should never be washed because they "soak up water like a sponge". When he soaked white mushrooms in water for a full five minutes, they absorbed only 2.7 per cent of their weight in water. "So go ahead and wash your mushrooms to your heart's content - at least the common button kind" is the carefree advice.
Wolke is writing in a distinguished American tradition of literal-minded culinary problem-solving. For the past ten years, Cook's Illustrated magazine (go to www.cooksillustrated.com for more details) has sought the ultimate answers to even the smallest cookery questions. Which is the best rubber spatula? How do you stop lemon chicken from tasting bitter? How can you make a carrot cake that is "moist and rich, not soggy and oily"? Cook's Illustrated tests and retests, with Nasa-like thoroughness. Often, the results are enlightening. An article on Boston baked beans in the January issue dispels almost all the usual advice on cooking dried beans. Beans do not actually need to be soaked, provided they are cooked for long enough, nor does adding salt at the beginning "toughen" them (if this were true, why did the Bostonians learn to cook their beans with salt pork?). But too much acidity, in the form of tomatoes or vinegar, can toughen beans, as can too much calcium in hard water. The "safest bet", if not the cheapest, is to use bottled water - or follow the old advice of a pinch of bicarb.
Much as I admire Cook's Illustrated, sometimes its tips seem more trouble than the problem they are addressing. Always keep your pepper pot in a ramekin dish to avoid a mess of pepper powder! Avoid sliding sauce bowls by securing them to the plate with a dab of creamed honey! Use paper coffee filters as mise en place cups! Chop cranberries in the channel of a meat carving board!
It occurs to me that in almost five years of writing here, I have offered you very few cookery tips. And this, being my last NS column, is my final chance. So here are a few unscientific thoughts, in no particular order.
Don't burn garlic, even slightly - it tastes horrible. In fact, try not to burn anything. The best way to open a large jar is to bang the side of the lid forcefully against a work surface. Grated, sauteed courgettes are delicious, even if you think you hate courgettes. Deep-frying at home is seldom worth the fumes and risk of death. You should never be without a lemon, and never underestimate the power of a little butter. Oh, and only salt water for pasta just before you put it in. This is not because it affects the speed of cooking (another theory disproved by Professor Wolke) but just because if you salt it earlier, you'll only forget about it and salt again, leaving your spaghetti inedibly saline. I speak from experience.
Thank you, New Statesman readers. I will miss you.
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