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#1

Anatomical / Re: An Abomination: Is America...

Last post by J. Wilhelm - Yesterday at 11:56:54 PM

Next in the series of Lovekraftian culinary delights: American Chocolate 

I hadn't thought of processed cheese being Steampunk (to be honest I hadn't thought of processed cheese at all in a few decades) but it does seem to have just the right mixture of horror, history, absurdity and whimsy. And horror, stomach-churning horror.¹

It is easy to assume that adulterating foods to hold more water (or air) so they are cheaper to produce was a 20th century development, but as with so many things, it turns out to just be 'improvements' on Victorian ethiclessness. Ho hum.

¹ The first time I saw the cover of Jean-Paul Sartre's 'Nausea' I assumed that it was a Dutch/German edition of a book about the North Sea. 

Well, it's not all bad, to be perfectly honest.  I think milk chocolate turned out well (clearly a Victorian and European invention), as well as condensed and evaporated milk.

Have you ever tried to make hot chocolate with coarse ground, unmilled unfiltered and unemulsified cacao nibs?  It's an awful lot of work for just a cup of hot chocolate.  Even the traditional Mexican/Spanish chocolate, the first hot chocolate that ever was, is emulsified nowadays, though they still leave the cocoa and cinnamon fibers in it for authenticity (you find a little grit to chew at the end of your cup).

It was the milk chocolate (particularly Hershey's) that I was thinking of. Spoiling the milk before making chocolate with it makes it keep for much longer. Hershey's won't admit that they do it, but most people can taste the butylic acid that this creates: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/hersheys-chocolate-tastes-like-vomit_l_60479e5fc5b6af8f98bec0cd

As for making cocoa with nibs, surprisingly I have. My son is a bit of a 'foodie' and bought some cocoa nibs for a recipe. The simplest recipe I could find to use some of the leftover nibs was cocoa. It's an interesting, earthy flavour and while I could see why they stuck with it and developed it, it tasted a bit watery and one-note to me. As you say, the emulsification makes a bit difference sensually and the addition of vanilla and bucketfuls of sugar over the centuries has definitely made it more palatable to modern tastes.

Oh! Butyric acid, I see... Oh well. The assumption is that they're spoiling the milk, but I think they're not admitting that. As to whether all American chocolate may taste like Hershey's... that's debatable.  I can taste significant differences between manufacturers.

The formulation of chocolate can sometimes follow the acquisition of a brand by another company. And today you're no longer talking about "national" companies. Today these are transnational conglomerates. For example, the largest baking conglomerate in the world is Grupo Bimbo from Mexico, and they own a number of important brands in the US! This means that products are now being reformulated away from the "American Standard." And even between domestic companies you can have a change in philosophy depending on who the owner is.

Recently, to give you another example, I noticed an important change in an American candy bar known as "Butterfinger."  Butterfinger is a comprised of a crumbly solid peanut-caramel center covered in a layer of chocolate. The brand has been passed around among a plethora of conglomerates through the decades since its inception in 1923.  Its latest owner,  Ferrero SpA, bought it from Nestle in 2018, and let me tell you it was a great improvement. Gone were artificial colors, stabilizers and the partially hydrogenated oil used for the caramel core. Much to my surprise the ingredient list shrank to less than 6 natural sources like plain sugar cane and regular cocoa. The thing is that Nestle didn't change the formulation when they bought it in 1990. The formula was nearly the same since I was a small kid in the 1970s/80s when the bar was owned by Standard Brands and Nabisco. But by then the bar had been composed of myriad food chemicals for decades. It is very rare to have a manufacturer go "all natural" when they purchase a product but Ferrero did! I can only hope that Ferrero will hold on to that brand for a long time.

###

The traditional way to get around that wateriness in hot chocolate in Mexico (and I imagine Spain since colonial times) is to use boiling milk, rather than water (milk has lecithin which is a set of various chemical emulsifiers), which makes the chocolate more full bodied, smoother and much frothier. Then you can use the wooden "molinillo" to "attempt" to create the froth and eliminate as many cocoa globules as you can.

On additives: Mesoamerican Natives did have vanilla, which is native to the coastal areas in the Gulf of Mexico.  Cinnamon ("false" cinnamon as opposed to Ceylon's Cinnamomum verum) is also native to Mexico, and today is -always- used in hot chocolate, which may bring an extra dimension to it, since you noted it'd be rather bland with vanilla, but I don't know if vanilla had ever been used alone with cocoa (I'll have to check, but I don't think so).

Along those lines, the use of chili peppers in cocoa or chocolate really only belongs to the original Native cocoa + water drink, and it's a bit of a fad, used by contemporary chocolatiers today, since we don't even know how much and what kind of sweetener (if any) was ever used in prehispanic times, or how much chili was added. I'd avoid the use of chili unless you're trying to reproduce a known specific Native recipe.  One additive that is never mentioned for the Native cocoa and which has a lot of written  evidence for it as well as archeological evidence is Annato (Sp. "Achiote") which adds a reddish color and a faint nutty flavor. I haven't seen anyone mention that at all or use it in modern chocolate.

#2

Anatomical / Re: Saccharin is Steampunk

Last post by J. Wilhelm - Yesterday at 11:36:00 PM

That was a fairly interesting article. And it has profound implications for the Victorian Food list. Because sugar is listed as one of the products branded by several companies in the 19th. C., then it follows that Saccharin must be listed too,provided a brand name can be found attached to the product since its emergence through to present day.

However, the original company which produced it for Fahlberg in New York in 1886, Schulze-Berge, Koechl & Movius (Magdeburg, Germany) no longer exists, and it's not clear if anyone at all still holds the patent for it, or if it's name "Saccharine" is itself a registered active trademark.

#3

Off Topic / Re: YET *EVEN* MORE things tha...

Last post by Sir Henry - Yesterday at 04:26:16 PM

I called a friend and had a chat this afternoon.

It was only a short call, but it's the first time I've spoken to anyone other than my wife, son or cashier at the supermarket (and you lot) in well over two months. I was supposed to go to a party a week ago but had a panic attack instead, so today's call was the first baby step back to being social, I hope.

#4

Anatomical / Re: Saccharin is Steampunk

Last post by Sir Henry - Yesterday at 03:48:14 PM

I'm not sure that I can agree; for me something so basic, straightforward and undecorated has no place in the Steampunk universe.
Except, of course, as an ingredient in a much more fantastical creation such as a life-sized crystal candy copy of the Eiffel Tower perhaps.

It's food made from coal tar! How is that not Steampunk?

You are right, of course. 

#5

Meta-Clubs / Re: Dragon Tamers - A room for...

Last post by SeVeNeVeS - Yesterday at 02:55:06 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-WUej0sSpU

#6

Anatomical / Re: Saccharin is Steampunk

Last post by von Corax - Yesterday at 01:39:06 PM

I'm not sure that I can agree; for me something so basic, straightforward and undecorated has no place in the Steampunk universe.
Except, of course, as an ingredient in a much more fantastical creation such as a life-sized crystal candy copy of the Eiffel Tower perhaps.

It's food made from coal tar! How is that not Steampunk?

#7

Anatomical / Re: Saccharin is Steampunk

Last post by Sir Henry - Yesterday at 09:49:46 AM

I'm not sure that I can agree; for me something so basic, straightforward and undecorated has no place in the Steampunk universe.
Except, of course, as an ingredient in a much more fantastical creation such as a life-sized crystal candy copy of the Eiffel Tower perhaps.

#8

Anatomical / Re: An Abomination: Is America...

Last post by Sir Henry - Yesterday at 09:46:01 AM

Next in the series of Lovekraftian culinary delights: American Chocolate 

I hadn't thought of processed cheese being Steampunk (to be honest I hadn't thought of processed cheese at all in a few decades) but it does seem to have just the right mixture of horror, history, absurdity and whimsy. And horror, stomach-churning horror.¹

It is easy to assume that adulterating foods to hold more water (or air) so they are cheaper to produce was a 20th century development, but as with so many things, it turns out to just be 'improvements' on Victorian ethiclessness. Ho hum.

¹ The first time I saw the cover of Jean-Paul Sartre's 'Nausea' I assumed that it was a Dutch/German edition of a book about the North Sea. 

Well, it's not all bad, to be perfectly honest.  I think milk chocolate turned out well (clearly a Victorian and European invention), as well as condensed and evaporated milk.

Have you ever tried to make hot chocolate with coarse ground, unmilled unfiltered and unemulsified cacao nibs?  It's an awful lot of work for just a cup of hot chocolate.  Even the traditional Mexican/Spanish chocolate, the first hot chocolate that ever was, is emulsified nowadays, though they still leave the cocoa and cinnamon fibers in it for authenticity (you find a little grit to chew at the end of your cup).

It was the milk chocolate (particularly Hershey's) that I was thinking of. Spoiling the milk before making chocolate with it makes it keep for much longer. Hershey's won't admit that they do it, but most people can taste the butylic acid that this creates: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/hersheys-chocolate-tastes-like-vomit_l_60479e5fc5b6af8f98bec0cd

As for making cocoa with nibs, surprisingly I have. My son is a bit of a 'foodie' and bought some cocoa nibs for a recipe. The simplest recipe I could find to use some of the leftover nibs was cocoa. It's an interesting, earthy flavour and while I could see why they stuck with it and developed it, it tasted a bit watery and one-note to me. As you say, the emulsification makes a bit difference sensually and the addition of vanilla and bucketfuls of sugar over the centuries has definitely made it more palatable to modern tastes.

#9

Off Topic / Re: GAAAAAHHHHHH Mk.VI: The Re...

Last post by LukeHogbin - Yesterday at 07:50:42 AM

Had a seizure on the night between Thursday and Friday and I'm still trying to recover from it. Blah.

I hope you're recovering well.
But don't let it happen again, it's just not on.

I wish it were that simple, but I have atypical epilepsy and even the doctors don't know where it came from. :/

#10

Anatomical / Saccharin is Steampunk

Last post by RJBowman - April 29, 2024, 10:55:13 PM

I saw this video last week, and was inspired by J. Wilhelm's post about American Cheese. It was discovered in 1879.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwAKFeqJznI

In the 19th century, coal tar extract were important to industry as a source of textile dies among other uses. I guess it was inevitable that the source of artificially color for the visual sense could also produce artificial flavors.

Be grateful that coal tar only became a source of flavoring, and did not become a source of the substance of synthetic foods.

Additional history from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin#History