Tasty (8 page)

• • •

The body's “taste” for bitterness may be responsible for the ubiquity of bitter foods today. Humans need bitter com
pounds; many are beneficial in low doses. Chewing willow bark is an ancient folk remedy for pain or fever—­salicin is an anti-inflammatory compound related to aspirin. Bitter melon, a fruit grown in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, contains a suite of unpleasant-tasting chemicals that mildly lower blood sugar. As humans populated the globe, bitter-sensitive people may have helped their groups survive by detecting poisons; non-tasters might have tried more new things, bringing the others along when they found something with potential.

Humans can get used to anything. The Aymara people of Bolivia's Altiplano farm a very bitter type of potato, and their taste perceptions have adapted accordingly. Tests done in the 1980s showed the tribe was less sensitive to bitterness than Americans—yet every person tested was a PTC taster. Their sensitivity had dulled because their diets demanded it. Even at this new threshold, however, their tastes remained discerning: the point at which potatoes started to taste too bitter to them was exactly the point where they became toxic.

Like much else in the body, the flavor sense is a dialectic between genes and life experience. As people age, and sample ever-expanding varieties of foods, the networks of neurons in the brain responsible for aversive reactions shift. Bitterness mellows; for some it does a volte-face, becoming pleasurable. This capacity for contradiction, the strange yen to embrace the aversive, is what makes cuisine come to life.

It might have gone like this: Many generations after Bab el-Mandeb, a group of humans had migrated north of the Mediterranean, setting up camp in a valley. Culling the underbrush for food, they found sprigs atop twisted roots: plants from the genus
Brassica
, the wild ancestors of broccoli
and mustard. What these lacked in tastiness, they made up for in nutrition: chemicals called isothiocyanates that stimulate the immune system and provide protection against cancer. To the eternal regret of President Bush and all modern broccoli-haters, this assured
Brassica
's future.

CHAPTER 4

Flavor Cultures

A
bsinthe, a green-hued alcoholic beverage made with anise and assorted herbs and extracts, has a reputation for mystery and danger. Invented in Switzerland in the 1700s as a medicinal elixir, it became the preferred drink of artists, writers, and bohemians, who were drawn to its sharp herbal flavors and the vivid highs it was said to produce. In fin de siècle Paris, it cast a spell. “What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?” Oscar Wilde wrote. In
For Whom the Bell Tolls
, Ernest Hemingway described it as “opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-­warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy.”

Among absinthe's ingredients is thujone, an intensely bitter chemical with a menthol fragrance obtained from the flowers of wormwood, a small shrub. (Wormwood extracts are still used as a traditional folk treatment for intestinal parasites, and to kill insects.) A century ago, high doses of thujone were thought to cause hallucinations and madness. Vincent van Gogh was a heavy absinthe drinker; in 1887, he painted
Still Life with Absinthe
, which depicts a tall, shimmering, pale green drink sitting next to a water decanter on a table in a Paris café. After he killed himself in 1890, the art world speculated absinthe had been responsible for everything from
impairing his color perceptions—leading to his use of bright and off shades in paintings—to his mental deterioration, to his death itself.

Once known as the “green fairy,” absinthe came to be called the “green witch” and the “queen of poisons.” After a laborer went on an absinthe bender and shot his pregnant wife and two children in Switzerland in 1905, the Swiss government banned it. France followed suit in 1915; “absinthism” was blamed for eroding French culture. These fears lingered for decades. Even after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, absinthe remained illegal in the United States until 2007.

Modern science has shown that absinthe got a bad rap. While thujone blocks the action of GABA receptors, one of the nervous system's principal signaling tools, it would take a massive dose to have any effect. A 2008 study of thirteen century-old absinthes found that each contained only trace amounts of thujone; overindulging in absinthe would cause alcohol poisoning long before thujone could do any damage. Scholars now believe van Gogh's decline was caused by some form of mental illness, combined with alcoholism.

With the legal strictures lifted, enterprising beverage makers set out to re-create and rehabilitate absinthe. One of them, Jedd Haas, built a distillery in a modest cinderblock room under an overpass in an industrial district of New Or­leans in 2011. He and his partners named it Atelier Vie, French for “Life Workshop.”

Distillation—the process of heating, evaporating, and condensing a liquid to purify it—dates to the ancient world (the term “distilled spirit” was coined by Arab alchemists, who thought that vapor contained the spirit of a substance). Distilled alcohol is a comparatively recent invention. Doctors
in Salerno, Italy, began consistently making it in the twelfth century for medical use; in China, a form of distilled wine became a popular drink among the upper classes a century later. Making these drinks takes many steps. First, an alcoholic beverage is required; this may be wine (the basis for brandy) or a barley mash (whiskey) or fermented molasses (rum). It's heated in a still to a temperature above the boiling point of alcohol, 173.3 degrees Fahrenheit, but below water's 212 degrees. The alcohol evaporates faster, giving the vapor a higher concentration than the original drink. In the simplest kind of still, this vapor flows from the heated kettle into a separate container, where it is cooled and condensed into droplets, which collect in a third vessel. The resulting drink then may be aged and/or flavored.

Absinthe adds an extra twist to this process. First, herbs are infused into a previously distilled clear spirit. Atelier Vie uses rum; its hint of sweetness balances the bitterness of the herbs. This alcoholic “tea” is then distilled. The redistillation makes absinthe one of the most potent drinks on the market; Atelier Vie's is 136 proof, or 68 percent alcohol. (Scotch whisky is typically 40 to 50 percent alcohol.)

Serving absinthe involves a bit of chemical showmanship. First, Haas poured some of his absinthe into a glass. Instead of herbal green, this drink was a deep red, created by a secondary infusion of natural colors including hibiscus flower. He then placed an ornate, slotted silver spoon across the rim, set a sugar cube in the bowl of the spoon, and poured chilled water over it. As the sugar water and absinthe mixed, dissolved herbal compounds coalesced, turning the drink cloudy; this milkiness is called the
louche
, French for “shady.”

A drink such as Atelier Vie's Toulouse Red owes its existence to centuries of refinements, technological advances, and
cultural foment. It is many steps removed from the natural world, its original ingredients transformed beyond recognition. Its sensations and effects on the brain are like nothing found in any ancient hunter-gatherer's meal. These differences can be traced back to the birth of civilization itself about twelve thousand years ago, when both culture and the tools people used changed profoundly, and flavor with them.

At that time, the great post-Africa migrations were ending. The Ice Age was over, glaciers were receding, and a climate of warm, dry summers and cool, wet winters settled in across Europe and Asia. Wild grasses such as wheat, barley, and rye thrived, spreading over the Fertile Crescent, the area spanning the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. People began eating these grasses, then cultivating them. In mountains not far away, others learned the tricks of herding goats and sheep. Cultivated crops and domesticated animals replaced the more diverse foods found in nature.

With this simplification of diet came a flood of food and flavor innovations. One of these rivaled the taming of fire: humans harnessed fermentation. Today, fermentation is the source of much of the flavor in the world, its signature found in a galaxy of consumables, which, in addition to spirits, includes wines, beers, cheeses, yogurts, tofu, soy sauce, and pickles.

A basic biological force, fermentation is the metabolic action of certain types of bacteria and fungi. These single-­celled organisms belong to the microbiome, the sprawling populations of microbes that cover human skin, line our insides, and infest every square inch of the planet. One of the microbiome's most important jobs is decomposition: microbes feast on dead tissue, injecting its molecules back into the circle of life. Fermentation is a particular kind of decomposition,
the breakdown of carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen. It has the felicitous result of making decomposing things taste better, rather than worse.

The by-products of fermentation include carbon dioxide, acids, alcohol, and a host of cast-off molecules. These were useless waste to the microbes, but they captured prehistoric imaginations. Their flavors were complex and provocative. Alcohol also altered brain chemistry, lowering inhibitions and smoothing social interactions. These new sensations shocked stunted palates, and altered the nature of flavor itself. Taste and smell are usually thought of as a series of chemical reactions in the mouth and nose. But flavor only comes to life at the other end of this system, in the brain, where chemistry is transmuted into sensation and consciousness. Just as the advent of cooking unleashed new flavors and nutrients that influenced the course of evolution, fermentation impressed itself on human biology and the mind.

• • •

There was no single “first” alcoholic beverage, cheese, or any particular fermented food. Like cooking, these items were probably invented a number of times, in more than one place. But they were profoundly different from cooked food. The tools of civilization gave prehistoric peoples a level of control over nature, specifically microbiology, that had never been achieved before.

All the elements for success were already in place in nature, waiting to be assembled. One of the most prolific, and useful, microorganisms on earth is a species of yeast called
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
. It is the hidden agent behind virtually all alcoholic beverages, as well as breads and other baked goods, which is why it's also known as baker's yeast.
Saccharomyces cer
evisiae
is a supermicrobe. It can store lots of energy to survive lean periods, and it manufactures enough alcohol to kill off other yeasts, eliminating its competition. DNA from baker's yeasts still clumped to the legs of ant-like insects entombed in amber found in Poland and the Dominican Republic shows that it is tens of millions of years old.

There's an intriguing explanation for the ubiquity of baker's yeast: wasps. Wasps carry yeasts in their guts, and are attracted to fruits. In wine country, wasp nests often grow nearby as grapes ripen each season. Scientists at the University of Florence, Italy, looked for evidence of a connection. They caught wasps from colonies in Italy and analyzed their insides. Among 393 distinct kinds of yeast, the baker's variety stood out. The other yeasts waxed and waned during the course of the year, but baker's yeast was always present. It survived the cold by riding out winters in the guts of the fertilized queens. When young wasps departed their hives in the spring to form new colonies, baker's yeast went with them. In fact, the wasps are part of a global yeast transportation network; DNA evidence linked baker's yeast at Italian vineyards to many places in Italy and beyond: breweries, palm winemakers, and bread ovens as far away as Africa.

This means that
Homo sapiens
was hardly the first species to encounter the products of fermentation. Nature has its own version of the alcoholic beverage, made by the action of baker's and other types of yeast on ripening fruits. The bud of
Eugeissona tristis
, the bertam palm, found in the West Malaysian rain forest, exudes a nectar containing as much alcohol as a craft-brewed ale. The ripening process marbles the tree's green fruits with bright colors and turns its pulp sweet; yeast ferments the sugars. Alcohol plumes are chemical Sherpas, carrying scents far and wide, attracting insects that assist
with pollination, as well as shrews and slow lorises that spread the tree's seeds.

In Panama, howler monkeys habitually tempt fate by eating alcohol-laden palm fruit and drunkenly swinging through the trees. Biologist Robert Dudley tracked these monkey benders on a preserve on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal. One monkey climbed up a thirty-foot palm and then leaped to another to grab the bright orange fruits clustered near its top. He sniffed each carefully. In twenty minutes, he had imbibed fruit infused with the alcohol content of two bottles of wine. And the more he ate, the more reckless his maneuverings through the branches became. Yet he didn't fall.

But it seemed to Dudley that the monkeys weren't just out to get hammered. They were discerning tastemakers, sampling different fruits to find just the right degree of ripeness, the tastiest balance between the sweetness of the sugars and the pungency of the alcohol, as if at a wine tasting. Drinking alcohol is something that primates have always done, Dudley suggested. He called this “the drunken monkey hypothesis”: a certain amount of alcohol in the diet is normal, and shaped human brains and metabolisms. (Like the ills caused by eating and drinking too much sugar, alcoholism seems to be an unfortunate effect of civilization producing too much of something the human body evolved to tolerate only in limited amounts.)

Early humans left the rain forests to trek across savannas and through mountain passes, ultimately occupying many places that lacked ripening palm buds. But there were other opportunities to encounter alcohol. Patrick McGovern, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, believes early beverages developed out of a series of accidents. A bee
hive loosens and falls from a tree in a rainstorm. Yeasts swimming in the water and honey go to work, fermenting the mixture to mead in a matter of days. Honey + water + time is a simple recipe that humans would have noted, remembered, and shared. Gatherers might have harvested honeycombs, set them in hollowed rocks, and doused them with water, then left them in the sun.

At some point, people began to keep food in hollowed gourds, an invention that allowed a foodstuff's evolution from fresh to spoiled to be observed and tested. Human control of fermentation grew out of the ceaseless, and mostly losing, war on rot. When wild grapes were stored in gourds, some were crushed, breaking their skin and releasing sugary juice into the embrace of hungry yeasts. It frothed and bubbled. After a few days, it would become a pulpy, lightly alcoholic wine, tasty for only a short while before it turned to vinegar. The only choice was to drink and enjoy. Eventually, such accidents became recipes.

The earliest evidence of systematic beverage making was found in the 1990s at Jiahu, an excavated Chinese village along a branch of the Yellow River, settled about nine thousand years ago. An archaeological dig revealed evidence of surprising sophistication for a village dating back so soon after the dawn of civilization: A cemetery, holding hundreds of graves, sat beside clusters of mud huts. Social ranks had been established; some bodies were buried with jewelry, decorated tortoise shells, and ritual pottery vessels. People had fine toolmaking skills and, evidently, a talent for music: some graves contained flutes made from carved bone, the earliest ever found. They could still be played, and produced light, delicate notes. Archaeologists also uncovered some of the earliest known Chinese glyphs, the beginnings of written language.
They were etched into bones and shells: an eye, a window, and signs for the numbers one, two, eight, and ten.

Jiahu's artisans had also built earthen kilns to fire clay vessels, and many jars and pottery fragments were unearthed. When McGovern saw the clay jars for the first time, he was astounded: they were clearly beverage containers, resembling the wine amphorae of ancient Greece, though vastly older. Best of all, they weren't empty: a dried, reddish sheen lined the interiors of some, the remnants of a liquid.