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Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

bbc.com

71–80 of 101 posts

Re: Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

#71
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you file it as click bait, exactly? I thought the headline gave me a very clear idea of what the article's contents would be. How would you improve it? Edit: Wait, the actual article says secret and on HN it says chemical. Hmm.

It's click bait because the most important information is missing from the title. It could be improved by changing it to "Tonka beans: delicious and toxic".

Missing? I'm confused. All of those words are in the title.

Re: Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

#72
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that part about his cooking experiment was rather ridiculous. It marries very well with vanilla and chocolate. By itself it has a bit of a sweet nutty flavor that is rather complex. To be slighlty flippant, it's kind of the shitake (or msg) of desert, it enhances the rest of the flavors.

The writer is a woman.

You are a ...pedant!

Re: Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

#73
post #68

>“I was talking to a vanilla purveyor recently and he offered me tonka bean paste,” says Raquel. “I was like ‘If I want to use tonka bean, I’ll use tonka bean.’” One of my biggest issues with mislabeling foods. Sell me vanilla at the market price, sell me tonka at the market price, but don't sell my vanilla that is actually tonka at vanilla market prices. Same with scallops and stingray, crab and surimi, calamari and…

This is a big problem in the USA, but much of Europe is far stricter about food labeling.

No joke, a big thing I noticed the first time I went outside America was, "Holy shit, the food is real." No matter where I go, I find cheap food that's simply better quality than anything that's even mid-range in the US. It's especially noticeable with snacks/junk food, where everything in America is some odd artificial flavor that tastes nothing like what it claims to be, while (particularly in Japan) things taste exactly like what they claim to be and often are made from those exact ingredients.

Re: Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

#74
post #18

Can someone who's a better cook than this author tell us their opinion of the taste?

It tastes delicious and has a fantastic aroma. It's quite complex. I'd put it somewhere between vanilla, marzipan and cinnamon. I've tried it with chocolate, almond, vanilla, fruit, cream, custard with good results. It also apparently goes well with fish (haven't tried it yet).

It tastes rather like cola nuts to me - like cinnamon + cola + vanilla.

Thanks for the suggestion about fish

Re: Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

#75
post #38

>“I was talking to a vanilla purveyor recently and he offered me tonka bean paste,” says Raquel. “I was like ‘If I want to use tonka bean, I’ll use tonka bean.’” One of my biggest issues with mislabeling foods. Sell me vanilla at the market price, sell me tonka at the market price, but don't sell my vanilla that is actually tonka at vanilla market prices. Same with scallops and stingray, crab and surimi, calamari and…

> scallops and stingray Ray and skate is nothing like scallops. > calamari and pork Again, nothing alike. > chocolate and flavored vegetable oil Chocolate contains more elements than just cocoa butter, so you can't just replace it with vegetable oil. I'm sure there's some chocolate out there that cuts vegetable oil into the cocoa butter, but I've personally not come across it.

> I'm sure there's some chocolate out there that cuts vegetable oil into the cocoa butter, but I've personally not come across it.

You should come to Poland. :-(

Re: Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

#76
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's click bait because the most important information is missing from the title. It could be improved by changing it to "Tonka beans: delicious and toxic".

Missing? I'm confused. All of those words are in the title.

Only in HN's edited title, not the original BBC title.

Re: Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

#77
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missing? I'm confused. All of those words are in the title.

Only in HN's edited title, not the original BBC title.

I think I've been misreading the BBC title the whole time as also saying "Tonka beans". Oops. It's in the subtitle but not the real title.

Re: Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

#78
post #46

>“I was talking to a vanilla purveyor recently and he offered me tonka bean paste,” says Raquel. “I was like ‘If I want to use tonka bean, I’ll use tonka bean.’” One of my biggest issues with mislabeling foods. Sell me vanilla at the market price, sell me tonka at the market price, but don't sell my vanilla that is actually tonka at vanilla market prices. Same with scallops and stingray, crab and surimi, calamari and…

It sort of makes one stick with whole ingredients. If you want flour that is relatively bug free, grind your own wheat. No packaged goods. Certainly shrinks one's choices but it might be the right thing to do to encourage more transparent suppliers.

Are bugs in flour really that big of a health concern?

Re: Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

#79
post #38

>“I was talking to a vanilla purveyor recently and he offered me tonka bean paste,” says Raquel. “I was like ‘If I want to use tonka bean, I’ll use tonka bean.’” One of my biggest issues with mislabeling foods. Sell me vanilla at the market price, sell me tonka at the market price, but don't sell my vanilla that is actually tonka at vanilla market prices. Same with scallops and stingray, crab and surimi, calamari and…

> scallops and stingray Ray and skate is nothing like scallops. > calamari and pork Again, nothing alike. > chocolate and flavored vegetable oil Chocolate contains more elements than just cocoa butter, so you can't just replace it with vegetable oil. I'm sure there's some chocolate out there that cuts vegetable oil into the cocoa butter, but I've personally not come across it.

It's referred to as 'compound chocolate' [1]. It's done because to make paletable chocolate you need to add a greater porportion of cocoa butter than is in cocoa beans themselves. This makes the cocoa butter more expensive than the cocoa solids/powder. To save money low end chocolate replaces some or all of the cocoa butter with other oils, and uses chemicals to doctor up the chocolate to create something with roughly the same experience.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_chocolate

Re: Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

#80
post #12
post #8

I was surprised the article didn't mention nutmeg, which is widely used despite its toxicity, so I tried to figure out how their LD50 compares (i.e. how much tonka nut you need to eat to have a 50% chance of death, and how nutmeg stacks up). I couldn't find any clear answers for tonka beans and the exact dose of course depends on body weight but the lethal doses for nutmeg were an order of magnitude higher: for nutme…

> for nutmeg the doses are given in thousands of grammes per kg body weight Is it really fair to call something toxic if the LD50 is more than your bodyweight? I suspect you might have your LD50 value off.

It turns out the LD50 of Anvils is way less than a typical persons body weight when applied topically to the cranium via a 20 foot drop.
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