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‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

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Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#151

Post by hinkley »

taneq wrote: post #136
hinkley wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a tavern owner, one might be prone to neutrality. One king is as good as another, as long as they leave you alone. In dramatizations of wars we always see an army taking over a village and sucking it dry, but I suspect there would be some overlap of tavern locations and 'tactically bad places to get caught by the enemy', such that the officers might volunteer you for a free meal and then move on before enemy scout…

I’d imagine natural selection plays a part. Eventually after all the taverns in dangerous (for taverns, not individual humans) locations are ransacked, the site of locations the survivors were built in will enter the zeitgeist as “This seems like a good spot for a tavern.”

And floods, and forest fires…

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#152

Post by atleta »

wackget wrote: post #148

The nonsense about how the flavour gets more complex over time is just that: nonsense. There's a video on YouTube where a hobby scientist takes a cup of water and doses it with an incredibly potent poison, a tiny fraction of which could kill. He then discards half the water, dilutes it, and repeats the process about 6 times. Finally he drinks the water and is totally unharmed. The point is that after the pot's been h…

Discarding just the half of the poison solution and doing it 6 times just dilutes it down to 1/64th of the original concentration. I guess the video you mention wants to debunk homeopathy, but the maths as you describe it doesn't work. (Homeopathy uses 1:100 dilutions, so that would be a different game. Indeed, I think I've heard that they don't even bother with diluting 1:100, they just discard the whole contents and use what's left inside accidentally.)

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#153

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

notfromhere wrote: post #87
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't had it personally, but one of my SO's tried a famous "perpetual stew" when in France and we talked about it at one point. Her description kinda matched what I'd expect from braises that I've let go to long: you end up with bland mush. I think there's a reason very few restaurants serve this style of dish, and it's not because of health codes. We live in an era of insane abundance compared to the medeivil an…

It's a romantic notion but if you simmer anything for too long it'll just be generic food water at some point

It’s just old timey MSG.

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#154

Post by kadoban »

inetknght wrote: post #23
Waterluvian wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. I'm not sure the historians fully know. This concept might even be apocryphal to an extent. What I have learned is that the concept evolved (like so much cooking does) from what I described into a "it's actually now a recipe that people prepare once." Something else I learned is that back in the day, people had different expectations for food quality. We would regularly eat rancid meat (many BBQ sauces…

> well... actually we purge it once a week otherwise it goes completely bad I know that when I cook stews I often end up with a lot of food bits stuck and eventually burned at the bottom and sides of the pot. I can imagine keeping it going by pouring the stew contents to another pot so that I could clean the first pot though. Without doing that... those stuck & burned bits will certainly add "flavor" to the stew.

> Without doing that... those stuck & burned bits will certainly add "flavor" to the stew.

Pretty sure you're joking, but very likely they will. A limited amount of little charred bits taste quite good, and unless there's serious issues with heating or composition, it's not like it's going to overwhelm the rest of the flavors.

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#155

Post by boomerango »

dekhn wrote: post #78
inetknght wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> well... actually we purge it once a week otherwise it goes completely bad I know that when I cook stews I often end up with a lot of food bits stuck and eventually burned at the bottom and sides of the pot. I can imagine keeping it going by pouring the stew contents to another pot so that I could clean the first pot though. Without doing that... those stuck & burned bits will certainly add "flavor" to the stew.

This stuff is known as "fond" and it's commonly used to make flavorful liquids (stock/broth).

There is fond (which can also burn) and then there is charred debris. The former adds umami, the latter tastes like cigar ash.

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#156

Post by prpl »

bobthepanda wrote: post #137
curiousllama wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought of it more as a way to conserve the calories that food represent, rather than a delicious dish in its own right

It can preserve flavor, but it becomes concentrated as the water evaporates away, so i wouldn’t say you should ever grab a bowl of just that. Master stocks are used as a base in Chinese cooking the same way a lot of recipes already start from a stock; but it is rarer and rarer for home cooks to make stock from scratch and not just use a box from the store in the US. I have a lot of friends that categorically do not c…

Aromatics also tend to escape as well, not just water. There’s some good tests out there with venting vs non-venting pressure cookers for making stock

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#157

Post by kadoban »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #130
malfist wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, the ones that survive outside that range are typically anaerobic and can't survive being exposed to air, so that makes it even less likely to be a vector for food poisoning

2 ways bacteria/fungi hurt people: excreting toxins or by colonizing us. The 140 degree rule basically stops all colonizers since anything that lives in those temps probably isn't planning to infect us. But some extremophile that takes hold in the hot soup could still excrete toxins that build up over time

I'm not sure there's anything in the intersection of: "grows in boiling water" , "exists outside of the deep sea or other exotic places" , "hurts humans" and "is at _all_ common".

If there is, it has to be a really short list.

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#160

Post by mithr »

Also brings to mind balsamic vinegar: there's a battery of casks, decreasing in size, and each year a portion of the biggest cask are transferred to the one below it, part of which has been moved to the next smaller-sized cask, and so on. New grape must is then added only to the biggest. The smallest cask is where the final product comes from (after a minimum of 12 years, for the "real thing").

Having some older vinegar in each of the casks significantly enriches the flavor, but also protects against bad years, since if the flavor of the grapes is a bit off one year, it gets balanced by what's already there as well as by next year's batch.

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