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A street snack that has baffled botanists

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Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists

#131

Post by andi999 »

mPReDiToR wrote: post #111
daxfohl wrote: post #89

> "We are professors, busy between teaching and administrative work, so we rely on existing literature to come to conclusions" Is this really what academia is like?

In the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov this exact meme is lampooned. A character describes how they went to the library, read all the old books, wrote a paper and called it new research. Dr Asimov may have seen the bleak future of academia, what with it being his other trade. Mayhap we need more Dr Indiana Jones types with tenure?

Indiana Jones wouldn't get tenure, yes he found the ark of the covenant, but what did he find afterwards (which was delivered to the gov/museum?)

Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists

#132

Post by coldcode »

derefr wrote: post #68
hyperpallium2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

coke secret recipe, KFC secret herbs and spices

For both of those, you can put them through some chromatography/spectrography/etc. and figure out essentially what's in them — what ingredients, in what ratios. What you won't find out is the particular process required to get those ingredients "formatted" the right way to taste like the result. (E.g. Coke apparently does some fancy, hard-to-replicate-at-home kind of micronized emulsification to the flavoring oils th…

When I was in college in the 70's we went to a Miller brewery where they told us about some blue liquid they poured into Miller High Life that allowed them to ship the beer in clear bottles instead of brown. It came in tanker cars full; they claimed the FDA didn't know what it was (don't think I believed them).

Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists

#133

Post by mcphage »

andi999 wrote: post #131
mPReDiToR wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov this exact meme is lampooned. A character describes how they went to the library, read all the old books, wrote a paper and called it new research. Dr Asimov may have seen the bleak future of academia, what with it being his other trade. Mayhap we need more Dr Indiana Jones types with tenure?

Indiana Jones wouldn't get tenure, yes he found the ark of the covenant, but what did he find afterwards (which was delivered to the gov/museum?)

The Cross of Coronado

Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists

#135

Post by Rexxar »

singularity2001 wrote: post #110

meta: how can atlasobscura.com operate legally in Europe when the only cookie option is 'confirm'?

I have blocked the popup and I block third parties requests and I have only two cookies at the moment :

    ao_cookies_ok:0
    eu_origin:1
So it's not ok (the irremovable popup), but it could be worse.

Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists

#136

Post by thechao »

dandelany wrote: post #106
barkha2803 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi. I am the author of this article :) To sum up, most research as of now points to Agave but botanists who did the DNA barcoding don't want to commit to Agave. For two reasons: 1) It is 89% close to Agave, the Sisalana variety but 11% is open to doubts and research. 2)The Agave expert, who tried to make a beverage out of it and has worked on it for years, says it's can't be agave. He has eaten both the snack, as wel…

Interesting article. I also can’t imagine that it’s either sisal or Americana exactly, both are so tough & fibrous, and are in such widespread cultivation that this preparation would be more well-known. The agave heart or “piña” used for mezcal is somewhat similar but not that similar. Agaves very quickly grow some massive asparagus-shaped flower stalks before they die, is it possible this is the base of an enormous…

We have the americana all over central Texas; the stalks that grow here are more like vertical rope, smell like death & are green/brown all the way through. They’re also segmented & don’t get nearly fat enough as shown.

Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists

#138

Post by gus_massa »

grawprog wrote: post #14
jackvalentine wrote: post #13

I don't get it, rather than using the tools of botany and DNA analysis why not just pay a PI to follow the vendor -> supplier -> source trail?

>Probe them and they’ll cart away. “Forest officials in Maharashtra have tried to spy on them, but it was futile,” Dr. Nimbalkar recalls.

Perhaps they are getting bribes from the street vendors to look the other way, and that reduces they spying abilities.

Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists

#139

Post by dunham »

Clewza313 wrote: post #94
drubio wrote: post #39

This looks like a giant variety of 'Pachyrhizus erosus' or Jicama, which is also a street snack widely sold in Mexico. I'v never seen ones as large as the one in the article, but the watery texture and how it's condimented (lemon, sugar, salt, chili powder) is exactly like Jicama. Seems wikipedia has a reference to ones as large as 2 meters and 20 kg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachyrhizus_erosus so it may be like…

This seems unlikely, since jicama is widely eaten in India as well, and much smaller than what the images depict. (I don't doubt it can grow that large, just that I've never seen it that big.) The texture also looks off for jicama, which is more watery and can't be sliced that thin. Wikipedia: "In Bengali, it is known as shankhalu (শাঁখ আলু), literally translating to "conch (shankha, শাঁখ) potato (alu, আলু)" for its…

> can't be sliced that thin.

Loló in San Francisco slices jicama that thin to use in place of a tortilla in tacos:

http://cyneats.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Screenshot-201...

Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists

#140

Post by kortex »

MattGaiser wrote: post #42
kortex wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Species doesn't mean as much in the plant world. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, kohlrabi, and gai lan are all Brassica oleracea . You can have specimens that are even technically the same cultivar but wildly different alimentary character.

TIL that the vegetable aisle has half the species I thought it did.

Oh yeah. Brassica rapa has your turnip, napa cabbage, bok choy and rapini/rabes. Brassica napus gives canola oil, swedish turnip, and rutabaga. Mustard comes from B. juncea, B. nigra and B. hirta.

Also those species names aren't really even guaranteed to be accurate because biologists, botanists, geneticists, etc, can't even really agree on where to draw the line.

There's a whole genre of Brassica memes and it's fantastic.

https://mobile.twitter.com/faineg/status/1386522223901618177...

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