Scientists at Leeds University in England have been seeking answers to one of the great food mysteries: Why are french fries so good? Using a technique called Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry - which is able to separate foods into their base elements - the scientists were able to capture the various aroma components of the chips (that's British for fries if you don't know).
It turns out that the french fries' bouquet includes butterscotch, bitter cocoa, onion, cheese, flowers and even …ironing boards. These aromas combine to make one of the most addictive foods known to man.
Lead researcher, Dr. Graham Clayton speculates that "perhaps these findings will see chips treated like wine in the future – with chip fans turning into buffs as they impress their friends with eloquent descriptions of their favourite fries." Hopefully this won't mean that people start eating aged french fries.
1 comment:
Ironing boards? Yes! The smell (wonderful word -- those double ll's after the sm and the generous "I won't get in the way but will provide an opportunity for the others to be separate and then connect" short e -- tastes like chocolate!) of freshly laundered, dry (but not too) cloth.... Think El Norte (that great, great film), with its magical-realist scene of clothes set out to dry in the sun, and the butterflies, the butterflies -- so like Nausicaa and her girlfriends in the Odyssey! Or think Glen Close folding the towels in that otherwise problematic movie -- the scene where she folds and then unnecessarily and wonderfully keeps moving her hand over the towels she has just washed and dried (the woman's experience of a houseful of guests: the weekend/week of the many sheets and towels, to coin a Homeric epithet: I'm tired, I'm anxious, I feel this with -- okay, here goes -- every fiber of my.... I'm not quite imagining that I'm hoping for those butterflies to surprise me at any moment and return me to mama's tortillas, slap, slap, slap, slap).
Noah, I love the way your blog sends me into synaesthetic reveries....
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