Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time
Speaker 1: for a vault episode. This one originally aired on November.
Speaker 1: This was actually an episode about Thanksgiving food, which got
Speaker 1: way weirder and more interesting than than you would expect.
Speaker 1: This one sounds exciting that I have no memory of it, um,
Speaker 1: and then we just did it last week we talked
Speaker 1: about holy gravy. Oh yes, yes, okay, I do remember
Speaker 1: it now. Yes, the Holy Gravy discussion is pretty fun. Well,
Speaker 1: let's ladle it up and enjoy. Hello, listeners. This is Seth,
Speaker 1: the audio producer for Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This
Speaker 1: is just a quick note to let you know that
Speaker 1: in this episode Robert's microphone sounds a little different compared
Speaker 1: with our normal episodes, but it's just a one time thing,
Speaker 1: little glitch in the old technology during these COVID times.
Speaker 1: But do not worry. We've cleaned it up as best
Speaker 1: we can and should be still a very pleasant listening
Speaker 1: experience and we'll be back to normal next week. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. Enjoy the show. Welcome to stot to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio Hey, you
Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe mccormickan. Today we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about some American Thanksgiving food. Rob I've noticed that
Speaker 1: over the past few years, every year you say something like,
Speaker 1: this year we're going to lean into the holidays. But
Speaker 1: we've been doing it a lot, and I think one
Speaker 1: I'm wondering about something psychological. Is it that you think
Speaker 1: if we actually do content about the holidays on the show,
Speaker 1: the Holidays, will we will get through them faster? Um?
Speaker 1: Maybe that's part of it. It does kind of extend
Speaker 1: from my personal philosophy of like, you know, in the past,
Speaker 1: I have seen Halloween as sort of the end of
Speaker 1: the year, and then all this other stuff is just
Speaker 1: kind of added on and isn't as fun and maybe
Speaker 1: it's more of a chore. And then I realized, well,
Speaker 1: that's not getting me anywhere. You know. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a sad sack um, you know, or a
Speaker 1: grump us holidays, be a happy sack. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: the idea, you know, lean into it, find find something
Speaker 1: to enjoy about the holidays, find that the bits that
Speaker 1: that work for me and celebrate those, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think maybe part of it is like, yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're into it, it's gonna it's gonna move a little faster.
Speaker 1: It's gonna it's gonna move along. Uh you know. Uh
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think that's part of it. And uh
Speaker 1: also occasionally we have advertisers who are saying who come
Speaker 1: to us and say, hey, what are your holiday episodes
Speaker 1: for this year? Could have one or two in the
Speaker 1: you know, in the sheath, but you you brought up
Speaker 1: a topic that I actually thought was pretty interesting because
Speaker 1: I'd never considered this at length before. And it's the
Speaker 1: idea of the poultry wishbone. So so that's where we're
Speaker 1: going to be starting today. I don't did you ever
Speaker 1: actually do the thing as a kid where you take
Speaker 1: out the turkey's wishbone and break it or was that
Speaker 1: just something you saw on TV? We would do it
Speaker 1: at some point or another, and it's not something I
Speaker 1: remember doing every year. It's so not a tradition. I
Speaker 1: continue I have continued on when I'm around cooked turkeys.
Speaker 1: Uh So I don't have like a strong attachment to it,
Speaker 1: but I do remember doing it. But I probably did
Speaker 1: it because I saw it on TV. Yeah, I'd say
Speaker 1: me too. Uh. We we figured at some point we
Speaker 1: tried it at my house and I figured out I
Speaker 1: don't remember the details, but I figured out intuitively how
Speaker 1: to always get the bone to break in my favor,
Speaker 1: and I definitely did. That's a real life hack there,
Speaker 1: magical life hack, because yeah, it generally the idea is
Speaker 1: you take this wishbone, this this little you or v
Speaker 1: shate bone in the turn key. Um. You'll also, of
Speaker 1: course find in a chicken. We'll get into all the
Speaker 1: places you can find it here in a bit. But
Speaker 1: the idea is what it's. It's you or be shaped.
Speaker 1: Two different people grab an end of it, and then
Speaker 1: you bend, you break, and whoever gets the big part,
Speaker 1: whoever gets the the lion's share of the turkey bone,
Speaker 1: gets to live. However, what they get, they get a
Speaker 1: wish Is that the thing or it's a good luck
Speaker 1: maybe that's what it's. What it's called a wishbone. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean it's some kind of luck thunder dome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get the good end of the bargain. It's not
Speaker 1: clear exactly what the bargain is. Yeah, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of these things that it seems pretty it is pretty
Speaker 1: harmless because it's almost completely devoid of of any kind
Speaker 1: of magical thinking. I've never encountered anyone who took the
Speaker 1: wishbone seriously, like, yes, now I have a wish that
Speaker 1: I may call upon, or oh wow, but this day
Speaker 1: is gonna be great. The rest of the day is
Speaker 1: gonna be wonderful because I got the big end of
Speaker 1: the wishbone. But it has what feels like this visual
Speaker 1: magic that has that has been passed down, like something
Speaker 1: like the turkey itself. You know, it has been so
Speaker 1: cooked and rendered it's almost unrecognizable anymore, but there is
Speaker 1: a semblance of the original organism here, and I think
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of what we see with the wishbone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh maybe even in an evolutionary sense with some wishbones
Speaker 1: and some types of birds or bird like organisms. But
Speaker 1: what I was thinking about the wishbone is maybe the
Speaker 1: tradition would would be more powerful if instead of saying
Speaker 1: the winner gets something good, you say the loser, the
Speaker 1: side of the one who gets the bad side of
Speaker 1: the break gets something bad, like those email forwards that
Speaker 1: would say, you know, like if you get the wrong
Speaker 1: side of the wishbone, you will see a ghost face
Speaker 1: in the bathroom mirror or something like that. Or how
Speaker 1: about this one. If you get the short end of
Speaker 1: the wishbone, you're the one who has to pick all
Speaker 1: the meat off the turkey carcass for soups and sandwiches
Speaker 1: the next day. If you get the short endo the wishbone,
Speaker 1: you have to eat the turkey breasts that has been
Speaker 1: cooked to a hundred and ninety degrees fahrenheit is as
Speaker 1: dry as a pile of sawdust, and you don't get
Speaker 1: any gravy to moisten it. Uh yeah. The The only
Speaker 1: hope for those pieces is the is the turkey sounds
Speaker 1: the next day where you can literally apply man AI's
Speaker 1: to it. Oh yeah, yeah, rescues everything, though, I do
Speaker 1: I do want to talk about gravy later in the
Speaker 1: episode and the role that gravy serves, because I think
Speaker 1: one of the big functions of gravy, in addition to
Speaker 1: just making the best of a pan that's got some
Speaker 1: good fond on it, is rescuing utterly lifeless base foods.
Speaker 1: All right, So yeah, we're gonna We're gonna start with wishbone.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into the turkey a little bit, and
Speaker 1: then we'll finish off with the gravy. The gravy will
Speaker 1: be necessary to go on top. Okay, So, but like biologically,
Speaker 1: what is a wishbone? I've actually wondered this before. It
Speaker 1: seems like it's in a weird place on a bird.
Speaker 1: What what does it do? So, yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 1: an actual bone. It is the fercula um or if
Speaker 1: you're talking plural, ferkually, and it is a bone between
Speaker 1: the neck and the breast. It's flexible, it stores energy
Speaker 1: that's been released during the wing stroke. It's form via
Speaker 1: the fusion of two clavicals. It's essential to flight, and
Speaker 1: so we see it in all modern birds. Even the
Speaker 1: flightless penguin has a fercula, though it's structurally a bit
Speaker 1: different to accommodate flipper action rather than flying. So it's
Speaker 1: sort of like um almost kind of like a spring
Speaker 1: or a little structural thing within the breast that that
Speaker 1: provide structural support when the breast muscles are powering back
Speaker 1: and forth to move the wings. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: would be a fair way to think about it. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, so it's it's just an essential part of
Speaker 1: powered flights and modern and powered flight and modern birds,
Speaker 1: or in the case of the Pengland powered swimming um.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing, though, that is that even flightless terrestrial
Speaker 1: ratites we discussed rattites on the show in the past,
Speaker 1: we're talking about things like ostriches, the emu um. These
Speaker 1: are birds that no longer fly, but they retain vestigial
Speaker 1: aspects of their wings, and you do find the remains
Speaker 1: of a wishbone in there, although in these cases it
Speaker 1: is almost entirely absent. Now that probably raises a question.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to the show for you know, the
Speaker 1: past year or so, you might remember our episodes on
Speaker 1: the Moa. The Moa, of course, is this now extinct
Speaker 1: flightless bird that was just simply amazing. You'll have to
Speaker 1: go back and listen to those episodes for our full
Speaker 1: argument on the wonder of the Moa. But one of
Speaker 1: the many wonderful things about it is that it is
Speaker 1: this giant rattype, this enormous flightless bird that not only
Speaker 1: lost the use of its wings, but completely lost its
Speaker 1: wings like it had no wings. It is a completely
Speaker 1: two limbed land creature, unlike virtually anything else you could
Speaker 1: think of what the snake is to the lizard, this
Speaker 1: bird is to to the flying bird. Yes, So my
Speaker 1: immediate question then, with MOA on the mind was how
Speaker 1: about the MoMA is? Did the moa have, as far
Speaker 1: as we know, have anything like a wishbone, like even
Speaker 1: just the slimmest remnant of a wishbone. And I looked
Speaker 1: around and in some of the sources we used for
Speaker 1: the MOA episode, and I wasn't finding anything about it.
Speaker 1: So I actually looked up a researcher who had worked
Speaker 1: on some MOA stuff before, Dr Charlotte a Brassie of
Speaker 1: Manchester Metropolitan University, and I exchanged a couple of emails
Speaker 1: with them, just asking like, is there how about the moment?
Speaker 1: Did the moa have a wishbone? And this is what
Speaker 1: they told me quote. I don't think moa had fercularly
Speaker 1: to speak of the different species of moa very a
Speaker 1: bit in their shoulder region denornis. The really big ones
Speaker 1: did have a vestigial clavical, which are are what eventually
Speaker 1: fused together to form the fercula, but they are very
Speaker 1: small and not fused packy ornis and megal electrics. Moa
Speaker 1: didn't even have of this digital clavical just totally accent Wow,
Speaker 1: interesting by by bones. Yeah, so, uh, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: there are exceptions to the rule then, but you look
Speaker 1: at modern birds, uh, instant birds, and you're going to
Speaker 1: find a wishbone in there. But that's interesting and it
Speaker 1: makes me wonder since birds are the closest relatives of
Speaker 1: the extinct non avian dinosaurs. Uh, did dinosaurs have a
Speaker 1: have a fercula? Ever? Did that they have a wishbone
Speaker 1: on a on a raptor or t rex or something.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because, as it turns out, the wishbone has
Speaker 1: an interesting place in our in the history of our
Speaker 1: understanding of dinosaurs. So the seeming absence of the fercula
Speaker 1: in dinosaurs was long held as a case against the
Speaker 1: connection between dinosaurs and modern birds. And uh and and
Speaker 1: we see this really even with the archaeopter x discovered
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, of which we have some
Speaker 1: pretty impressive fossil evidence of a lot of these these dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Especially when you're going back to the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: you're dealing with very incomplete fossil sets. You know, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of gaps we had to fill in
Speaker 1: and Therefore, when it comes to something like a wishbone
Speaker 1: being there or not, you can say, well, maybe it
Speaker 1: was and we just haven't found it yet. Um. But
Speaker 1: with the with the archaeopter X, you know, some of
Speaker 1: these are very complete looking fossil remains and they seem
Speaker 1: to be lacking a wishbone. So Dlo's law of irreversibility
Speaker 1: at the time held that things lost to evolution would
Speaker 1: not come back, so admitt that the missing fercula and
Speaker 1: dinosaurs could not lead to modern birds. Now we know
Speaker 1: now that Dolo's law is incorrect, and the clavicles of
Speaker 1: non avian dinosaurs serve as one of the key objections
Speaker 1: to this idea. But as far as dinosaurs go, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the key thing to drive home is dinosaurs did
Speaker 1: have ferculate that they were simply missing from our early
Speaker 1: fossil evidence in many of these creatures. Uh, And it's
Speaker 1: and it's a small feature after all. Again, we have
Speaker 1: to think about the fossil record, the missing pieces that
Speaker 1: are just a part of uncovering the fossil evidence of
Speaker 1: these ancient organisms. And as it turns out, the archaeopter
Speaker 1: X itself um actually did have these kind of cartilage uh,
Speaker 1: fercularly in their in their bodies. What the situation was
Speaker 1: that these were these were young ones um young archaeopter
Speaker 1: x in the fossils, and they didn't have fully ossified
Speaker 1: fercularly yet and therefore, um it was softer, it was
Speaker 1: easier to lose, and it took U V examinations to
Speaker 1: pinpoint it in these well preserved fossil remains. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: So the lack of fercule in some dinosaurs or dinosaur
Speaker 1: bird relatives um could be due not just not actually
Speaker 1: to what was present in the animal as it lived,
Speaker 1: but to biases in what types of body parts are
Speaker 1: preserved and how right. And then of course as time
Speaker 1: went by, we just found more and more fossil evidence
Speaker 1: for for the for many of these dinosaurs. So like
Speaker 1: for now, for now we know that the t rex itself,
Speaker 1: the mighty key Rex, had a fercula um. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not You look at evidence as examples of it,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't look like the wishbone as much. It's
Speaker 1: a much more like a U shape that has been
Speaker 1: almost completely straightened out at least is leased as far
Speaker 1: as the way it's presented in a lot of these uh,
Speaker 1: these fossil displays, but it is still a wishbone. I
Speaker 1: think this is clear evidence that the tiny t rex
Speaker 1: arms were actually wings and the t rex could fly.
Speaker 1: Now now that you have everyone has a little bit
Speaker 1: more respect for the role of the wishbone. Like no,
Speaker 1: when if you're holding a wishbone today or this uh
Speaker 1: holiday season, you know you're you're holding this thing that
Speaker 1: is universal to all living birds, that it connects to
Speaker 1: the age of the dinosaurs. But again, most of us
Speaker 1: interact with this thing simply by plucking out of out
Speaker 1: of the holiday carcass and then snapping in in half
Speaker 1: with a friend so that you can engage in some
Speaker 1: some lighthearted divination. I could point out. Another thing is
Speaker 1: that sometimes chefs, when roasting a chicken will advocate removing
Speaker 1: the wishbone prior to cooking because this makes it easier
Speaker 1: to carve the breast of the bird in the end.
Speaker 1: Like this is the thing I've seen videos for the
Speaker 1: chef Thomas Keller recommends doing this. So you kind of
Speaker 1: like stick your knife in and you rub it around
Speaker 1: on the wishbone and then you pull it out with
Speaker 1: your fingers. It looks kind of gross, but it makes
Speaker 1: the breast makes you able to take the breast off
Speaker 1: in one piece when you're done cooking. So this is
Speaker 1: this is this is a this is a good point
Speaker 1: to make because, yeah, we're about to get into discussions
Speaker 1: of of how the wishbone was used and interpreted by
Speaker 1: by ancient people's. And so if you're processing the carcass
Speaker 1: of a of a chicken or some chicken like bird, uh,
Speaker 1: it's going to be potentially something you take out early
Speaker 1: right in order possibly process the carcass and then if
Speaker 1: you do take it out or what her phase in
Speaker 1: the butchery that you do this, Uh, it is it
Speaker 1: is something that look that has a distinctive shape again
Speaker 1: you or v shape. It is going to have sort
Speaker 1: of a symbolic quality to it, Uh that might be
Speaker 1: lacking in other easily plucked pieces of the skeletal system. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I was looking around for some more information on
Speaker 1: all of this, and I ran across a wonderful book
Speaker 1: by by Janet uh limb Key that's L. E. M.
Speaker 1: B k E. And the title of the book is
Speaker 1: Chickens Their Natural and Unnatural History. And in this book
Speaker 1: she writes a great deal just about chickens and their
Speaker 1: history obviously, but she touches on on the wishbone of
Speaker 1: the chicken and things involving the snapping of the wishbone,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And she says that customs surrounding the wishbone
Speaker 1: may be as old as the Etruscans in what is
Speaker 1: now called Tuscany or or Umbria, and then the Romans arrived,
Speaker 1: the custom passed on to them, and of course from
Speaker 1: the Romans we we would see it entering into ultimately
Speaker 1: into European and uh in British culture, and then that
Speaker 1: would have been transplanted to the New World during the
Speaker 1: age of of transatlantic colonization. So um. She points out
Speaker 1: that that first of all, you have to put this,
Speaker 1: you have to couch this this idea of of looking
Speaker 1: at the wishbone at all in the history of bird
Speaker 1: divination in general, and bird divination is interesting because it
Speaker 1: can cover a broad category of divination, like not just
Speaker 1: cutting open a bird to to poke around in it
Speaker 1: and look at its organs or bones as a way
Speaker 1: to understand the future, but also just observing birds in
Speaker 1: the sky and using the flight patterns of birds as
Speaker 1: a way to try and magically understand the patterns of
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, if you want a fuller dive on divination,
Speaker 1: by the way, you might want to go back and
Speaker 1: check out our older episode on the each ing which
Speaker 1: uh which which. This has gotten me thinking about one
Speaker 1: possibility we talked about in the episode. And obviously this
Speaker 1: would be impossible to prove, but but an idea that
Speaker 1: we play with there is that divination could actually prove
Speaker 1: useful to people even though you can't get real hidden
Speaker 1: knowledge that's in any way accurate, it could prove useful
Speaker 1: to people just by introducing uh, motivations that spur action
Speaker 1: and what would otherwise be a sort of paralyzing state
Speaker 1: of of you know, just not knowing anything. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm to understand that that modern sports games
Speaker 1: well sometimes began with the flipping of a coin. You
Speaker 1: need that random event in order to make it fair
Speaker 1: that one team will have what might be an unfair
Speaker 1: advantage by starting first, right um and so um, and
Speaker 1: it gets going. It's gets you going and instead of
Speaker 1: just being at a complete stand still. That's very good analogy.
Speaker 1: And birds are a perfect thing to look for in
Speaker 1: this case, right, because birds also invite a kind of
Speaker 1: sacred understanding because birds can fly, they are able to
Speaker 1: to bridge this gap between the Earth and the sky,
Speaker 1: between the terrestrial world and the realm of clouds and
Speaker 1: stars and gods and what have you. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's just birds, of course. There's also a long
Speaker 1: ancient tradition of examining the bodies of terrestrial creatures. Babylonian
Speaker 1: texts pointed the examination of sheep in trails in acts
Speaker 1: of divination, and the Romans to famously practice such readings
Speaker 1: of in trails known as horestacy, especially concerning the livers
Speaker 1: of sheep and poultry m HM. In Greece, it was
Speaker 1: known as heptosco scopie or heptomancy to give it a
Speaker 1: you know, more of a Dungeons and Dragon's feel to it.
Speaker 1: If you want to bust out some heptomancy in your
Speaker 1: next game. Is that that's also looking at livers? I
Speaker 1: think yeah. Now, the Etruscans considered chicken sacred and use
Speaker 1: their bodies and acts of divination. They would apparently dry
Speaker 1: the fercula and touching it would bring good luck, like
Speaker 1: the fercula itself was kind of a good luck charm. Hmm.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that has anything to do with the
Speaker 1: idea of a horseshoe being a good luck charm. That
Speaker 1: could could be totally unrelated. But but then again there
Speaker 1: is there does seem to be a similarity between the
Speaker 1: symbols right, similar shape. Now again, the Romans eventually adapted this,
Speaker 1: adding the breakage tradition apparently, and and it appears to
Speaker 1: a varied depending on who is using this tradition, whether
Speaker 1: the big scoring, the big part of the wishbone, or
Speaker 1: the small part was the good luck Like, who wins?
Speaker 1: Is it the small or the big. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like drawing straws or something. I don't know. You just
Speaker 1: break it and then you calvin ball it out from there. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the Romans subsequently then brought the tradition to England, where
Speaker 1: the particular bone was often known as the merry thought,
Speaker 1: and then the English brought it to the New World. Now,
Speaker 1: in terms of just thinking about these acts of divination
Speaker 1: involving the bodies of the movements of animals, um, there's
Speaker 1: more to consider here. I read about some of this
Speaker 1: animals and divination by Peter Struck and he points out
Speaker 1: that among the Greeks and the Romans, these were common
Speaker 1: ways of attempting to understand what was happening and would
Speaker 1: happen in the world around you. Uh. He writes that
Speaker 1: there there wasn't anything esoteric about turning to the entrails
Speaker 1: or the bones of an animal like this, It's just
Speaker 1: what you did. Quote. The ancients understood that the universe
Speaker 1: had certain inclinations built into it which were more or
Speaker 1: less closely tied to the inclinations of the gods. So
Speaker 1: maybe you could think about UM trying to do divination
Speaker 1: based on the behavior or the bodies or parts of
Speaker 1: animals as sort of like the modern thing where people
Speaker 1: think that animals no first, when X is going to happen,
Speaker 1: you know, when there's going to be an earthquake or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, some kind of natural disaster. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you could also look to the modern UM use of
Speaker 1: biomimicry and bio mimetic the designs the idea that if
Speaker 1: we're going to solve an engineering problem, let's look just
Speaker 1: to see how evolution solved it first, see how the
Speaker 1: bodies of animals or plants solve that particular design problem. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are more nuanced and scientifically accurate versions
Speaker 1: of the same thing, like, I need to understand what's
Speaker 1: happening in the world. Let me look to the physical
Speaker 1: substance of the world for hints about its design. Right,
Speaker 1: And when you have a fuzzier picture of the causes
Speaker 1: and connections between all the different parts of nature, it
Speaker 1: might seem more logical to try to infer x from
Speaker 1: the you know, the bodies of animals or something. I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't know, that's not how it works. Now, they'll struck.
Speaker 1: In his writings here he points out that Ascalis, who
Speaker 1: lived through four fifty six b c e UH, summoned
Speaker 1: up much of this in the words of the titan
Speaker 1: Prometheus in his play from Prometheus Bound, discussing how Prometheus
Speaker 1: instructed humans and the quote difficult and murky art of
Speaker 1: reading these inclinations uh in key places, such as in
Speaker 1: the livers and thigh bones of birds. It does make
Speaker 1: me wonder to what extent we see reverberations of these
Speaker 1: ideas even in the modern scientific undertaking of of the
Speaker 1: autopsy or the necropsy. Uh. You know, not the procedures themselves,
Speaker 1: but the sort of the grandeur afforded them in the media.
Speaker 1: You know, the idea of wise individuals poking around and
Speaker 1: the bodies of not only like murder victims and whatnot,
Speaker 1: but I think to the various sci fi scenes in
Speaker 1: which the breaking down of an alien's body or the
Speaker 1: disassembly of an artificial being such as a you know,
Speaker 1: a droid or or or an android or a replicant
Speaker 1: or something like that reveals the inclinations of the unknown,
Speaker 1: that is interesting. Yes, So, I mean, obviously we would
Speaker 1: say that topsies necropsy is performed in the real world
Speaker 1: by competent professionals have an empirical basis, but the way
Speaker 1: they appear in media, the person doing it often might
Speaker 1: as well be a wizard. Yeah. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: they're like the scene an Alien where they reassemble ash
Speaker 1: and and and then manipulate his like they're really just
Speaker 1: sort of goosing around with his various um uh android
Speaker 1: in trails and he's covering in the milky stuff. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're able to, you know, to to to juice
Speaker 1: him into getting information, to reveal hidden knowledge about the
Speaker 1: predicament that they're facing. In a weird way, that scene
Speaker 1: is almost a perfect parallel of King Saul's summoning up
Speaker 1: the shade of the Prophet Samuel to to get advice
Speaker 1: on how to proceed against an enemy. Yeah, so, I
Speaker 1: don't know, would be interesting to hear what other people
Speaker 1: think about that, because it is a scene you see
Speaker 1: a lot again, if not not only in detective stories,
Speaker 1: but just in any kind of sci fi tale in
Speaker 1: which an alien or robot, utter or any kind of
Speaker 1: artificial being is encountered and granted, from a scientific standpoint,
Speaker 1: it would make sense to perform a necropsy on an
Speaker 1: alien being if you wanted to understand how it works
Speaker 1: on a biological level. Likewise, it makes sense from it
Speaker 1: now on an engineering level that you might say, take
Speaker 1: apart a captive battle droid to try and figure out
Speaker 1: what it's programming was. But I can't. I can't help
Speaker 1: but wonder if there is this kind of residual magical
Speaker 1: interpretation of the scenario as well. Totally Now you're probably wondering, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're talking about turkeys here, where does the turkey enter
Speaker 1: the picture? So again we're talking about we've been talking
Speaker 1: about the chicken here. The chicken, of course, has has
Speaker 1: Asian origins, but then comes to sort of rule the
Speaker 1: world in its own way, slowly as it is it
Speaker 1: just spreads from one people to the next becomes incredibly popular. Um,
Speaker 1: that is it the sorry? Is it the case that
Speaker 1: the ancestral chicken is probably from originally from like Southeast Asia?
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? I believe so. Yes, the idea
Speaker 1: that it's essential essentially this kind of jungly bird um
Speaker 1: that we long ago realized had had value. Uh. And
Speaker 1: of course this is how the chicken would would make
Speaker 1: it to the America's But there was already a bird
Speaker 1: in the America's and that was the turkey. Um. Specifically,
Speaker 1: we were probably thinking here about Meligris gallopavo, which is
Speaker 1: the domestic turkey. I love it by Ben Franklin's Everywhere. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it makes a strong case as always for
Speaker 1: the being the bird of America. And in fact, it
Speaker 1: is native to eastern and central North America, and it
Speaker 1: was first domesticated by the Mayans in in In in
Speaker 1: ancient Mexico, so naturally, surviving traditions for chicken wishbones would
Speaker 1: easily translate to the turkeys when Westerners encountered this bird. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, here's here's something we know how to eat
Speaker 1: a chicken. Well, here's a turkey. It's natural that you
Speaker 1: would apply some of the same ideas to the rendering
Speaker 1: of the boddy um and for for these people though
Speaker 1: the original domesticators of the turkey, the bird was used
Speaker 1: for food and materials, but also had a symbolic power
Speaker 1: as well. So we we recently discussed the papal Voo
Speaker 1: on the podcast before, so I looked at this to
Speaker 1: see if there were specific mentions of the turkey, and
Speaker 1: there there is. There are a couple of passages that
Speaker 1: are pretty fantastic because they talk about someone running a
Speaker 1: foul of of the gods, becoming cursed and and this
Speaker 1: is what the curse looks like. Quote, even their own dogs, turkeys, tools,
Speaker 1: and houses rise against them, taking vengeance for past mistreatment.
Speaker 1: Only their descendants are the monkeys that inhabit the forest today.
Speaker 1: And then their dogs and turkeys told them, you caused
Speaker 1: us pain, you ate us, but now it is you
Speaker 1: whom we shall eat. Now I am the master. Did
Speaker 1: we actually say, I know it, talked about it in
Speaker 1: a recent episode. But the popul Vu is a is
Speaker 1: a text that contains a lot of ancient Mayan mythology,
Speaker 1: specifically a lot of the beliefs and like myths of
Speaker 1: the Kiche Mayan people. Yes. Yeah. Now, as for magical
Speaker 1: uses of the turkey itself, the use of its bones
Speaker 1: and Mayan and Aztepe practices, I didn't find. I didn't
Speaker 1: find anything particularly that does. It doesn't mean it didn't exist,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it isn't written about well. And it
Speaker 1: also doesn't mean that it wasn't practiced and then just
Speaker 1: sort of lost in the of course, you know, cultural
Speaker 1: apocalypse that was the arrival of Westerners in the America's.
Speaker 1: But I did find an excellent article titled the Oscillated
Speaker 1: Turkey in Maya Thought, and this is by Maya specialist
Speaker 1: Anna Louisa as Cuerdo y de la Cueva and Maria
Speaker 1: Elena Vega Phila Lobos, and they discussed some of the
Speaker 1: Maya traditions and beliefs concerning the turkey. Okay, I gotta
Speaker 1: hear this. So first of all, they point out that
Speaker 1: the Maya would have had access to domesticated turkeys imported
Speaker 1: from Mexico as well as the more local wild oscillated turkey. Also,
Speaker 1: turkeys were royal birds and not everyone had access to them. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were seen as stand ins for messengers from the
Speaker 1: gods quote a messenger of divine will, and they were
Speaker 1: used or consumed on very special occasions. They were made
Speaker 1: of sacrifices to ensure the harvest. And then there's this
Speaker 1: additional interesting bit as well. There's this idea of I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if I'm pronouncing this correctly, but why is
Speaker 1: spirits They spell at w A H y I S.
Speaker 1: And these would have been auxiliary spirits that live within
Speaker 1: the body of the possessor, but then are controlled by
Speaker 1: the possessor as well. It would be something you would
Speaker 1: acquire through birth or through special petition throughout life. And
Speaker 1: what would happen is during sleep, the possessor would expel
Speaker 1: the wagists through their mouth to keep watch on them,
Speaker 1: to protect them for enemies. Uh. And these would I
Speaker 1: think be supernatural enemies or enemies, you know, supernatural enemies
Speaker 1: summoned by uh, living enemies that could potentially hurt us
Speaker 1: during quote the nocturnal and dream space. So you could
Speaker 1: breathe the spirit out in the night and it would
Speaker 1: keep watch over you. Well, what's the did the spirit
Speaker 1: take the form of a turkey? What's the turkey? Can
Speaker 1: at least some of the time, Yes, it would take
Speaker 1: the form of a turkey, which which I think is
Speaker 1: telling because the domestic turkey and domestic birds in general,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's especially in modern times, there is
Speaker 1: a tendency to degrade them and see them as these
Speaker 1: um just stupid um animals that have no no, you know,
Speaker 1: mental existence of their own, that are just they're just
Speaker 1: purely domesticated species, and we don't really acknowledge them as
Speaker 1: as anything wondrous. And the idea here is that there
Speaker 1: was a sense of wonder to the turkey. There was
Speaker 1: a noble aspect of the turkey. The turkey was seen
Speaker 1: as something especially this this wild variety of something that
Speaker 1: that connects us to the spirit world, that connects us
Speaker 1: to the gods, and therefore it would be a fitting
Speaker 1: um animal for this spirit that is a part of
Speaker 1: us to take its form. I think it may be
Speaker 1: that just the word turkey sounds funny in English, so
Speaker 1: it becomes the butt of a joke. Yeah. But but
Speaker 1: for the Maya it was it was somewhat different that
Speaker 1: the authors here also point out that there was at
Speaker 1: least one Maya king that took on the title of
Speaker 1: the turkey like that was his his title or nickname.
Speaker 1: You know, it was an animal that was it was
Speaker 1: perfectly suitable to be taken on as kind of the
Speaker 1: the the the animal likeness of a ruler. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: turkeys can look quite beautiful. It's but there was this
Speaker 1: one you were talking about that's mentioned in this article,
Speaker 1: the oscillated turkey. I mean, god, there's a picture of
Speaker 1: it um that that the authors here include, and it
Speaker 1: looks so gorgeous. It's even gut these who has sort
Speaker 1: of a blue shading on the skin of its head
Speaker 1: with red lining around its eyes. And then it's even
Speaker 1: got these strange kind of like moles or tumor looking
Speaker 1: things all over its head, these little bulbs that are yellow,
Speaker 1: and the colors altogether are are fabulous. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: even you know, even a purely domesticated turkey that you
Speaker 1: encounter nowadays. I mean, it is a fact. It's a
Speaker 1: big creature, you know. I think if you really stop
Speaker 1: and look at it and consider it, you can you
Speaker 1: can you'll be impressed by it. But then also, of course,
Speaker 1: we have wild turkeys, and I feel like encountering wild turkeys,
Speaker 1: if you're fortunate enough to encounter them, it can be
Speaker 1: quite Uh, it can be quite a moving experience. I've
Speaker 1: even encountered them here in the the the the Atlanta area.
Speaker 1: I encountered them at a cemetery once where they're out
Speaker 1: walking among the tombstones, which seems perfect for, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of spirit being. But I also encountered one
Speaker 1: in my backyard once, which was pretty fabulous because I
Speaker 1: heard other birds. Now, yeah, the house I live in
Speaker 1: now just in the backyard, you know, a very residential
Speaker 1: type area, but the other birds were raising a ruckus
Speaker 1: and I was like, what's going on back there? Is
Speaker 1: there a dog in my backyard or something? No, it
Speaker 1: was a full blown wild turkey. And and these are
Speaker 1: sizeable animals. Oh yeah, I mean I have definitely encountered
Speaker 1: urban wild turkeys in in Tennessee. Sometimes they'll just wander
Speaker 1: through neighborhoods in the city. Is pretty cool. So I
Speaker 1: would in closing here, I would say, if you find
Speaker 1: yourself this Thanksgiving at the table um considering the wishbone
Speaker 1: of a turkey, that you would you would think first
Speaker 1: of all, to the the magical, the divinational practices that
Speaker 1: this bone is tied to. You know that you were
Speaker 1: at least holding on to the vestigial remnants of of
Speaker 1: ancient divination practices. And then on the other hand, you
Speaker 1: the bird itself that you are consumed ming or present
Speaker 1: or present for the consumption of that this too is
Speaker 1: a creature with roots in the sacred I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of an animal that's commonly eaten in America
Speaker 1: that is treated with more reverence and respect to compare
Speaker 1: it to, But then I couldn't think of anything. Maybe
Speaker 1: it seems like modern American cuisine doesn't just doesn't really
Speaker 1: honor the animal, does it now? I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: you could make a case for the turkey being celebrated
Speaker 1: more than many of the animals we can see. I'm
Speaker 1: certainly more than the chicken. Because of course, what do
Speaker 1: we do we we we include it as part of
Speaker 1: in our iconography for Thanksgiving every year, like it is
Speaker 1: a symbol of Thanksgiving. It is a symbol of a
Speaker 1: of a great feast that one has. We have that,
Speaker 1: you know, ridiculous tradition with US president's pardoning turkeys. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what that's gonna happen
Speaker 1: this year. I don't know how many turkeys are gonna
Speaker 1: be pardoned this year. Um but but we'll see, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I want to move on from turkey at this
Speaker 1: point because if if you've had a turkey prepared in
Speaker 1: the traditional American style, which is to um to cook
Speaker 1: until the breast meat is so dry you could like
Speaker 1: play basketball with it, you sit down and and it's
Speaker 1: there on the plate, and what what's gonna say, what's
Speaker 1: going to be the saving grace of this experience? Well,
Speaker 1: obviously it's like you would want some kind of hot, fatty, wet,
Speaker 1: highly flavored stuff to go on the turkey to sort
Speaker 1: of revive it, to bring it back from the grave.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that this is actually another centerpiece
Speaker 1: of the American Thanksgiving tradition, which is the gravy. And
Speaker 1: I so I want to talk about gravy for a bit,
Speaker 1: but I also want to just bring your attention rob
Speaker 1: to some ads I found for old like commercially sold
Speaker 1: industrial gravy products, so like canned gravs and gravy mixes.
Speaker 1: Um uh. One I found is it was in an
Speaker 1: article that I'm going to talk about in a bit,
Speaker 1: but it's for the Dirky Brown gravy mix. This is
Speaker 1: a packet mix that you throw in with water. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it says all sauce and gravy mixes are made
Speaker 1: for convenience, but Dirkys is for dining. And the this
Speaker 1: yeah calligraphy. Everyone should look this up. It's d u
Speaker 1: r k eat um dirkeys is for dining and has it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of a snazzy looking advertisement, has
Speaker 1: kind of a Madman mad men vibe to it. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: fancy people in suits. Clearly they're gonna be having some
Speaker 1: Canadian club on the rocks or maybe Shiva's regal with this.
Speaker 1: I love how there's a cup of coffee in the scene,
Speaker 1: which I don't know. I never drink coffee with my
Speaker 1: meals for the most part, But is it the idea?
Speaker 1: It's like, all right, thanksgivings coming at you. You You got
Speaker 1: at let's let's move this food. Let's let's supercharge the
Speaker 1: digestive system. I think it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: they tried to promote new uses for foods to sell
Speaker 1: more of them in the mid century. So here it's
Speaker 1: obviously saying, hey, you already you put cream in your coffee,
Speaker 1: Just do gravy instead. But I found another ad. This
Speaker 1: is for Franco American beef gravy and a can. It
Speaker 1: says easy economical beef gravy burgers, and it's suggesting that
Speaker 1: you have a piece of white bread and on top
Speaker 1: of that it looks like just just a puck of
Speaker 1: ground beef and then you spoon over or ladle over
Speaker 1: about a gallon of this canned Franco American gravy. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the copy on this set is really good too.
Speaker 1: It says made from the juices of selected beef with
Speaker 1: that genuine roasting pan flavor. Delicious served hot with any
Speaker 1: meat and potato, dinner, on sandwiches, in stews, or added
Speaker 1: to make your own gravy stres at chin it it
Speaker 1: hyphenates out the word stretch um. And so several things
Speaker 1: here that I like, the the use of the there's
Speaker 1: like carefully chosen words made from the juices of selected beef.
Speaker 1: And what is what work is the word selected doing? There?
Speaker 1: I did? Did I guess too? Um? Set it apart
Speaker 1: from random beef? Yeah, you know, made from the juices
Speaker 1: of beef that was found somewhere. I had to say.
Speaker 1: The photo on this one that went black and white
Speaker 1: and all it looks oddly appetizing. I feel like my
Speaker 1: family had some version of this when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: where it would be the the beef patty on top
Speaker 1: of the slice of bread with gravy on top, with
Speaker 1: the peas on the side. I remember being fond. But
Speaker 1: another one of these Franco American beef gravy ads I found,
Speaker 1: the tagline is just smooth, brown, delicious, and I like
Speaker 1: the idea that this actually does tie into some some
Speaker 1: food science stuff. The word brown there suggests not just
Speaker 1: a color, but a flavor. What flavor is it? It's
Speaker 1: brown flavored, and that that actually does get to the
Speaker 1: original heart of of real gravy. So I was trying
Speaker 1: to think, how would a Martian describe gravy, and like
Speaker 1: she she's making an encyclopedia of earth life, and I
Speaker 1: think it would be something like gravy is a hot
Speaker 1: emulsified sauce made by combining fat, starch and then some
Speaker 1: glutamate flavored liquid, like a savory liquid thickened to the
Speaker 1: rough consistency of heavy cream. I think that that that's
Speaker 1: about it, um. But for the non cooks out there,
Speaker 1: the traditional method of gravy preparation is actually great because
Speaker 1: it is a sort of natural byproduct of roasting a
Speaker 1: big piece of meat, which people often do for Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: um because a gravy is usually based on the fond
Speaker 1: left over on the bottom of the pan after you've
Speaker 1: cooked meat via some dry heat method like roasting or
Speaker 1: pan frying. So is the meat cooks, it releases liquids,
Speaker 1: It releases fats and juices, and usually the juices will
Speaker 1: contain a mixture of proteins and carbohydrates sugars, and as
Speaker 1: these juices are cooked on the bottom of a pan
Speaker 1: under high heat, their water content evaporates and they undergo browning.
Speaker 1: So if there are sugars present, they can caramelize, but
Speaker 1: then the proteins and the carbohydrates can together undergo this
Speaker 1: complex suite of chemical changes collectively known as the Myard reaction,
Speaker 1: and the Myard reaction in particular is the reaction that's
Speaker 1: responsible for the fact that browned food usually tastes good.
Speaker 1: It creates this a lot of complex flavors. It's the
Speaker 1: browning on the outside of bread when you toast bread.
Speaker 1: It's the browning on the outside of meat. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: in coffee, you know. It is that good roasty flavor
Speaker 1: so to make a traditional gravy, after your roaster pan
Speaker 1: fry a piece of meat, you'll have all this extremely
Speaker 1: flavorful gunk stuck to the bottom of the pan, all
Speaker 1: these browned juices. And from here the gravy process goes
Speaker 1: to deglazing. So you have some kind of liquid. Usually
Speaker 1: this is water or wine broth, maybe spirits uh, and
Speaker 1: then you use the liquid as a solvent to scrape
Speaker 1: up and dissolve all the brown gunk. And then you
Speaker 1: usually add some form of fat and starch to thicken
Speaker 1: the miss mixture. So this can be a rue like
Speaker 1: butter or rendered fat from the pan, mixed with flour
Speaker 1: or even corn starch. And then you whisk it all
Speaker 1: together and you cook it until it's thick into the
Speaker 1: consistency you want. And the thickening actually happens two different ways.
Speaker 1: As you cook, the starch grains will swell with liquid
Speaker 1: and burst, releasing carbohydrate molecules. They unravel they meshed together
Speaker 1: with one another, and that thickens the sauce. But the
Speaker 1: other method of reducing is just reducing by evaporation as
Speaker 1: the sauce cooks. And I was interested in what brought
Speaker 1: about the all of these like prepared gravy products, because again,
Speaker 1: gravy is it's like a byproduct of cooking, right, Like
Speaker 1: you've done the cooking and now you've got the basis
Speaker 1: to make a gravy. How do you get from that
Speaker 1: to the gravy comes in a pre prepared and okay
Speaker 1: in or mixture like a powder mixture, how do we
Speaker 1: get to dirkys is for dining. So I was reading
Speaker 1: a little article in The Atlantic about this by Alexis Madrigal,
Speaker 1: and this is about the history of industrial gravy products,
Speaker 1: specifically powder mixes for gravy um. And it is interesting
Speaker 1: to think about the development of instant food products as
Speaker 1: a real sort of science and engineering challenge because I
Speaker 1: know these products are often derided. I mean, we were
Speaker 1: just making fun of them, but it is. It's it's
Speaker 1: an interesting process that led to their development. Because you've
Speaker 1: got something that is a natural product of some other
Speaker 1: cooking process. You know what you want the final product
Speaker 1: to look like, taste like, feel like. Uh, you know
Speaker 1: what real gravy is, and you know what limitations you
Speaker 1: have to work with. Maybe your way of getting there
Speaker 1: has to be in a powdered packet or or cannibal
Speaker 1: or something, and then you've got to use science to
Speaker 1: try to get from here to there within your limitations.
Speaker 1: And Madrigal argues that the history of dry mixes for
Speaker 1: gravy really best understood in the context of dry mixes
Speaker 1: for baking other baking products, which go further back in history.
Speaker 1: So he mentioned that in eighteen eighty two, there's this
Speaker 1: inventor named Philip Thorne who files a patent for a
Speaker 1: just add water baking mix which incorporates flour and baking
Speaker 1: powder as a leavening agent uh and the and also
Speaker 1: dehydrated butter. But this did not immediately become a popular
Speaker 1: product in America. The instant biscuit dope bis Quick entered
Speaker 1: the market in nineteen thirty one, but it really wasn't
Speaker 1: until after World War Two that instant baking mixes like
Speaker 1: Betty Crocker cake Mix became very popular. Now, there's one
Speaker 1: thing I will say about this article, which is that
Speaker 1: it relays a story that I found very interesting but
Speaker 1: started to doubt, and this led me down a rabbit trail.
Speaker 1: But I think this rabbit trail is worthwhile because it
Speaker 1: ties into things that people also sometimes make conservant Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: So there's this anecdote here that Magical shares about how
Speaker 1: the recipe design for packaged foods isn't just about taste
Speaker 1: and convenience, it's also about the psychology of the cook. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you've ever made cake cake mix from a box, Duncan,
Speaker 1: Hinds or whatever, you probably know that there are usually
Speaker 1: a couple of ingredients that you have to provide yourself.
Speaker 1: So you know, the box will give you all the
Speaker 1: dry ingredients, but then you have to combine it with water,
Speaker 1: maybe oil, and a couple of eggs. Now, the story
Speaker 1: goes that originally the Betty Crocker brand simply required water
Speaker 1: and nothing else in their cake mix boxes, and that
Speaker 1: these weren't selling very well, and the reasoning was that
Speaker 1: the process just seemed too artificial, too impersonal, too industrial.
Speaker 1: Uh So, so, in one influential instance, General Mills changed
Speaker 1: the cake mix recipe to require the home cook to
Speaker 1: add their own eggs in addition to the water, and
Speaker 1: so hey, suddenly you're not using, you know, just a
Speaker 1: boxed product, you're actually baking. You added the eggs, you're
Speaker 1: health And according to the industry lore, this recipe change
Speaker 1: where suddenly, instead of having dried eggs in the mix already,
Speaker 1: you had to add your own eggs. This recipe change
Speaker 1: made the mix a hit. I even found an article
Speaker 1: on Psychology Today that was retelling the story, framing it
Speaker 1: as about guilt and authenticity. This was supposedly discovered through
Speaker 1: research by the American consumer psychologist Earnest dicter Uh that
Speaker 1: that home cooks of the nineteen fifties felt guilty serving
Speaker 1: these delicious cakes that were just so easy to make,
Speaker 1: and Dictor reasoned that adding the eggs made the process
Speaker 1: slightly less convenient, and thus people felt better about serving
Speaker 1: these cakes to guests. But it certainly makes a certain
Speaker 1: amount of sense. You know, you would you're you're doing
Speaker 1: something other than just following some simple directions and inting
Speaker 1: out a can or a box of powder and adding milk.
Speaker 1: You know that there is some element of actual baking
Speaker 1: or food preparation to it that it makes you feel
Speaker 1: useful and not just a uh, you just just to
Speaker 1: somebody assembling something. Yeah, and I think there absolutely could
Speaker 1: be something to the underlying psychology there. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: people are full of all kinds of interesting psychological quirks
Speaker 1: that drive their consumer decisions, and sometimes a product will
Speaker 1: sell for reasons other than just it's you know, pure
Speaker 1: value in in whatever objective sense you you wanna classify that.
Speaker 1: But the fact that this is such a great historical anecdote,
Speaker 1: the fact that it's so perfectly ted talkie kind of
Speaker 1: made the sleeping dragons of the BS detection go off
Speaker 1: in my mind. So I decided to check, and wouldn't
Speaker 1: you know it, Snopes actually has an article about this
Speaker 1: very story. It's by the founder, one of the founders,
Speaker 1: David Nicholson, and my hunch was correct. They ruled this
Speaker 1: story is false. And the reason they rule it as
Speaker 1: false is that while this is based on a historical reality, Yes,
Speaker 1: there were these recipe changes to adding fresh eggs. Yes,
Speaker 1: around the same time there was increasing use of box
Speaker 1: cake mixes. But just saying, uh, the psychological insight from
Speaker 1: ernest dict that said you have to add the egg
Speaker 1: yourself at home, that is what made the box cake
Speaker 1: mix a success. That massively over oversimplifies things. Uh. For example,
Speaker 1: it overstates the novelty of the recipe change. There'd been
Speaker 1: this long running debate in the industry over the trade
Speaker 1: offs of requiring fresh eggs at preparation versus using powdered
Speaker 1: eggs in the mix. It ignores other reasons for the
Speaker 1: success of the fresh egg recipe. One of them is
Speaker 1: that a cake made with a fresh egg is usually
Speaker 1: going to be a lot better, uh quote. Using complete
Speaker 1: mixes which included dried eggs resulted in cakes that stuck
Speaker 1: to the pan, had poor texture, had shorter shelf life,
Speaker 1: and often tasted too strongly of eggs. Another thing is
Speaker 1: that it kind of screws up the timeline of cake
Speaker 1: mix sales, and it ignores the simultaneous success of cake
Speaker 1: mixes that did include powdered egg and it ignores other
Speaker 1: changes in marketing and advertising that took place simultaneous to
Speaker 1: the fresh egg recipe. One example is repositioning cake mixes
Speaker 1: as step one in a larger creative process that involves
Speaker 1: icing and decoration and things like that. So if if
Speaker 1: the cook wanted to feel like they were actually doing
Speaker 1: something and not just you know, not just opening a box,
Speaker 1: and that was it, that could come at the decoration
Speaker 1: stage of the cake. And then finally I thought this
Speaker 1: was maybe the most interesting. And the story ignores other
Speaker 1: social changes that led to the increasing sales of box
Speaker 1: cake mixes in the fifties, one of which was that
Speaker 1: high school home economics classes were increasingly teaching baking based
Speaker 1: on mixes rather than from scratch, just sort of couching
Speaker 1: it in that case, and just the the overall um
Speaker 1: shift towards industrial food products, right. Yeah, And so it
Speaker 1: seems like there's a bunch of different stuff going on here,
Speaker 1: and this story just kind of like, you know, a
Speaker 1: cherry pick like a couple of little facts from this
Speaker 1: period and then makes it a self contained, causative story.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly what it was about that story
Speaker 1: that set me on alert. I guess it just has
Speaker 1: it has that shape, you know, the shape of a
Speaker 1: story that is a little too tidy, where the solution
Speaker 1: to the problem is very cutely psychologically revealing. It's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that you know, you love to have
Speaker 1: as an anecdote to lead off your motivational talk. Huh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I mean, I can't help but thinking about
Speaker 1: just the basic idea of providing your own egg or not. Um,
Speaker 1: I see this today and some of the box meal
Speaker 1: kids that are out there, Um, because box meal kids
Speaker 1: very like there's some box meal kids that are basically
Speaker 1: just TV dinners, um, and then most of the more
Speaker 1: famous ones involved chopping and preparation. But there's one major brand,
Speaker 1: uh that I won't name because they're not paying us
Speaker 1: to right now that includes eggs. And there's another major
Speaker 1: brand that I won't name because they're not paying us
Speaker 1: right now that ask you to provide your own egg
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to think about. Of course, just the
Speaker 1: shipping demands of mailing eggs to people, I imagine that
Speaker 1: is a huge part of it. But but maybe there
Speaker 1: is also the sense of preparation, you know, like it
Speaker 1: is it is good to provide your own egg. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's good that I had to procure my own eggs.
Speaker 1: I don't know or or think about where my eggs
Speaker 1: came from by exactly the type of eggs that I want,
Speaker 1: like if I want to you know, cage free. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. And I mean, the the underlying
Speaker 1: premise of this story I think does have something to it,
Speaker 1: which is that, you know, like we were saying there,
Speaker 1: there are these different sort of psychological pressures that are
Speaker 1: operating us when we're making decisions about what types of
Speaker 1: food products to buy, and those psychological pressures might not
Speaker 1: be only how does it taste, what is the cost
Speaker 1: and things like that. It could be things about how
Speaker 1: we feel about methods of preparation or even methods of eating.
Speaker 1: Here's one thing, you know, Taco Bell they put they
Speaker 1: give you the sauce packets on the side, and there's
Speaker 1: like the question of like, now, what's the why why
Speaker 1: do they give you the sauce packets on the side
Speaker 1: instead of just putting the sauce on your taco and
Speaker 1: then handing it off to you. I mean, there's something
Speaker 1: that they've reasoned about, Like people like to be able
Speaker 1: to put the sauce on themselves that you know, there's
Speaker 1: something pleasurable about that process, or like being able to
Speaker 1: determine exactly how much sauce and where it goes and stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: spice control is a big thing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: You can have that taco as bland as you want,
Speaker 1: or you can you can start, you know, superpowering it
Speaker 1: with with multiple spicy packs. So I also wonder about
Speaker 1: like box macaroni and cheese, uh, you know, so they'll
Speaker 1: give you, like the cheese sauce fully made in a
Speaker 1: powdered form, or a you know, like gooey velveta form
Speaker 1: or whatever ahead of time. Or I think there's some
Speaker 1: fancier brands that ask you to supply something of your own,
Speaker 1: you know, use your own butter, or use your own
Speaker 1: milk that may contribute somewhat to the texture the final product.
Speaker 1: But I wonder also if that's like if you're trying
Speaker 1: to up sell a brand, you're trying to sell a
Speaker 1: more expensive boxed macaroni and cheese. Is there is there
Speaker 1: a calculation that people will think, oh, this is a
Speaker 1: more legitimate meal, more legitimate food product if I provide
Speaker 1: some of my own fresh ingredients. Yeah, is this a
Speaker 1: meal in a box? Or is this an ingredient for
Speaker 1: a meal? Um? I guess the difference can can can
Speaker 1: play a major row and whether one purchase it or not.
Speaker 1: But let's get back to the gravy too. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so where does gravy enter the picture again? Here? Well,
Speaker 1: thinking about these industrially produced gravy mixes. Um, so again,
Speaker 1: you know we've we've said gravy is usually a byproduct
Speaker 1: of cooking meat. What is the gravy factory supposed to do?
Speaker 1: Like you cook a million roasts and then you deglaze
Speaker 1: the fond or the drippings from that, and then you
Speaker 1: find something else to do with the meat. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like kind of impractical at an industrial scale,
Speaker 1: and for this reason, a lot of package gravies, you know,
Speaker 1: they'll have to like use a secondary animal aroduct as
Speaker 1: the flavoring to begin with, or they in fact maybe
Speaker 1: have little or nothing to do with the meat they're
Speaker 1: supposed to taste. Like. In this article, Madrigal quotes a
Speaker 1: food scientist at the University of Minnesota named Gary A. Rhinesius,
Speaker 1: who says the gravy mixes are a little more sophisticated
Speaker 1: because the flavor from the gravy mix maybe a beef gravy,
Speaker 1: but it's never been near a cow, so that you
Speaker 1: might get a beef gravy that just has no beef
Speaker 1: content at all. So where does the flavor come from? Well,
Speaker 1: they're they're all kinds of flavorings that can be like
Speaker 1: wheat based flavorings, there can be I mean, a big
Speaker 1: one for gravy mixes in history is MSG, which we've
Speaker 1: done whole episodes about before. Monosodium glutamate originally isolated by
Speaker 1: by Japanese food scientists from from seaweed, and this recreates
Speaker 1: a lot of the savory flavors that we associate with
Speaker 1: things like parmesan cheese or tomatoes or soy sauce or meats,
Speaker 1: but has apparently been a huge bugbear in the history
Speaker 1: of powdered gravy mixes, and that is lumps. So if
Speaker 1: if you ever made gravy yourself, you you might have
Speaker 1: encountered lumps before. When when you add starch to a
Speaker 1: mixture of water and fat, it can be very easy
Speaker 1: for the starch to form little clumps that don't fully
Speaker 1: dissolve into the sauce. So if you you know, if
Speaker 1: you get a clump of raw flour or corn starch
Speaker 1: in your mouth while you're eating gravy, that is very unpleasant. Uh.
Speaker 1: And on the on the On a slightly related note,
Speaker 1: you should never eat raw flour. By the way, when
Speaker 1: when people tell you not to eat raw dough for
Speaker 1: some reason, they only emphasize the presence of raw eggs,
Speaker 1: But you should be at least as concerned about raw
Speaker 1: flower because raw flower can easily pick up bacterial contamination
Speaker 1: like E. Coal I and other things. Um and bacteria
Speaker 1: can survive until the flower is cooked. You should think
Speaker 1: about raw flour in sort of the same way you
Speaker 1: think about raw hamburger. Uh, you know, don't eat if
Speaker 1: it's not cooked. So that to be clear, you're saying,
Speaker 1: don't eat unco cookie dough, right, Well, I mean it
Speaker 1: depends like you could make cookie dough from something that
Speaker 1: is safe. But yeah, if it's got raw flour in it,
Speaker 1: you should not eat it because it might hurt me.
Speaker 1: I mean, so good there are outbreaks. Well, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think there are things that are
Speaker 1: safety use like there. You know, there are companies that
Speaker 1: sell cookie dough that's just ready to eat cookie dough,
Speaker 1: ice cream and all that. I think that does not
Speaker 1: have raw flour in it, or if it does, it's
Speaker 1: somehow been through a process that renders it safe. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying one should definitely ignore you on this one,
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying it's it's gonna be it's gonna
Speaker 1: be hard to to make this life change when the
Speaker 1: cookie dough or the cake batter or even the pancake
Speaker 1: batter is often the most delightful part of the whole process.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it can be I don't know
Speaker 1: the taste of raw flower. I think is is kind
Speaker 1: of gross and chalky on its own, But there's obviously
Speaker 1: no I mean, I understand the appeal. I mean I've
Speaker 1: had cookie dough too, but no, raw flower can have contamination,
Speaker 1: just like raw meat can. There's been major outbreaks of
Speaker 1: ecal live from flower in the US. There's one in sixteen,
Speaker 1: there was another one in twenty nineteen. According to the CDC,
Speaker 1: these sickened at least eighty people. Uh. And a fun fact,
Speaker 1: I was looking up, Oh, how exactly does flower get
Speaker 1: contaminated by e coal? Lie? Does that happen in the
Speaker 1: factory or whatever? It can happen at multiple stages of
Speaker 1: the process, but sometimes it appears to be literally just
Speaker 1: contamination by animal feces in the fields where the wheat
Speaker 1: is grown. So cool, huh ah, man, you can ruin
Speaker 1: cookie dough. But back to lumpy gravy. Hey that you
Speaker 1: know it's so so maybe you've got some lumps of
Speaker 1: that same flower in your gravy. Uh. There are ways
Speaker 1: around lumpy gravy. So first of all, it helps to
Speaker 1: add starch when the mixture is cool will instead of hot.
Speaker 1: And then dissolve it before as the mixture heats, rather
Speaker 1: than adding starch to liquid that's already hot or boiling.
Speaker 1: Another method is, of course, just good old fashioned whisking.
Speaker 1: Just break it up with a whisk. But in reference
Speaker 1: to a patent that he found, Madrigal rights, quote home
Speaker 1: cooks can prevent this simply by stirring the mixture, but
Speaker 1: that required quote considerable skill, as General Mills Harold Keller
Speaker 1: put it in a nineteen fifty eight patent application. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how much skill it takes to stir something
Speaker 1: or to whisk it. But I don't know. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I've been accused of improper whisking before, so
Speaker 1: oh yeah, what do you do wrong? Um? I think
Speaker 1: it was just like scrambled eggs that I did not
Speaker 1: whisk properly, you know, because you gotta get it, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's not just stirring rapidly, like there's a whole
Speaker 1: like a wrisk orientation that needs to be right to
Speaker 1: do it if you're really whisking something. Yeah, oh, well,
Speaker 1: here's a tip actually for for the cook's out there. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to emulsify something really good with a whisk,
Speaker 1: or fork, you're beating it. I used to always think
Speaker 1: it would be best to stir in a circle, but
Speaker 1: I have read that it is better to go just
Speaker 1: back and forth side to side than it is to
Speaker 1: go in a circle, because there's actually more mechanical agitation
Speaker 1: if you go back and forth in a straight line
Speaker 1: that I think that was one of the problems I
Speaker 1: had previously, is that I would kind of I was
Speaker 1: whisking like I was stirring rapidly, and so I was
Speaker 1: going in a circle and I wasn't doing that that
Speaker 1: just fast whipping. It's more like point A to point
Speaker 1: B in the back to point A. So you're one
Speaker 1: of these people who who Harold Keller just thinks that
Speaker 1: you do not have considerable skill. Correct, I can't do it.
Speaker 1: I think I'm better now, I'm I'm improving, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: I I don't think I was good at whisking nothing
Speaker 1: or passable at whisking until very recently. So was there
Speaker 1: a way around the lump problem? Well, some more food
Speaker 1: science came in. Manufacturers discovered that, of course the addition
Speaker 1: of leavening agents could help a little bit. They could
Speaker 1: help prevent lumps from forming, and especially if mixture was
Speaker 1: again added at lower temperatures, but lumps would still come
Speaker 1: together if you had already boiling water and you poured
Speaker 1: the mixture in. So finally, the solution to the lump
Speaker 1: problem was to add long chain carbon hydrates, specifically multidextron
Speaker 1: in a one to one ratio, and that sort of
Speaker 1: gets us up to the instant packet of gravy we
Speaker 1: know today dirkys is for dinner. Thank thank you, I've
Speaker 1: got weirder territory to get to. Even then, this this
Speaker 1: strange packet of of of gravy stuff or gravy like food,
Speaker 1: because you know that we love the intersection of religion
Speaker 1: and food. Of course, I was wondering if I could
Speaker 1: find any good gravy rituals or gravy superstitions, gravy mythology.
Speaker 1: I I wasn't expecting to find anything, but I actually
Speaker 1: did sort of, at least in a very old classic
Speaker 1: book of religious ethnography that is coming from a scholar
Speaker 1: named Uno Holmberg. He's He's a Finnish scholar of religions.
Speaker 1: He's apparently also known as Uno Harva, and he wrote
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century. He wrote a volume of
Speaker 1: this Big Mythology series that was about the beliefs and
Speaker 1: rituals of what he called the Finno Ugric people. So
Speaker 1: this is gonna include Finnish people and people of much
Speaker 1: of the northern Northern Eurasia and northwest Siberia by region
Speaker 1: at least, I mean they might identify as different than
Speaker 1: Russian ethnically. And this volume mentions recorded observations of several
Speaker 1: interesting rituals involving gravy. So the first is in rituals
Speaker 1: honoring the memory of the dead among some of the
Speaker 1: language groups of Northern Eurasia. Again this would be like
Speaker 1: Western Siberia, and among some of these cultures, after a
Speaker 1: person dies, it is customary to honor them by bringing
Speaker 1: food to their grave or placing food out somewhere in
Speaker 1: the dead person's memory. Quote. Fish and meat are cooked
Speaker 1: and together with other eatables, placed in vessels, either on
Speaker 1: the ground by the house against the door on the
Speaker 1: side of the hinges, or taken to the cemetery, where
Speaker 1: they are put on the ground above the head of
Speaker 1: the deceased, or below the window of the grave house
Speaker 1: if there is one on the ground t gravy Gin
Speaker 1: and finally some cold water are poured, whence the term
Speaker 1: water pouring is derived. Uh so gravy and gin for
Speaker 1: the dead. I was also surprised by the specification of gin,
Speaker 1: because I don't usually think of that as uh the
Speaker 1: commonest spirit to find in like western Siberia. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder if it's specifically gin we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, or they're just referring to some regional alcohol
Speaker 1: that might be comparable on some level to jin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that could be sort of some sort of clear herbal.
Speaker 1: Another one that I thought was interesting was there there
Speaker 1: is a memorial gravy practice that Holmberg mentions as taking
Speaker 1: place among the fins of the Vulgar region. And he
Speaker 1: says that so there are these memorial feasts for the
Speaker 1: dead in which quote at the door near the fireplace,
Speaker 1: a trough is placed on which, as on the head
Speaker 1: of a bed, little wax tapers And I think that
Speaker 1: would refer to little objects that you would use as
Speaker 1: if to like light a candle with little wax tapers
Speaker 1: are fixed into the trough. Pieces of meat are thrown,
Speaker 1: and some gravy poured when the names of the dead
Speaker 1: are mentioned with an appeal to them to eat and drink,
Speaker 1: and to receive the lately deceased with a contented mind
Speaker 1: into their company. And so I like this because it
Speaker 1: it almost seems to mirror the presence of gravy at Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: It's like you're using meat and gravy as a kind
Speaker 1: of bribe or offering to the long dead so that
Speaker 1: they don't give a cold shoulder to the recently dead,
Speaker 1: and they bring them into the family of the dead.
Speaker 1: But there's also a description of practices related to the
Speaker 1: killing of a bear by some of the Sami people's
Speaker 1: and I thought this was really interesting, So I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna read this paragraph here. When the flesh is being cooked,
Speaker 1: the hunters sit on each side of the fire according
Speaker 1: to their rank in position. First it's the one who
Speaker 1: tracked the bear, then the interpreter of the magic drum,
Speaker 1: the bear killers, etcetera, all according to the importance of
Speaker 1: the duty which they have had to do during the kill.
Speaker 1: The vessel in which the flesh is cooked must be
Speaker 1: of brass, or at the very least ornamented with brass rings.
Speaker 1: It must be carefully watched during the cooking, as the
Speaker 1: running over of the tiniest trifle of gravy into the
Speaker 1: fire is regarded as a very bad omen should the
Speaker 1: gravy commenced to boil too violently. It is not regulated
Speaker 1: by adding water or thinning out the fire, but one
Speaker 1: of the men must go to the tent to see
Speaker 1: whether any of the women has caused the trouble by
Speaker 1: unsuitable behavior. Should nothing blame worthy be found there, the
Speaker 1: chief person of the gathering tries to stop the gravy
Speaker 1: from boiling over by the customary singing, singing to the
Speaker 1: gravy to prevent it from boiling out of the pan
Speaker 1: into the fire, which would be a horrible symbol of
Speaker 1: bad luck to come. But only if you can't blame
Speaker 1: it on the women. On the women in the tent, yes, um,
Speaker 1: and so as always the You know, this is an
Speaker 1: older work of of recorded observations of religious rituals. I
Speaker 1: don't know how this would hold up to more modern
Speaker 1: scrutiny of what the same tribes would practice, but these
Speaker 1: are interesting reports. Oh absolutely, yeah. I have to admit
Speaker 1: I never even considered the possibility of of sacred gravy
Speaker 1: or sacred traditions involving gravy, I mean the gravy It
Speaker 1: is a it's it's a liquid essence of the body
Speaker 1: of an animal. And so if you have sacred thoughts
Speaker 1: about the flesh of an animal, it clearly, uh, there
Speaker 1: are sacred practices revolved around the hunting of a bear
Speaker 1: among the Sami People's Yeah, I guess, I guess that
Speaker 1: it comes down to the rendering, you know, like once
Speaker 1: something is rendered or processed into another food product, this
Speaker 1: is problem. Maybe this is more the modern sensibility where
Speaker 1: we often want to distance the end result of the
Speaker 1: food from the animal, so we don't think of you know,
Speaker 1: we don't don't want to think of the pork as
Speaker 1: the pig, and we certainly don't want to think about
Speaker 1: the uh, the anna sausages as presumably a pig. I'm
Speaker 1: not even sure what animal on the other end of
Speaker 1: that that the foul process. But but but at any rate, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the modern sensibilities to think, well, the thing
Speaker 1: you make out of the animal no longer has any
Speaker 1: connections to it, you know, we're not supposed to have
Speaker 1: that connection in place, whereas that's completely ridiculous, like why
Speaker 1: wouldn't the gravy of the bear still have bareness to it?
Speaker 1: That is a really good point. I think about this
Speaker 1: in the psychology of food a lot actually the d
Speaker 1: naturing of the food, the removal, the ways that you
Speaker 1: change food and process it so that it no longer
Speaker 1: resembles or even reminds you of the animal or the
Speaker 1: plant that it once came from, the making of everything
Speaker 1: into like patties or into chicken nuggets, you know, things
Speaker 1: that that you you couldn't even mistake for a muscle
Speaker 1: or for a part of an animal's body, and that's
Speaker 1: clearly antithetical to some of these sacred practices where you
Speaker 1: are not only not processing the food so that it's unrecognizable,
Speaker 1: you are constantly making reference to and thinking about the
Speaker 1: animal it came from as you eat it. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: also think it's interesting that you see a lot of
Speaker 1: this denaturing specifically in foods for children. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's just a quirk of modern American culture
Speaker 1: or if that's a more common thing around the world
Speaker 1: and throughout history that you have to for kids, you
Speaker 1: have to make foods less resemble the organisms they originally
Speaker 1: came from. I don't know what do you think about
Speaker 1: the I mean, I can main they only speak to
Speaker 1: my my own experience with a child. But and even
Speaker 1: this example, there's some contradictions because on one hand, Um,
Speaker 1: as soon as he knew the distinction that you know,
Speaker 1: the chicken is this, uh, this bird, you know, etcetera,
Speaker 1: he decided he didn't want to eat those animals anymore. Uh,
Speaker 1: and has has remained firm on that point, on on
Speaker 1: on this. At the same time, as far as marine
Speaker 1: animals go, Uh, it's the complete opposite, Like like he
Speaker 1: gets excited about crabs if he has helped to catch
Speaker 1: crabs before, and he makes him want to eat them
Speaker 1: even more, you know, And he seems totally into the
Speaker 1: like the experience of of eating oysters, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the opening of the shell and pulling it, pulling it apart.
Speaker 1: Now all the like, the consumption of an oyster is
Speaker 1: very tied to an understanding of its um of it,
Speaker 1: of its biological origins. And uh yeah, so I don't know,
Speaker 1: I kind of see both things in him. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: that's funny because modern secular oyster culture reminds me very
Speaker 1: much of these sacred rituals where like with the bear here,
Speaker 1: where you're very much wanting to think about the animal
Speaker 1: itself and even uh not wanting to spill any of
Speaker 1: the liquor out of the shell. You know, you want
Speaker 1: to get it all in your mouth. Yeah, I mean yea,
Speaker 1: oysters are very ritualized really at every level. Like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm kind of a I'm still kind of old fashioned
Speaker 1: with my appreciation of oysters. I like I like my
Speaker 1: my catch up the horse radish sauce. I like my
Speaker 1: saltine crackers and uh and you know a little bit
Speaker 1: of lemon um and and but that in and of
Speaker 1: itself is very you know, it's it's almost like communion.
Speaker 1: You know, you have these different elements that come together.
Speaker 1: But then of course you have fancier versions of the
Speaker 1: same ritual that involve like like you know, little little
Speaker 1: glass tubes of liquid that are poured on top. Uh
Speaker 1: and and it gets it gets even fancy, or even
Speaker 1: feel it feels even more sacred in some way. This
Speaker 1: is the body of Poseidon. Eat this in remembrance of me. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I know we've been talked thing about a lot of
Speaker 1: meat products here because they are very central to you know,
Speaker 1: a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in American culture. But I want
Speaker 1: to add a brief culinary note which is that if
Speaker 1: you are a vegetarian, you need not miss out on
Speaker 1: gravy for the rest of your life because gravy made
Speaker 1: from mushroom broth, I think, is not only as good
Speaker 1: as gravy made from meat, it's often better. I think
Speaker 1: probably the best gravy I ever made was mushroom based,
Speaker 1: and you can make these yourself just by like simmering
Speaker 1: dried mushrooms with aromatic vegetables to make a mushroom broth.
Speaker 1: Then you reduce that, then you mix it with a
Speaker 1: with a ru or whatever seasonings you want in order
Speaker 1: to thicken it. Even if you're a meat eater, a
Speaker 1: good mushroom gravy is absolutely worth trying. It's delicious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was some sort of meal my family would make
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, and it was I can't
Speaker 1: remember the details, but I feel like the idea was
Speaker 1: it was a less um fancy cut of meat well
Speaker 1: and and adding a mushroom sauce to it was an
Speaker 1: essential part of enjoying it. Like it it. It alone
Speaker 1: elevated this cut of meat to something that was was
Speaker 1: suitable for consumption. I think this brings us back to
Speaker 1: one of the core things about how gravy is used
Speaker 1: because and this actually ranges across different types of customs.
Speaker 1: It's true for the dry, overcooked underseason turkey that a
Speaker 1: lot of people would eat, you know, you save it
Speaker 1: by pouring gravy all over it. But it's also true,
Speaker 1: I say biscuits and gravy, you know, I think that's
Speaker 1: a recipe that where the gravy was brought in to
Speaker 1: save just these like gross lumps of You just got
Speaker 1: to get this food into your body to power you
Speaker 1: through the day. But it's this nasty baked product that
Speaker 1: is not very good on its own. Well, you pour
Speaker 1: some gravy over it. Now it's a hot meal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of our Invention episode on Catchup, which
Speaker 1: I anybody who's digging this episode definitely go look up
Speaker 1: that episode of Catchup. It's either in the Stuff to
Speaker 1: boil your mind feed from earlier this year when we
Speaker 1: kind of dumped a lot of Invention episodes into the feed,
Speaker 1: or you might have to go over to the Invention
Speaker 1: show feed itself. But but it's a similar history, like
Speaker 1: the the the origin of ketchup is the origin of
Speaker 1: these various sauces that were created oftentimes it's like a
Speaker 1: secondary product from the from preserving the preservation of you know,
Speaker 1: fish or whatnot, and then using these as a way
Speaker 1: to make potentially vile tasting foods more palatable. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: this this also reminds me one of the early recommendations
Speaker 1: for uses of ketchup an American cuisine was to add
Speaker 1: flavor to graves no joke. Wow, so you'd like mix
Speaker 1: it in? Yeah? Okay, One last bonus fact. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about real quick before we end. Cranberry sauce.
Speaker 1: Do you have cranberry sauce thoughts? Do you like the
Speaker 1: can stuff? I've seen people say like they don't want
Speaker 1: it unless it has the the can ribs still visible
Speaker 1: on it, like you know, bones poking out under the
Speaker 1: flesh of a beast. I don't have a particular preference.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm better, but I remember growing up, we would
Speaker 1: the rest of the family would have like a more
Speaker 1: elegant cranberry sauce that clearly has an organic origin. But
Speaker 1: my dad, I believe it was my dad that insisted
Speaker 1: on or maybe it's my grandfather, can't remember. I think
Speaker 1: it was my dad insisted on the canned version. Where
Speaker 1: if it's like clearly it's in the shape of a can,
Speaker 1: it still has the lines on it, the ridges, and
Speaker 1: it's just been sliced in half. It's just like a
Speaker 1: chopped up segment of a pink snake and you can
Speaker 1: see it's bones. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. As
Speaker 1: far as traditions go, I kind of love them both.
Speaker 1: Like I even though I don't think I ever ate
Speaker 1: the canned cranberry slice stuff like that, just thinking about
Speaker 1: it makes me happy, So I guess I'm all for it. Well,
Speaker 1: so I was wondering quickly, why is it that cranberry
Speaker 1: sauce gets so thick like that, you know, you get
Speaker 1: the jelly version of the can now in the canned
Speaker 1: to product. It's possible that some brands will add further
Speaker 1: things to make it hold its shape even better, but
Speaker 1: that that doesn't necessarily have to be the case, because
Speaker 1: there are natural parts of cranberries that will make it
Speaker 1: gel quite nicely if you just prepare it the right way. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is a nice reminder that, like we've been
Speaker 1: talking about with with animal products, many of the culinary
Speaker 1: properties of food are also just straightforwardly the biological properties
Speaker 1: of plants and animals. It's a strange thing to remember.
Speaker 1: In the case of cranberry sauce. Part of the answer
Speaker 1: of what makes cranberry sauce gel so thickly and hold
Speaker 1: its shape is a molecule called pecton. Pecton is a
Speaker 1: natural polysaccharide that's found in plants, and it works as
Speaker 1: a type of biological cement that holds plants sell walls together,
Speaker 1: and fruits that are high in pectin will release their
Speaker 1: pectin content as their cells are destroyed through cooking. And
Speaker 1: this is one reason that longer cooked cranberry sauces tend
Speaker 1: to gel together more than a short cooked sauce. Well,
Speaker 1: the longer you cook it, you extract more and more
Speaker 1: of this biological glue that gets all mixed into the
Speaker 1: sauce you're making and helps it sort of hold its
Speaker 1: shape once it sets. Interesting, all right, I know what
Speaker 1: what everyone out there is is asking. At this point,
Speaker 1: you're saying, what about stuffing? I gotta know about stuffing. Well,
Speaker 1: we're out of time, so we're not gonna do stuffing
Speaker 1: this year. Maybe we'll do stuffing next year. We need
Speaker 1: to have portion control on this show. Thanksgiving meal itself
Speaker 1: is not about portion control, but the show has to
Speaker 1: be so as far as stuffing goes, maybe we'll cover
Speaker 1: it next year, or maybe you can just go listen
Speaker 1: to our episode about pie crete and that'll be close
Speaker 1: enough to stuffing for your taste. It's a low carb
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving what everyone wants. All right, Well, this is this
Speaker 1: was pretty fun. I got to learn. I got to
Speaker 1: learn a few things about turkeys and witch bones that
Speaker 1: I wasn't familiar with. I got to learn about sacred gravy.
Speaker 1: This is. This has been great. Alright, We're gonna let
Speaker 1: it go. Then we hope everybody, if you're celebrating Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: or some version of Thanksgiving, we hope that that goes well. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to check out
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can
Speaker 1: find us wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that
Speaker 1: happens to be. If you have the ability to rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe to the show, we asked that you do that.
Speaker 1: It's a great way to help out the show. Another
Speaker 1: thing you can do, and this is it's kind of
Speaker 1: mostly for fun, is that if you go to stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com that will take you
Speaker 1: to the I Heart page for our show, and there's
Speaker 1: something you can click on there for our store that'll
Speaker 1: take you to our T shirts store. We have a
Speaker 1: number of different designs. You can get them on a
Speaker 1: sticker or a shirt or what have you face mask
Speaker 1: I think even now, and there's several different designs there.
Speaker 1: Some of them are logo and some of them are
Speaker 1: some other fun things. We have a new shirt in there.
Speaker 1: It's a Pandora shirt that a listener of designed for us,
Speaker 1: and it's really fun. It's got a Pandora Moti and
Speaker 1: she's opening in the box and it's releasing these various
Speaker 1: uh mythological concepts and ideas. It's pretty cool, so go
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