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What I find most interesting about this is just what a difference there is between cooking at that time and today in terms of what is 'plain', 'spicy', 'savory'

What I find most interesting about this is just what a difference there is between cooking at that time and today in terms of what is 'plain', 'spicy', 'savory', etc. I had a conversation with my dad (currently in his late 60s) about what eating was like growing up and he said: "Well, we didn't have any spicy food." and I asked: "Like what? Mexican? Schezuwan? Thai?" and his answer was: "Any food with garlic".

Spooky23 9y ago
Reminds me of my grandparents. Spicy for them was shake and baked bbq chicken. Otherwise, the main flavorings in use were salt, butter, yellow onion and microscopic quantities of pepper.
- jandrese 9y ago
  Health cookbooks are the worst for this. They'll call for 2 lbs of beans, 2 onions, a cubic foot of leafy greens, half a dozen carrots, and 1/8 of a tsp of salt. They seem to be ashamed of flavor like it's a naughty sin that they have to hide from the decent folk.
  - blt 9y ago
    People think salt is bad for you... They don't understand the role of salt in cooking. Let them try eating unsalted bread. It will be an educational experience.
    - upvotinglurker 9y ago
      Yes, they're not afraid of "flavor" in general (at least the ones I've encountered call for plenty of chiles, herbs, etc.) but the perceived harms of salt in particular.
crookshanked 9y ago
That is rather interesting to hear. I will need to have the same conversation with my elders sometime. Coming from the south garlic is in the majority of the dishes I first learned to cook. This fresh onion juice concept is thought provoking as well. Recently tried making latke and upon shredding my onions was left with onion juice but it did not occur to me that this liquid could be put to use.
- pacaro 9y ago
  An Armenian friend of mine marinades chicken in onion juice (obtained by crushing halved onions with his bare hands), salt, and black pepper, before grilling. Delicious
abpavel 9y ago
Well, savory is one of the five basic tastes, so I don't think that would change a lot - it's just fat. However spicy can be any type of spice, so it would likely differ even between individual families within the same block today.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Savory is "umami". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Wikipedia notwithstanding, they're not really synonyms. Savory is a broader term that is essentially intended to contrast with sweet. If I make an unsweetened herb bread with sage and thyme or whatever, it would be correct to call that a savory bread even though it's definitely not umami (i.e. meaty/brothy).
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      Context notwithstanding too right? The comment I replied to used the term in the context of the 5 basic tastes, not as a culinary term.
      - ghaff 9y ago
        Fair enough. It's almost certainly more correct to list umami as one of the basic tastes, rather than savory. (I was more commenting on Wikipedia suggesting they're the same thing when they're really not.)
        zeveb 9y ago
        > It's almost certainly more correct to list umami as one of the basic tastes, rather than savory. I really don't think so: 'savory' is an actual English word while 'umami' is a Japanese one. Writing 'umami' like writing 'arugula' instead of 'rocket' or 'cilantro' instead of 'coriander.' And 'umami' isn't really any more accurate than 'savory': it's a 100-year-old neologism from the Japanese word for 'delicious.' Given a choice between two words which aren't necessarily perfect fits for the concept, why not stick with the native one?
jackhack 9y ago
Ha! Great story. And to think I was disappointed the other night because I couldn't find the exact type of hot pepper I was after and had to settle for habaneros. We are living in a golden age of food. Yet wars were fought over access to black pepper. It's difficult to believe, but just 100 years ago a food as commonplace as spaghetti with tomato sauce was considered somewhat exotic; at the least predominately an ethnic Italian dish. Even 50 years ago, chicken was considered an 'occasional' meat. Cornell university is famous for a basting sauce, as a result of an effort to encourage more domestic consumption of chicken. I wonder if Pad Thai, bulgogi, or stretchy Turkish ice-cream will be considered everyday foods in another 50 years.
- mrob 9y ago
  >Cornell university is famous for a basting sauce See: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cornell-chicken-barbecue-sauce-upstate https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cornell-chicken-barbec...
  - jackhack 9y ago
    Yep. That's the stuff. We use it all the time on grilled chicken. Best made fresh (and it's quite easy) but there's a commercial brand called "Spidie's State Fair Sauce" or similar that gets very close for those who can't wait.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  See the BBC's legendary spaghetti tree hoax from April Fool's Day, 1957. A lot of viewers really were taken in by the idea that spaghetti grew on trees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU
- pikchurn 9y ago
  > I wonder if Pad Thai, bulgogi, or stretchy Turkish ice-cream will be considered everyday foods in another 50 years. I'll have to try stretchy Turkish ice-cream sometime (where do you find that?) but Pad Thai and bulgogi are already everyday foods you can find on every corner of every strip mall in the part of America where I live.
Digory 9y ago
Boston/New England folk cuisine was (and is) still very bland. Pot roast, baked beans, mashed potatoes, brown bread, apples, etc. Very similar to the "English cooking" that used to be derided all over. Even today, I have a friend from Boston who treats ketchup as a spicy condiment, almost like midwestern friends treat Tabasco. Other parts of the US had a spicier food culture -- the Cajuns, the Southwest, African-Americans, etc. But the wealthy parts of America liked very bland, well-processed food.
- minikites 9y ago
  I'm originally from the Southwest but I went to college in the Northeast. One of my roommates was from Maine and he introduced me to the concept of a "boiled dinner" which he raved about and I was quite skeptical of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_boiled_dinner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_boiled_dinner
  - cm2012 9y ago
    Corned beef and cabbage is legit, let me assure you.
  - qalmakka 9y ago
    We have a strong tradition of boiling meat and vegetables in Northern Italy. You get a delicious stock where you can cook pasta into (either standard, or filled, such as tortellini) and also very delicate, yet tasty, boiled beef and chicken. These often come with additiomal mashed potatoes and sauces based on parsley, bell peppers or mustard, sometimes mayonnaise. In Cremona they make something called "mostarda", which is candied fruit spiced with a shitload of mustard. It's absolutely weird and burns like hell, but boy how delicious it is.
elboru 9y ago
I'm not a native English speaker, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think English needs a new word related to pepper spiciness, for me sometimes is difficult to translate it. In Spanish we have "picoso" to describe pepper's hot feeling. Since spicy in English could describe a long variety of spices, flavors and sensations. Maybe 50 years ago it wasn't necessary since they were foreign flavors, but now that your food and taste has evolved and globalized it could be necessary.
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  You're not wrong. The closest I think in English is how we have modified the word "spice" to be, in context, "spiced" vs "spicy". The former implies the "herbs and spices" and the latter the "hot pepper" types. But it's not exactly consistent. We of course have the modifier "hot" which works. And we stole piquant from the french, but that is a little different I think.
  - justinlardinois 9y ago
    For "spiced" we also have the word "seasoned." It has a handful of meanings, but if you're using it to describe a flavor it should be clear that's the meaning you're using. I've also heard foods described as having "bite" to indicate that they have a strong, spicy flavor, but not necessarily a "hot" one.
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      “Bite” can also be about acidic flavor too (or both in the case of vinegar siluable spices!)
  - mirimir 9y ago
    But then there's ginger hot vs pepper hot.
  - Retra 9y ago
    "Hot" is also ambiguous; probably more so.
csours 9y ago
My dad hates spicy foods (any peppers, garlic, etc). Ok, people can like what they like. But then I noticed he eats spicy radishes like they're nothing...
INTPenis 9y ago
Interesting that he'd say garlic because my dad (in his 70s now) lives in his hometown in Croatia. Where most people grow crops, it's a rural community. And near the center most crops are just for personal consumption. Yet no one grows garlic. I was shocked by this. He said he'd be the first to grow garlic in the whole village. He has of course lived many years in Sweden where I was born and raised before he moved back for his twilight years. In Sweden garlic has been very common for my entire life, since at least 1985. I can only speculate but it's likely that I had access to garlic due to global imports. And it's also likely his fellow villagers, many in their 50s and older, aren't used to garlic because they didn't grow up with it.
- hycaria 9y ago
  My dad is 70, of italian descent, and uses a lot of garlic, everywhere.
  - INTPenis 9y ago
    Of course, I forgot about the italians. They're literally across the adriatic sea from croatia and they love garlic. I need to get to the bottom of this.

Spooky23 9y ago

Reminds me of my grandparents. Spicy for them was shake and baked bbq chicken. Otherwise, the main flavorings in use were salt, butter, yellow onion and microscopic quantities of pepper.

jandrese 9y ago
Health cookbooks are the worst for this. They'll call for 2 lbs of beans, 2 onions, a cubic foot of leafy greens, half a dozen carrots, and 1/8 of a tsp of salt. They seem to be ashamed of flavor like it's a naughty sin that they have to hide from the decent folk.
- blt 9y ago
  People think salt is bad for you... They don't understand the role of salt in cooking. Let them try eating unsalted bread. It will be an educational experience.
  - upvotinglurker 9y ago
    Yes, they're not afraid of "flavor" in general (at least the ones I've encountered call for plenty of chiles, herbs, etc.) but the perceived harms of salt in particular.

crookshanked 9y ago

That is rather interesting to hear. I will need to have the same conversation with my elders sometime. Coming from the south garlic is in the majority of the dishes I first learned to cook. This fresh onion juice concept is thought provoking as well. Recently tried making latke and upon shredding my onions was left with onion juice but it did not occur to me that this liquid could be put to use.

pacaro 9y ago
An Armenian friend of mine marinades chicken in onion juice (obtained by crushing halved onions with his bare hands), salt, and black pepper, before grilling. Delicious

abpavel 9y ago

Well, savory is one of the five basic tastes, so I don't think that would change a lot - it's just fat. However spicy can be any type of spice, so it would likely differ even between individual families within the same block today.

maxerickson 9y ago
Savory is "umami". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami
- ghaff 9y ago
  Wikipedia notwithstanding, they're not really synonyms. Savory is a broader term that is essentially intended to contrast with sweet. If I make an unsweetened herb bread with sage and thyme or whatever, it would be correct to call that a savory bread even though it's definitely not umami (i.e. meaty/brothy).
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Context notwithstanding too right? The comment I replied to used the term in the context of the 5 basic tastes, not as a culinary term.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Fair enough. It's almost certainly more correct to list umami as one of the basic tastes, rather than savory. (I was more commenting on Wikipedia suggesting they're the same thing when they're really not.)
      - zeveb 9y ago
        > It's almost certainly more correct to list umami as one of the basic tastes, rather than savory. I really don't think so: 'savory' is an actual English word while 'umami' is a Japanese one. Writing 'umami' like writing 'arugula' instead of 'rocket' or 'cilantro' instead of 'coriander.' And 'umami' isn't really any more accurate than 'savory': it's a 100-year-old neologism from the Japanese word for 'delicious.' Given a choice between two words which aren't necessarily perfect fits for the concept, why not stick with the native one?

jackhack 9y ago

Ha! Great story. And to think I was disappointed the other night because I couldn't find the exact type of hot pepper I was after and had to settle for habaneros. We are living in a golden age of food. Yet wars were fought over access to black pepper. It's difficult to believe, but just 100 years ago a food as commonplace as spaghetti with tomato sauce was considered somewhat exotic; at the least predominately an ethnic Italian dish. Even 50 years ago, chicken was considered an 'occasional' meat. Cornell university is famous for a basting sauce, as a result of an effort to encourage more domestic consumption of chicken. I wonder if Pad Thai, bulgogi, or stretchy Turkish ice-cream will be considered everyday foods in another 50 years.

mrob 9y ago
>Cornell university is famous for a basting sauce See: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cornell-chicken-barbecue-sauce-upstate https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cornell-chicken-barbec...
- jackhack 9y ago
  Yep. That's the stuff. We use it all the time on grilled chicken. Best made fresh (and it's quite easy) but there's a commercial brand called "Spidie's State Fair Sauce" or similar that gets very close for those who can't wait.
jdietrich 9y ago
See the BBC's legendary spaghetti tree hoax from April Fool's Day, 1957. A lot of viewers really were taken in by the idea that spaghetti grew on trees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU
pikchurn 9y ago
> I wonder if Pad Thai, bulgogi, or stretchy Turkish ice-cream will be considered everyday foods in another 50 years. I'll have to try stretchy Turkish ice-cream sometime (where do you find that?) but Pad Thai and bulgogi are already everyday foods you can find on every corner of every strip mall in the part of America where I live.

Digory 9y ago

Boston/New England folk cuisine was (and is) still very bland. Pot roast, baked beans, mashed potatoes, brown bread, apples, etc. Very similar to the "English cooking" that used to be derided all over. Even today, I have a friend from Boston who treats ketchup as a spicy condiment, almost like midwestern friends treat Tabasco. Other parts of the US had a spicier food culture -- the Cajuns, the Southwest, African-Americans, etc. But the wealthy parts of America liked very bland, well-processed food.

minikites 9y ago
I'm originally from the Southwest but I went to college in the Northeast. One of my roommates was from Maine and he introduced me to the concept of a "boiled dinner" which he raved about and I was quite skeptical of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_boiled_dinner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_boiled_dinner
- cm2012 9y ago
  Corned beef and cabbage is legit, let me assure you.
- qalmakka 9y ago
  We have a strong tradition of boiling meat and vegetables in Northern Italy. You get a delicious stock where you can cook pasta into (either standard, or filled, such as tortellini) and also very delicate, yet tasty, boiled beef and chicken. These often come with additiomal mashed potatoes and sauces based on parsley, bell peppers or mustard, sometimes mayonnaise. In Cremona they make something called "mostarda", which is candied fruit spiced with a shitload of mustard. It's absolutely weird and burns like hell, but boy how delicious it is.

elboru 9y ago

I'm not a native English speaker, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think English needs a new word related to pepper spiciness, for me sometimes is difficult to translate it. In Spanish we have "picoso" to describe pepper's hot feeling. Since spicy in English could describe a long variety of spices, flavors and sensations. Maybe 50 years ago it wasn't necessary since they were foreign flavors, but now that your food and taste has evolved and globalized it could be necessary.

abritinthebay 9y ago
You're not wrong. The closest I think in English is how we have modified the word "spice" to be, in context, "spiced" vs "spicy". The former implies the "herbs and spices" and the latter the "hot pepper" types. But it's not exactly consistent. We of course have the modifier "hot" which works. And we stole piquant from the french, but that is a little different I think.
- justinlardinois 9y ago
  For "spiced" we also have the word "seasoned." It has a handful of meanings, but if you're using it to describe a flavor it should be clear that's the meaning you're using. I've also heard foods described as having "bite" to indicate that they have a strong, spicy flavor, but not necessarily a "hot" one.
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    “Bite” can also be about acidic flavor too (or both in the case of vinegar siluable spices!)
- mirimir 9y ago
  But then there's ginger hot vs pepper hot.
- Retra 9y ago
  "Hot" is also ambiguous; probably more so.

csours 9y ago

My dad hates spicy foods (any peppers, garlic, etc). Ok, people can like what they like. But then I noticed he eats spicy radishes like they're nothing...

INTPenis 9y ago

Interesting that he'd say garlic because my dad (in his 70s now) lives in his hometown in Croatia. Where most people grow crops, it's a rural community. And near the center most crops are just for personal consumption. Yet no one grows garlic. I was shocked by this. He said he'd be the first to grow garlic in the whole village. He has of course lived many years in Sweden where I was born and raised before he moved back for his twilight years. In Sweden garlic has been very common for my entire life, since at least 1985. I can only speculate but it's likely that I had access to garlic due to global imports. And it's also likely his fellow villagers, many in their 50s and older, aren't used to garlic because they didn't grow up with it.

hycaria 9y ago
My dad is 70, of italian descent, and uses a lot of garlic, everywhere.
- INTPenis 9y ago
  Of course, I forgot about the italians. They're literally across the adriatic sea from croatia and they love garlic. I need to get to the bottom of this.