what people say and how important it can be
I rediscovered something cool today. Blame apples.
Evidence is only as good as our ability to interpret it. Some types of evidence we give a bunch of authority to. Magisterial-looking monographs, for instance, make far too many people nod their heads in agreement without considering the research and thought and general reliability of the book. Someone who sounds as if they know what they’re talking about or wears the right clothes is more often assumed to be credible than to be talking for the sake of talking.
Basically, we carry with us a series of expectations when we come across information about the past. Some of them are based on our formal education while some of them are based upon what our culture has taught us. We tend to assume, for instance, that authority comes in suits and so we give just that much more credence to a salesperson who is respectably dressed.
Where do apples come in? One group often given low credibility is elderly people who say “In my day…” I say it often now I’m middle-aged, just to get a laugh. The laugh shows that the phrase and anything that follows is not nearly as likely to be believed as an earnest statement by a man aged 40, wearing a cool suit and carrying a briefcase. “The apple tart was special,” a friend said recently. “There’s nothing around like that anymore.”
The trick is that this friend isn’t old at all (I was playing with someone’s mind – probably my own). She was referring to a quite specific type of apple used to make a quite specific type of pastry in a very precise part of Arkansas. She knows the folk history of that apple tree and can give you a precise description of the apple. I was able to locate its relatives from her description. She is a reliable witness and there as never any doubt about that. So memories can be reliable sources of food history.
Yesterday I bought some older style cooking apples (not omnipresent Granny Smiths). Anyhow, I stewed some because I was too tired to fix anything more complex and besides, I had tasted one of the apples last night with my class, and I rather thought that slow stewing would create some interesting textures. I picked up some very fine cream to go with it.
When the time came to eat it, I wasn’t hungry. I thought I ought to taste it, though, in the interest of proving that elderly people who kept telling me how much nicer apples were in their day were wrong.
The complete bowl is inside me. It doesn’t matter how un-hungry I am, when an extraordinary flavour comes I find I can suddenly eat. The evidence of the old folks who talked about the stewed apples of their childhood was very sound.
I think the trick is to find out if they’re talking generically or about a specific taste memory. I think the other trick is to admit that anyone’s memory of a flavour or an event is just as likely to be accurate as an expensive monograph. Accuracy, after all, isn’t just a matter of footnotes. In this case, the elderly people who reminisced about apples all had apple trees in their gardens when they were young, and those apple trees were very probably the same variety as the ones I just cooked.
March 7th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Treatise on Fast Food History:
This thought provoking piece made me think of another piece of food memorabilc history that often makes me wonder whether it existed at all, lost in the mists of time and distance that it is.
I refer to the mid-seventies, and to the arrival in Australia of a fast food franchise called KENTUCKEY FRIED CHICKEN.
Now, you are probably thinking “Ive eaten that.” Well, that depends entirely on how old you are at the moment, because the present franchise (KFC) is exactly that…KFC.
It is NOT and never has been…Kentuckey Fried Chicken…let me remind you of exactly what this original gourmet fast food USED to be…Firstly, there was the whole “experience” of PURCHACE…
When this franchise arrived in Australia, it was served in a red and white striped box, with the obligatory “re-heating” instructions, and a blurb telling you “The Story of the Colonel.
Your arrival at Kentuckey Fried Chicken was ALWAYS greated by collective “groans” from the occupants of the car. Unfortunate souls all, they were greeted by a line that frequently stretched around the building itself. Your place in the line was kept if you lined up in shifts, taking eachothers place, as the line GRADUALLY shuffled forward.
On your arrival at the door, the wonderful aroma used to hit you, and, by the time you actually made the counter to place your order, stomach juices would be RUMBLING if this was your only meal for the day. This process took about forty minutes on average.
Because the demand was so great, the chicken was sold pretty much as soon as it hit the shelves….this virtually guaranteed that your particular share would be hot off the press…..a wait of up to half anhour was not unusual….BUT, as you opened the door, fighting the urge not to open the box before the other hungry buggers got to it, your journey home was accompanied by a certain “hunting” look from the other car passengers….wings were passed to us kids at this stage to shut us up, but we were not always so luckey….
When you got it home, many moons later, and frequently breaking many speed limits to get there, as you opened the box, steam used to rise from the chicken….and it was TOO HOT to pick up even at this late stage in it’s development as food….so you had to either risk burning mouth/fingers, or wait for it to cool down….AND it was the BEST EVER FAST FOOD, CHICKEN OR OTHERWISE.
Modern KFC….none of the above….I’m not going into detail….I might start to cry….
Investigations with store managers of KFC old enough to remeber got you the information that this Kentuckey fried Chicken used to be cooked in ANIMAL FAT….both deep fried and STEAMED….the bones were literally too hot to pick up….and it WAS “finger lickin’ GOOD…
It aint anymore….araely, if ever do I see ANYBODY “lickin’ their fingers” just to keep that tsste in your mouth, as we used to…..
I PINE for this type of fast food again…..too much demand I was told….but the product is so INFERIOR these days, that I would gladly WAIT TWICE AS LONG for the Gourmet of all fast foods again….simply the best fast food EVER….
For Gods sake, KFC execs reading this….
Bring it BACK……..the “stuff” we buy today is just not KENTUCKEY FRIED CHICKEN anymore…
March 10th, 2008 at 8:01 am
I remember that. I only had it maybe twice in my childhood (since it wasn’t kosher) but I drove my whole family crazy over it and these days, I keep wondering why I did.
Although there was also the Kentucky Fried Rabbit scandal…