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Helminths Exposed: Inside the Sometimes Gross World of Food Borne Parasites
In 1865, Otto von Bismarck, the conqueror of France, the architect of German unification, Germany’s first Chancellor and the steely-eyed hard man of realpolitik challenged a scientist to a duel. This wasn’t an early case of nerd hazing. Rudolf Virchow, apart from his scientific career, was also the leader of the Progressive Party and one… Continue reading
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Phylloxera: The American Grape Vine Pest That Almost Ruined My Saturday Nights
Can you imagine a world without French wine? A world without the wines of Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy and Provence? A world in which French people don’t look down their nose at the wines of the rest of the world? Is such a world even possible? Well, in the late 19th century this is exactly the… Continue reading
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Vanilla II: The Curing and the Chemistry
When we left vanilla in the last post, the French had finally broken the Spanish monopoly and were beginning to establish a vanilla industry in Madagascar and French Polynesia. Normally when a monopoly is broken prices come down as supply increases and the monopolist loses control over pricing. While this was partly the case with… Continue reading
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Vanilla I: Botany and Bad Behaviour
Humans have an almost unlimited capacity to endure other people’s suffering when there are large sums of money to be made. For proof of this we need look no further than our history books. History is littered with examples of humans behaving appallingly to their fellow human while in pursuit of a quick buck. Notable… Continue reading
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The Brassica: Cabbage, Broccoli and Other Childhood Nemeses
There is probably no more feared food group than the plants that come from the Brassicaceae family. Also known as the cruciferous vegetables, this family, surely a practical joke played by God on children, includes the plants that bring us cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, mustard greens, arugula, turnips, kohlrabi, broccoli, cauliflower and many other childhood… Continue reading
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Why is Kobe Beef So Good?
I’ve been to a lot of places and I’ve eaten a lot of things. I thought that there was nothing left that could give me a culinary jolt. I was wrong. I’m in Osaka, Japan. I’m travelling with my family and another from our home town of Brisbane. We had landed at Narita Airport two… Continue reading
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Are Michelin Stars All in Our Mind?
I’ve been watching ‘Knife Edge’ on Apple TV, a documentary that follows the trials and tribulations of Michelin star hopefuls. It is a guilty pleasure; it’s basically reality TV with some Michelin star prestige to ramp up the stakes. A couple of things did strike me when I was watching though. Firstly, why would anyone… Continue reading
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Custard, Avgolemono and Carbonara: The Science of Using Eggs to Thicken Sauces
The world of sauces can be pretty intimidating. The French, in particular, have elevated the art of sauce making to such an extraordinary extent that the whole idea of making a sauce can seem overwhelming. They have their mother sauces, their daughter sauces and a whole culinary tradition based specifically around sauces. To the French… Continue reading
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The Microbiome II: Every Microbiome Is Happy in Its Own Way
In the first post of this microbiome series I covered the beginnings of microbiology. The realisation that we were surrounded by microorganisms, the development of germ theory and the first stirrings of the idea that microbes, apart from destroying our health, could also be contributing to our well-being. We left the story in the early… Continue reading
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The Microbiome I: A New World is Discovered
For anyone with an even cursory interest in health and nutrition it has become very hard to avoid the gut microbiota. The collection of bacteria, and other microbes, that we all carry around in our gastrointestinal tract is proving to have an influence on our health and well-being unimaginable even twenty short years ago. Our… Continue reading
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Acids, Cooking and Inconvenient Corpses.
I’ve written more than a few posts on food science now and it is something of a scandal that I haven’t yet talked about acids in cooking. Acid ranks right up there with salt when it comes to seasoning our food and yet I’ve skirted the issue, mentioned it here and there, but haven’t really… Continue reading
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The Cautionary Tale of Trofim Lysenko
One day, years ago, when I was a cocksure university undergraduate, I was chatting to some Jehovah’s Witnesses who had come to the door of the share house I lived in. We discussed a few things but at one point the guy I was talking to said that when it came to evolution he didn’t… Continue reading
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Genes, Gluttony and Gout
As a young man, and even into his forties, Henry VIII was a charismatic, athletic and highly attractive individual. He stood, for his times, a towering six feet two inches and he was renown for his prowess on the jousting field and for excelling at hunting, wrestling, tennis, and archery. But, by the time he… Continue reading
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Food Science Book
It’s been a while since I’ve posted but I have an excuse. I’ve been working on a book which is now available on Amazon. The book is basically a selection of my blog posts with a lot more proof reading and a lot of edits to smooth out the rough edges that you might find… Continue reading
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Egg whites: The art and science of edible foams
When considering the great florescence of thought and ideas that was the Enlightenment we tend to focus on the big ideas, the big innovations and the big thinkers like Voltaire, Locke and Adam Smith. But, as in any other time of great intellectual or technological change, there are other, smaller, ideas that fly under the… Continue reading
The Science of Food 