27 November 2017

1. Scandal in the Dutch national herring test. Two things about this please me. First, the defence that “statistical evidence is a red herring”. Something fishy there. Secondly, The Economist never knowingly avoids an opportunity to pun.
2. Native American chefs excoriate “Thanksgiving”. I can empathise.
3. Cynthia D. Bertelson avoids that trap by focussing on the old English contribution to that feast, as an aperitif for a round-up of proper history books on Britain and food history.
4. Which offers a smooth segue into a slightly hard to swallow history of instant mashed potatoes.
5. All about celery; not, as far as I know, a star of any Thanksgiving table, anywhere.
6. I was expecting major insights from A Taxonomy Of Spices Based On Three Million Instacart Orders but I’m afraid the only insight I got was that in some matters I must be an appalling food snob. Also, how on earth can anyone with a smidgen of sense say this: “we don’t mind shelling out the few extra bucks to ensure that the spices haven’t been exposed to irradiation”?