fullygoldy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fullygoldy) wrote2006-07-18 07:16 am
fullygoldy) wrote2006-07-18 07:16 am
Food Porn in Science
More excerpts from The Best American Science Writing 2005 (ed. Alan Lightman), this time from Ellen Ullman's Dining with Robots.
"When the software engineer and writer Ellen Ullman decides to make a recipe from Julia Child's Art of French Cooking, she winds up contemplating the pleasures a robot cannot experience--and worries that even humans may be losing contact with those pleasures..." (Lightman)
Ullman starts out by explaining that in her first programming class, the instructor said programming was like creating a recipe. YOu list the ingredients first, then break it down into steps, culminating in 'cool, slice and serve.' Fast forward 25 years, where she encounters a 'certain filet of beef' in San Francisco's Ferry Building food hall.
Who would have expected such luscious passages of food porn in an article about artificial intelligence? Certainly not me, but this made my day.
"When the software engineer and writer Ellen Ullman decides to make a recipe from Julia Child's Art of French Cooking, she winds up contemplating the pleasures a robot cannot experience--and worries that even humans may be losing contact with those pleasures..." (Lightman)
Ullman starts out by explaining that in her first programming class, the instructor said programming was like creating a recipe. YOu list the ingredients first, then break it down into steps, culminating in 'cool, slice and serve.' Fast forward 25 years, where she encounters a 'certain filet of beef' in San Francisco's Ferry Building food hall.
The hall, with its soaring, arched windows, is a veritable church of food. The sellers are small, local producers; everything is organic, natural, free-range; the "baby lettuces" are so young one should perhaps cal them "fetal"--it's that sort of place. Before shopping, it helps to have a glass of wine, as I had, to prepare yourself for the gasping shock of the prices. ...a nice Pinot Grigio, which had left me with lowered sales resistance by the time I wandered over to the Potter Farms meat stall. ...he stood there as a man who had--personally--fed, slaughtered, and butchered this cow, and all for me, it seemed. I took home the beef.
And now, as rain hatched the windows, I came upon a recipe that Julia and her coauthors introduced as follows: Saute de Boeuf a la Parisienne (Beef Saute with Cream and Mushroom Sauce) and here you have to imagine Julia speaking these words:
This saute' of beef is good to know about if you have to entertain important guests in a hurry. It consists of small pieces of filet sauteed quickly to a nice brown outside and a rosy center, and served in a sauce. ...the cream and mushroom sauce here is a French version of beef Stroganoff, but less tricky as it uses fresh rather than sour cream.... Serve the beef ina casserole, or on a platter surrounded with steamed rice, risotto, or potato balls sauteed in butter. Buttered green peas or beans could accompany it, and a good red Bordeax wine.
And it was just right then, just after reading the words "a good red Bordeaux wine," that the programming class came back to me...I knew in that moment that my long-ago instructor, like my young self, had been laughably cluesless about the whole subject of cooking food.
If you have to entertain important guests.
A nice brown outside.
A rosy center.
Stroganoff.
Curdled.
Risotto.
Potato balls in butter.
A good red Bordeaux.
I tried to imagine the program one would write for this recipe. And immediately each of these phrases exploded in my mind. How to tell a computer what "important guests" are? And how would you explain what it means to "have to" serve them dinner (never mind the yawning depths of "entertain")? A "nice brown," a "rosy center": you'd have to have a mouth and eyes to know what these mean, no matter how well you might translate them into temperatures. And what to do about "Stroganoff," which is not just a sauce but a noble family, a name that opens a chain of association that catapults the human mind across seven centuries of Russian history? I forced myself to abandon that line of thought and stay in teh smaller realm of sauces made with cream, but this inadvertently opened up the entire subject of the chemistry of lactic proteins, and why milk curdles. Then I wondered how to explain "risotto": the special short-grained rice, the select regions on earth where it grows, opening up endlessly into questions of agriculture, its arrival among humans, the way it changed the earth. Next came the story of potatoes, that Inca food, the brutalities through which it arrives on a particular plate before a particular woman in Europe, before our eponymous Parisienne: how it is converted into a little round ball, and then of course, buttered. (Then, lord help me, this brought up the whole subject of the French and butter, and how can they possibly get away with eating so much of it?)
But all this was nothing compared to the cataclysm created by "a good red Bordeaux."
Lord help me, I was ROFL with this passage.
And how to explain wine at all? You could spend the rest of your life tasting wine and still not exhaust its variations, each bottle a little ecosystem of grapes and soils and weather, yeast and bacteria, barrels of wood from trees with their own soil and weather, the variables cross-multiplying until each glassful approaches a singularity, a moment in time on earth. Can a creature that does not drink or taste understand pleasure? A good red Bordeaux!
Singularity! In a glass of wine! Yes.
And now, as rain hatched the windows, I came upon a recipe that Julia and her coauthors introduced as follows: Saute de Boeuf a la Parisienne (Beef Saute with Cream and Mushroom Sauce) and here you have to imagine Julia speaking these words:
This saute' of beef is good to know about if you have to entertain important guests in a hurry. It consists of small pieces of filet sauteed quickly to a nice brown outside and a rosy center, and served in a sauce. ...the cream and mushroom sauce here is a French version of beef Stroganoff, but less tricky as it uses fresh rather than sour cream.... Serve the beef ina casserole, or on a platter surrounded with steamed rice, risotto, or potato balls sauteed in butter. Buttered green peas or beans could accompany it, and a good red Bordeax wine.
And it was just right then, just after reading the words "a good red Bordeaux wine," that the programming class came back to me...I knew in that moment that my long-ago instructor, like my young self, had been laughably cluesless about the whole subject of cooking food.
If you have to entertain important guests.
A nice brown outside.
A rosy center.
Stroganoff.
Curdled.
Risotto.
Potato balls in butter.
A good red Bordeaux.
I tried to imagine the program one would write for this recipe. And immediately each of these phrases exploded in my mind. How to tell a computer what "important guests" are? And how would you explain what it means to "have to" serve them dinner (never mind the yawning depths of "entertain")? A "nice brown," a "rosy center": you'd have to have a mouth and eyes to know what these mean, no matter how well you might translate them into temperatures. And what to do about "Stroganoff," which is not just a sauce but a noble family, a name that opens a chain of association that catapults the human mind across seven centuries of Russian history? I forced myself to abandon that line of thought and stay in teh smaller realm of sauces made with cream, but this inadvertently opened up the entire subject of the chemistry of lactic proteins, and why milk curdles. Then I wondered how to explain "risotto": the special short-grained rice, the select regions on earth where it grows, opening up endlessly into questions of agriculture, its arrival among humans, the way it changed the earth. Next came the story of potatoes, that Inca food, the brutalities through which it arrives on a particular plate before a particular woman in Europe, before our eponymous Parisienne: how it is converted into a little round ball, and then of course, buttered. (Then, lord help me, this brought up the whole subject of the French and butter, and how can they possibly get away with eating so much of it?)
But all this was nothing compared to the cataclysm created by "a good red Bordeaux."
Lord help me, I was ROFL with this passage.
And how to explain wine at all? You could spend the rest of your life tasting wine and still not exhaust its variations, each bottle a little ecosystem of grapes and soils and weather, yeast and bacteria, barrels of wood from trees with their own soil and weather, the variables cross-multiplying until each glassful approaches a singularity, a moment in time on earth. Can a creature that does not drink or taste understand pleasure? A good red Bordeaux!
Singularity! In a glass of wine! Yes.
The dinner party, which of course proceeded without a single robot guest, turned out to be a fine, raucous affair, everyone talking and laughing, eating and drinking to just the right degree of excess.
A successful event indeed.
And when each guest rose to pour his or her own cup of coffee, I knew it was one of those nights that had to be topped off with a good brandy. By the time the last firend had left, it was nearly two a.m., the tablecloth was covered with stains, dirty dishes were everywhere, the empty crab shells were beginning to stink, and teh kitchen was a mess. Perfect.
Well, my kitchen is usually a bit neater than this by the end of the evening, but that's because my guests usually show their appreciation by helping to clean up!
A successful event indeed.
And when each guest rose to pour his or her own cup of coffee, I knew it was one of those nights that had to be topped off with a good brandy. By the time the last firend had left, it was nearly two a.m., the tablecloth was covered with stains, dirty dishes were everywhere, the empty crab shells were beginning to stink, and teh kitchen was a mess. Perfect.
Well, my kitchen is usually a bit neater than this by the end of the evening, but that's because my guests usually show their appreciation by helping to clean up!
Who would have expected such luscious passages of food porn in an article about artificial intelligence? Certainly not me, but this made my day.
no subject
"Singularity in a glass of wine"
Must be added to my quote collection in my (mundane as opposed to virtual) leather-bound journal...