Port and skepticism
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.010023
In a previous post , I tackled the topic of molecular gastronomy, but I neglected to mention one of the field’s key components: skepticism.
When they founded molecular gastronomy, Nicholas Kurti and Hervé This advocated applying a scientist’s skepticism to the preparation of food. Just because a dish has always been prepared by following more or less the same classic recipe, you don’t have to accept that the recipe is beyond amendment or reform.
Of the several ways the cooks among you can improve a recipe, simplification is perhaps the easiest. For instance, if you google a recipe for Hollandaise sauce, you’ll find, as the top hit, the following instructions:
Vigorously whisk the egg yolks and lemon juice together in a stainless steel bowl and until the mixture is thickened and doubled in volume. Place the bowl over a saucepan containing barely simmering water (or use a double boiler,) the water should not touch the bottom of the bowl. Continue to whisk rapidly. Be careful not to let the eggs get too hot or they will scramble. Slowly drizzle in the melted butter and continue to whisk until the sauce is thickened and doubled in volume. Remove from heat, whisk in cayenne and salt. Cover and place in a warm spot until ready to use for the eggs benedict. If the sauce gets too thick, whisk in a few drops of warm water before serving.
Through experimentation, I’ve found you can make the sauce by first combining all the ingredients at once and shaking them up in an old jam jar. Next, pour the mixture into a double boiler and whisk to tangy, spicy, eggy perfection.
A skeptical approach also brings benefits to the enjoyment of wine. Vintage port is at its best after the wine has spent at least a decade in the bottle. In that time, molecules in the wine crystallize and precipitate. Port drinkers remove—or, rather, exclude—the resulting gritty sludge by decanting.
Decanting is easy when a bottle has been sitting in the cellar beneath your dining room. But what if you want to transport your port? My godmother faced that problem when she and my mother visited my wife and me. She decanted a bottle of Warre’s ’77 into an empty wine bottle, stoppered the bottle with a cork, then took the bottle on board her flight from London to Washington, DC. (This was before TSA restrictions on liquid carry-ons.)
The port was superb. When I faced the same challenge one subsequent Thanksgiving, I wondered if I really needed to pre-decant the wine. Granted, it takes a decade for a precipitate to form, but surely—the physicist in me reasoned—it takes far less time for a precipitate to settle in the bottom of a bottle. I decided to risk it.
On the drive from DC to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the gritty sludge in my bottle of Warre’s ’80 doubtlessly dispersed throughout the liquid. But after the bottle had stood on a mantle for a day, the wine was easy to decant—and just as easy to enjoy.
