介绍:
Xiaohua: What comes to your mind when the word formula is mentioned? Advanced mathematics? Quantum mechanics? Or relativity? Actually, what we are going to talk about is food. According to British researchers, quantitative recipes can help you make the most palatable food.
提到公式，你的脑海中会浮现出哪些高大上的理论呢？根据英国科学家的研究，即使是在烹饪领域，数学公式也能指导你做出最美味的食物。
So these researchers have come to the trouble to work out the best or the secret formula behind all these food items and different recipes. Do you believe in that? Do you believe in the perfect recipe?
Heyang: I think that when you have these very standardized and meticulously drawn-up recipes. I think it can produce a standardized flavor, but whether that is perfect to your palate is a completely different thing. So I think standardization is really what they’re trying to do, and not really trying to find the optimal flavor.
Brian: I think perfect is a tricky word whenever you use it. Perfect does not exist, but you don’t need to go for perfect. What science does is science improves peoples’ lives. I mean the fact that you are, our dear listeners, can hear us is due to science. The radio didn’t invent itself. It was invented by scientists, and that’s what we are trying to do here. They’re trying to figure out ways to make peoples’ lives better. And no – its not going to be perfect ‘cause nothing is, but if you follow perfectly and exactly step-by-step, you may get an extremely good tasting things. But even if you don’t follow perfectly, just the idea of doing this in a more rigorous sort of way instead of like “oh, I’ll just grab a certain amount of salt and just kind of throw that out there,” then that’s probably not going to be the optimal taste and this way it makes cooking easier in a lot of ways and it can actually be healthier. It’s about improving peoples’ livelihoods.
Heyang: Okay, so to give you an example. Strawberries with cream, which is a great signature piece that you have to consume during spring and summer time in England. And you go to the garden, have strawberry and cream, and have a glass of Pimm’s with leaves of mint in it. It is just so perfect. According to this recipe, the perfect strawberry-to-cream ratio is 7:3, and I totally disagree with it because I don’t really like whipped cream that much. I would prefer 8:2, so that’s also a 4:1. So I mean, just to give you an example. These are things that there’s a standard. It’s a reference, but when it comes to your own dish, put your own thought into it.
Xiaohua: I agree with that but also I think there are still some ironclad rules in some of these recipes. Maybe it’s not an argument between 7:3 or 8:2, but there are things that you have to do. For example, you have to have the cream there, right? Otherwise it’s not called the strawberries with cream. Similarly, you have to add salt into your hot chocolate. Otherwise if it’s……
Brian: What?
Xiaohua: Yes. You don’t know that, Brian?
Brian: No. I had hot chocolate. I mean I……
Xiaohua: You have to have salt.
Brian: I’m not a huge fan. But I have never done that. That seems offensive. I mean this is supposed to be a sweet sort of thing, like sweet and creamy and salt, what is it doing there?
Heyang: But the package already comes with salt in it.
Brian: See that? That’s if you make it from the package. That stuff is nonsense. You should make it yourself there and……
Heyang: Your own hot chocolate, you know how to make it from scratch?
Brian: I don’t……
Heyang: See? Busted.
Brian: Okay, okay. I mean I have not engaged in hot chocolate makery in some time. But you know, packaging is not the way to do it. Maybe they have the formula but that’s not good. You should use the formula that is correct and you know that is what it is. And by the way, Heyang, how do we know that you are not the weird one here? You want your 8:2, 4:1 ratio of your strawberries and cream. Maybe you’re just the weird outlier on this.
Heyang: I think the whole purpose of that little monologue you did is to call me weird. And what Xiaohua said earlier sounds like part two of yesterday’s discussion. When we talked about Kung Pao Chicken has been changed into different ways to cook in all kinds of countries outside of China, I suppose. And Xiaohua sounded like a true conservative there saying that you think that there should be a standardized rule where I think that certain variations are necessary to suit the local palate.
Xiaohua: Certain but not to make Kung Pao Chicken into some kind of sweet sour chicken or some sort of fried chicken dipped in weird sauce.
Heyang: See? See? Conservative.
Brian: Well, see that? That’s the thing. There’s the authentic cuisine, and then there’s the Americanized or Anglicized or whatever version of it. And maybe the local people like it there. But I’m sure if most Chinese people go abroad and they try whatever is like the orange chicken or broccoli beef in the U.S., they have no idea what they taste like. “Wait, what is the American food here?” So I think keeping the way things have been, I think there’s value to that.
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