The power of sayings and beliefs in the kitchen


The power of sayings and beliefs in the kitchen
One day, in the comments on the recipe for beaten egg whites, a young woman asked if you could beat egg whites stiff while having a period, as a friend had told her it wasn't possible.

Sometime later another person commented that for mayonnaise it had been (get this!) scientifically proven that a woman having her period couldn't make it successfully…
51 K 4.4/5 (20 reviews)
Grade this page:
Keywords for this post:MythsLegendsBeliefsHabitsCuisine
Last modified on: February 6th 2011
For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend User-friendly URL
The power of sayings and beliefs in the kitchen
In the 3rd millennium (that really is where we are), this kind of idea leaves one reeling, but, well, I suppose (I hope, even) that behind it there's a large measure of what we might call “continuity”: we've been told this when we were very young (or at an age when we were more inclined to believe what others said, especially if they were adults), we took it at face value, then later never gave it another thought, the saying having become an accepted truth.

This belief that “women who are having their periods can't make good mayonnaise” is actually quite widespread. I heard the chimist Hervé This telling a conference that he'd discussed this with a senior schools inspector, a woman who was convinced it was true!

Quite a few wine growers of, let's say, a generation ago, would bar the ladies from going down into the cellar for fear that they'd “spoil” the wine.

So for some, a woman's normal physiological processes can affect food that she is preparing – and that without her even touching it? Must be magic…

Of course, like any man who pays attention to and cares for the woman in his life, I know that this is a time when one can be rather more sensitive, irritable, or a bit tense, so managing tricky operations might be a little more risky, but quite frankly, when it comes to beating eggs or making mayonnaise, it's hardly an issue.

But apart from these medieval (and chauvinistic) sayings about women's periods, there are plenty of other more innocuous sayings that work pretty much the same way: everyone knows that… You know, the sort of phrases that start something like, “You should always cover a pan while it heats, so that it comes to the boil more quickly”, or “You should leave the stone in with the avocado flesh to stop it turning brown”.

And I'm sure that you must know loads of others. I've been wondering just how true they are. And, above all, how can we test them?

With this in mind, a while ago I set up a new category of recipes (not that they are that really) dedicated to such kitchen sayings. The principle is more or less this: I take a saying and I attempt to test by simple means if what we've been told is true or false. Of course, I wouldn't pretend to announce the result as scientific fact. It's just a matter of common sense; the saying says this: OK, let's do it to see if it's true, and let's do precisely the opposite to see if it really doesn't work and therefore if there is any rule we might apply.

As I don't have any sophisticated apparatus to hand, we're in Mr Average's kitchen after all, I make a point of doing it with the most basic of means: a thermometer, scales, etc. I started with a saying that I believed myself: “You should always cover a pan while it heats, so that it comes to the boil more quickly”, a phrase I'd heard many times, even from the mouths of chefs on television.

To test if this was true, I just measured the time a pan of water took to come to the boil, both covered and uncovered. And what a surprise! Covered or not makes no difference (or so little that it's negligible). Yet at the outset I would have bet that that it was true; it seemed to be so obvious.

If we need a maxim or a way of summing this up, it might be, “Don't take any rule or tradition for granted, test it first”.

Lasts posts
The importance of sieving
The importance of sieving
In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3rd 20251,265
The grease spray
The grease spray
As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26th 20254,4375
Cake moulds
Cake moulds
When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25th 20254,7505
Thinning out herbs
Thinning out herbs
If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...
August 8th 20252,9595
Add a bay leaf
Add a bay leaf
Bay leaf: small in size, but big in flavor. You'll find it in hundreds of recipes, and it's often added to cooking meat, in a sauce or broth, usually accompanied by other herbs or products. It's a staple of Provençal, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, but not the only one. Usually, in a...
July 31th 20253,0695

Other pages you may also like
The importance of sieving
The importance of sieving
In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3rd 20251,265
The art of the charlotte
The art of the charlotte
In cooking, a charlotte is a delicious moulded dessert, with biscuits around the outside that have been soaked in a flavoured syrup, filled with a light cream or mousse. The charlotte is left to set in the fridge before being turned out and served in slices. It is very light and a lovely sweet...
February 27th 201344 K4.3
The 3 secrets of Parisian flan
The 3 secrets of Parisian flan
A flan Parisien, or boulanger, is a simple yet delicious cake. A cream, a mixture of milk, eggs and sugar, is poured into a raw pastry base and baked in the oven until the pastry and cream are cooked. This is the simplest version of the recipe, probably the original one, but nowadays the cream...
July 21th 202313 K4.7
85 grams of eggs?
85 grams of eggs?
Some time ago, I already spoke to you about the difference between baking and pastry-making, I emphasized, among other things, the precision of pastry-making which requires grams, cm, degrees and minutes. That's why, on the one hand, you have baking and cooking, where a certain tolerance is...
November 26th 201854 K4.6
The Holy Grail of French bakers
The Holy Grail of French bakers
While browsing through the recipes on this site, you may have noticed that while I adore cooking (everything, in fact, to do with eating and drinking), I am particularly drawn to bakery: bread, viennoiseries and all that goes with them – it’s a real passion of mine; I love making them and I...
March 24th 201819 K 34.7
Post a comment or question
Posted by:
I am not a leaving thing

Follow this page
If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.
I am not a leaving thing
Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.

Back to top of page