On food and cooking the science and lore of the kitchen ( PDFDrive ) 710

neutralbakingpowderorshortenthecooking
timeandyougetalightorangepudding).
Persimmonfleshcanbewhippedintoalonglivedfoamthankstoitstannins,whichhelp
bindfragmentsofcellwallstogetherto
stabilizetheairpockets.InJapan,most
Hachiyapersimmonsaredried,massaged
everyfewdaystoevenoutthemoistureand
breakdownsomeofthefibrousnesstoasoft,
doughyconsistency.
FoodWords:Rhubarb
Rhubarb is a medieval Latin coinage, a
combination of Greekrha andbarbarum:
“rhubarb” and “foreign.”Rha also meant
the Volga River, so the plant may have
been named after it: it came from foreign
landstotheeastoftheVolga.
Rhubarb Rhubarb is a vegetable that often
masquerades as a fruit. It is the startlingly
sour leaf stalks of a large herb,Rheum


rhabarbarum, that is native to temperate
Eurasia and became popular in early 19thcentury England as one of the first fruit-like
produce items to appear in the early spring.
The rhubarb root had long been used as a
cathartic in Chinese medicine, and traded
widely as a medicinal. The stalks were also
used as a vegetable in Iran and Afghanistan
(in stews, with spinach) and in Poland (with
potatoes). By the 18th century the English
wereusingthemtomakesweetpiesandtarts.

The 19th century brought better varieties and
techniques for digging up mature roots and
forcing rapid stalk growth in warm dark
sheds, which produced sweeter, tenderer
stalks. These improvements, cheaper sugar,
and a growing supply resulted in a rhubarb
boom,whichpeakedbetweentheworldwars.
Rhubarbstalksmayberedwith
anthocyaninpigments,green,oran
intermediateshade,dependingonthevariety
andproductiontechniques.Theiracidityis