Posts Tagged ‘corkscrew’
“Mustard: Good only in Dijon”*…
France is facing a widespread dearth of Dijon mustard; Emily Monaco explains…
Take a wander down any condiment aisle in France these days, and you’ll notice a pervasive absence between le mayo and le ketchup. Since this May, France has faced a widespread dearth of Dijon mustard, leading one French resident to advertise two jars for sale to the tune of €6,000 or about £5,000 (since revealed to be merely in jest). The shortage has incited expats (this author included) to not-at-all-jokingly smuggle squeeze bottles of Maille back into the country from places like the US to get their fix, while author and Paris resident David Lebovitz even resorted to hunting his jars down at a local gardening store, of all places.
While French news outlets wasted no time in attributing the shortage to the war in Ukraine, the real story is a whole lot spicier than that.
Omnipresent on French tables, Dijon mustard, made by combining brown mustard seeds with white wine, is a beloved condiment that provides a counterpoint to rich, hearty dishes thanks to its acidity and heat. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a slice of crisp-skinned roast chicken, the ideal way to jazz up a simple ham-and-butter sandwich and an essential ingredient in homemade mayonnaise.
That the condiment is so anchored in France’s Burgundy region – of which Dijon is the capital city – is thanks to the historical co-planting of brown mustard seeds with the region’s renowned grapevines, a practice introduced by the Ancient Romans to provide the vines with essential nutrients like phosphorous. Monks continued to cultivate mustard in this fashion for centuries, and, in 1752, the link between Dijon and mustard was cemented thanks to Dijon local Jean Naigeon, who married the seeds, not with vinegar, but with verjuice – the juice of unripe wine grapes historically used to add a pleasantly sour flavour to recipes in regions inhospitable to citrus…
But the truth is that despite its historical link the to the region, Dijon mustard has been delocalised for quite some time.
After Burgundian farmers largely abandoned mustard cultivation in favour of higher-paying crops decades ago, moutardiers (mustard makers) began looking further afield for the tiny seed at the root of the condiment that launched 1,000 “Pardon me, sir” jokes. Their mustard seed needs were chiefly met by Canada, which produces about 80% of the world’s supply. But this winter, Canadian-grown mustard also dried up, when, after several years of declining production had reduced stores, dry summer weather obliterated the Canadian crop, sending mustard seed prices skyrocketing threefold.
Though the shortage was not caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was exacerbated by it, impacting Dijon mustard makers “indirectly”, according to Luc Vandermaesen, CEO of mustard producer Reine de Dijon. Rather than the brown seeds required for Dijon, Ukraine predominantly produces the white variety used in yellow and English mustard. Given the conflict, producers less tied to specific mustard varieties turned to Canada’s already meagre supply, intensifying the shortage.
Inadvertently, this all shed new light on the discrepancy between the name “Dijon mustard” and where it’s made. After all, unlike Champagne or Roquefort, the “Dijon” in Dijon mustard refers to a specific recipe and not to a geographic region protected by an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) or Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP) designation, which regulate products like wine, cheese and even lentils with an iron fist…
A spicy tale: “Why there’s no ‘Dijon’ in Dijon mustard,” from @emily_in_france in @BBC_Travel.
* Gustave Flaubert
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As we spread it thin, we might recall that it was on this date in 1795 that the Reverend Samuel Henshall was awarded the first patent for a corkscrew.
His idea was to incorporate a button between the shank & the worm. Its purpose was to compress and turn the cork once the worm was fully inserted, thus breaking any bond that might exist between cork and bottle.
Henshall’s improvement to the simple direct pull corkscrew was no doubt a winner. His design
Antique & Vintage Corkscrew Guide
was produced well into the 20th century in a vast array of different styles…
In vino volo…
In Slashdot “cold fjord” reports:
Red wine is a popular marinade for meat, but it turns out that it may become a popular treatment for creating iron based superconductors as well (Link to academic paper): Last year, a group of Japanese physicists grabbed headlines around the world by announcing that they could induce superconductivity in a sample of iron telluride by soaking it in red wine. They found that other alcoholic drinks also worked–white wine, beer, sake and so on — but red wine was by far the best. The question, of course, is why. What is it about red wine that does the trick? Today, these guys provide an answer, at least in part. Keita Deguchi at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, and a few buddies, say the mystery ingredient is tartaric acid and have the experimental data to show that it plays an important role in the process. . . It turns out that the best performer is a wine made from the gamay grape–for the connoisseurs, that’s a 2009 Beajoulais from the Paul Beaudet winery in central France.
As we soak our cable connections, we might recall that on this date in 1860, M L. Byrn of New York City, N.Y., was issued a patent for an improved corkscrew – a “covered gimlet screw with a ‘T’ handle” (No. 27,615). The inventor claimed the design would provide greater strength and durability and which could be manufactured at less cost than prior construction methods using a spiral twist of steel wire that gradually tapered from the handle to the point. Byrn claimed the gimlet-type screw with wider threads would also be strong enough to “remove a bung of the hardest wood from a barel or hogshead.”
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