Bitter
Well, for reasons best known to itself, the Comision Federal de la Luz has decided to replace all the electric poles and cables in our neighborhood. When the rains come (soon, soon, please) we will all be grateful as with luck there will be fewer power outages. Right now though the electricity vanishes for long periods, usually between 2 and 10 in the morning but in the last couple of days most of the day. So I’m way behind.
A couple of days ago, Diana Buja posted an interesting comment about traditional African beers and the taste of bitter. This sparked a few random thoughts.
Bitter’s not a taste that features much in our food today, except in bitter drinks such as coffee, and even then we often mask it with cream and sugar. It’s something for a screwed up expression of disgust.
That’s not so much so in Indian and Chinese cuisines where bitter is often appreciated. In Hawaii, where Chinese restaurants catered to Chinese tastes, I was thrilled to discover bitter melon dishes. To my taste, too, Mexican salsas (not pico de gallo but the red or green chile-based sauces) often have a pleasing touch of bitterness, though cooks take care not to let this get out of balance.
So from time to time, I’ve ruminated about bitter being one of the oldest tastes to appear in food. Many plants are bitter. Usually it’s a sign that they contain toxins to ward off predators. It also means that humans had better be careful with them. But they are widespread and so a readily available flavor.
Sour was perhaps, too, in certain leaves and most fruits, but fruits are more seasonal. Sweet was hard to come by–honey if you could get it, some saps, a few fruits. And even salt was scarce and valuable. It’s so hard now when salt costs essentially nothing to think of it as valuable. But it’s only in the last century and a half that it’s become “common.”
So there you are with bitter. Diana points out that the French scholar Jean-Pierre Chretien remarks that for African kirundi-speakers there is just one word that covers bitter and sweet. He thinks that bitter was the word for something that enhanced taste, and that when sugar recently became available it was just swept into the category of taste-giver.
And then of course because bitter is associated with potent chemicals in plants, it also means these plants are potentially useful as medicines. How early people dealt with these is the subject of a fascinating (if not always easy to read) book by Timothy Johns, With Bitter Herbs They Shall Eat: Chemical Ecology and the Origins of Human Diet and Medicine (1990).
And soon, on to Adam Balic’s detective story about shrimp paste.
I’ve wondered about this in some historical cuisines. Many Roman dishes contain bitter flaours, especially Rue which has a pleasant, milky/vanilla aroma, but it terribly bitter to the point that a few leaves make the dish inedible to my palate. Did the Romans have a radically different palate or was there some way of reducing the bitter flavour by processing the Rue? Historians tend to favour the former, but this is often linked to the view that Romans were decadent and corrupt and so was their food. Bitter flavours often seem to be associated with “primative” in the same way that sweet elements in savoury dishes are also seen as “wrong”.
I’ve no idea about processing rue. I don’t think I have ever seen a suggestion that there is a way to reduce the bitterness.
I think different cuisines do have different tastes and aromas.
Have these evolved over time? To more various? perhaps. To more sophisticated? I have no idea how we would judge this.
Indeed I don’t think it is possible to use “taste” in the subjective sense of tasting good or bad to judge past or present cuisines.
Some interesting points by Adam, regarding how tastes are considered. Bitter is a very common feature of cuisines here in central Africa. And this is related very much to several key vegetables, especially manioc leaves and so-called garden eggs, an indigenous type of eggplant, both of which are quite high in condensed tannins – and, a local variety of Amaranthus, that I suspect may also be tannin-rich. All three of these [most common] vegetables have a bitter base taste.
Rachel’s point of the relation between bitter and medicinal components of plants is really important – and even so with livestock; the role of condensed tannins not only to protect plants from being eaten – but that also – when consumed by livestock – they can inhibit the growth of internal parasites. This is a topic we’re quite interested in, given the wide variety of local browsing species that are high in condensed tannins, together with high parasite levels / low availability of drugs for livestock here in central Africa. Adam would know more about this.
Hum. Would regular consumption of cassava leaves possibly have a suppressive action on [human] internal parasite loads? Cassava leaves are regularly eaten here as a lovely sauce dish called Sombé and in some other areas of sub-Saharan Africa, often every day, as well as garden eggs [indigenous eggplants] and linga-linga [a local Amaranthus] – mentioned above as being high in condensed tannins… .
As to other ‘taste’ categories, come to think of it, in Egypt, ‘slimy’ is a popular ‘taste’: bamya [okra]; qawaari’a [well-stewed camel or water buffalo shins]; mulukhiyyah [the most popular local green]…. Even baluulsa – a cornstarch sweet pudding that is somewhat slimy… Why?
Maybe linked to the fact that okra and mulukhiyyah are the most common/cheap greens, and livestock shins/joints are a very cheap source of animal protein – and the making of cornstarch pudding is cheap, too. Being cheap and readily availaboe, these are all mainstays to both peasant and nomadic cuisines in Egypt, but are also well-liked by wealthier and urban folk as part of the national diet.
Diana,
my Ph.D. and first ten years of professional work was on the control of G.I. parasites (worms). Ph.D. was on livestock.
Is there a preference for bitter flavour if there is another option? In Europe the last 300 years of plant selection is largely in the direction of eliminating bitter. Mind you this largely coincided with rise of modern scientific process and loss of belief in the “humours” system.
Things taste better if you think they are doing something good for you.
Adam – Actually, I do have some of your articles … Great work! In the absence of 21st.C. techniques here, our breeding program [for improved’ goats] is based in large part on breeding for resistance – along the lines of the Nemisis program where you are.
Takes a while [several generations], but it does work, and though the ‘trade-off’ often includeds reduced production traits, in the wormy tropics of Africa, a live little goat is much more appreciated than a large wormy and finally dead goat. The indigenous Central African Goats are genetically more resistant than northern hemisphere breeds to parasites, to begin with – but with the introduction of exotic breeds for X-breeding this is changing. Well, enough shop talk… I’m not an expert, but only follow instructions and ‘best bet’ solutions …
I agree, largely, that, if there’s another option, bitter is not favored – either by people or by livestock. However, there do develop cultural preferences. In central Africa, a decided preference for bitter vegetables [in the historical context of there being few other options] – and in Egypt, with slimy-ness – which I do think is related to relative ease of gowing, preserving and cheapness of these items in the Nile Valley.
Recently, one of my Burundian colleagues noted that he really can’t stand the bland taste of northern hemisphere eggplant or spinach – both of which have indigenous strains that are more bitter. We’re working with some groups of returning refugees from Tanzania to promote such hardy ‘semi-civilized’ crops. Like the goats, they are more resistant / resiliant and also tastier [by local standards].
Of course, agronomists coming from universities and training ‘up north’ often keep trying to promote so-called ‘improved’ varieties of vegetables, grains and livestock. But we just don’t have the necessary array of technical expertise and inputs to sustain them.
So one way or the other, ‘bitter and slimy prevail.
Bitter is a desirable flavor in some Korean kimchis and bitter herbs and greens are used in some soups/stews and wrapped with lettuce for Ssam (a category of wrapped foods).
However, coffee (although “trendy” with some crowds) is considered undesirably bitter except when it’s loaded with sugar and powdered cream.
There are two common ways of describing sweet flavors. The first is “sweet like” which connotes a lighter, more “natural” sweetness or the sugars that are naturally found in foods. This kind of sweetness is considered pleasant.
Another way of describing sweet, is simply “sweet” and this usually implies “too sweet” or “artificially” sweetened with added sugar. This kind of sweetness usually means “too sweet” and not in a good way.
Honey is generally considered a better sweet flavor because it’s more “natural”.
I know that refined sugar was quite expensive and rare when my parents were children (early 1940s-1950s). In South Korea sugar is no longer rare, most middle class and up households have sugar in their pantries now. Commercially processed foods tend to be sweeter now.
I’m not sure if bitter is considered less desirable now because there’s a larger variety of other flavors available to the average South Korean.
I remember when I was a child I had a very difficult time eating at other people’s homes because the food was much more strongly seasoned with salt and hot peppers to make the side dishes stretch. Whereas in our household of relative abundance we tended to season foods more mildly and we had a larger variety of seasonings to cook with.
Overall, in South Korea because it’s now an industrialized country with descent middle class the foods are less salty and more mildly seasoned.
I think that “bitter” is associated with “healthy” in many contexts. In a Galenic (and related) system Bitter has a place medically and even now, outwith this system bitter is still associated with healthy.
Reading though early 17th century texts, I have remind my self that the food and its ingredients were much more closely related to their health giving properties then is typical now. Food was medicine. I’m not sure that on a day to day basis that the people that were eating this food were though about this, but on some level they were aware of it.
I wonder if a preference for bitter is something similar?
Well, food as medicine is definitely a concept that I grew up with. Upper class Koreans in particular have a range of dishes that are eaten for their medicinal value. And many include bitter medicinal herbs, even different kinds of barks and such.
Also, in oriental medicine medicinal tonics are quite bitter.
(In South Korea these tonics are dispensed in pharmacy like settings and tonic and Western style pharmacy combo stores.)
Italian cuisine has historically made great use of bitter flavors.
Amaro is an entire classification of digestivi, a little after dinner drink to promote digestion (health benefit, of course). Every region, and nearly every town has their own favorite amaro. Compari and soda is a wonderful summer drink.
Amaretti cookies, which use bitter almond, are very common.
Cooked bitter vegetables and greens are very popular, some greens are so bitter they need to be cooked twice (I’m thinking of cardoons). Those wild erbes that I’ve collected in the fields are killer bitter. I don’t know the names of the greens, everyone just calls them erbe.
The Italians are very ‘aware’ of health benefits of the food they eat, I’m not implying that these opinions have any basis in fact, only that they exist.
Ji-Young: that is a very interesting observation that you made about industrialized countries eating foods less salty and more mildly seasoned. Something for me to think about.