SC - Pizza Abroad and Madrone CG

[Phil & Susan Troy]

Jeanne Stapleton wrote:

> What is your personal definition of the word "rich" when it comes
> to food?

I'd say rich food is high in one or more of the elements we look for in a food
(not necessarily fat) and possibly approaching excessive levels. I'll go into
examples in a second, if you'll bear with me. Yeah, I know it's logically
stinky to define something by examples, but I do use them in support of my
rather vague definition...

> It's one of those weird words that gives me twitches--I have
> three or four like that :-) --I guess because the meaning is so
> inexact.  The baseline definition would seem to be "something
> high in fat".  Why not just say "fatty"?  Others use it to mean
> "very sweet", "with lumps of stuff in it", or "filling".

First of all, it is probably that "rich" used to be seen as a more or less
complimentary adjective as applied to food, whereas today people tend to avoid
richness in food: in common usage the adjective is usually preceded by the
adverb "too". I think of rich foods as being somewhat heavy (except maybe for a
good bearnaise or foyot sauce, which are rich and light when properly made).
Rich foods were once looked upon as hard to digest, often because of a high fat
content, but then this is in a past when people didn't automatically die of
heart attacks when the fat in their diets reached a certain level: there was no
central heating, and people were able to burn off a lot more of their dietary
fat simply staying alive and warm-blooded.

Other candidates for richness are butter, not only for its fat but for its milk
solids, which the tongue probably on some level associates with fat anyway.
Cream is another, and then there are the really concentrated proteins that end
up inside us: simple broths made from things like veal knuckle or pig's feet
can really be quite cloying, if not intrinsically flavorful. It's not just the
marrow that makes osso bucco rich. Of course, the marrow doesn't hurt, either
;  ) .

Adamantius

______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com


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