SC - big spice question

[Wade Hutchison]

I can't find flaw with Adamantius' logic, but I do have another
wrinkle to add, from the world of brewing beer.  If the spice
flavor does come from these essential oils, which are released by
cooking the spices, then perhaps the variable between large
batches and small batches would be the cooking time.  We all know
that it just takes longer to get that big pot of chili (for example)
up to heat, and cooked than it will for a whole series of smaller pots,
each with their own burner.  This longer cooking (and heating) time
could lead to more flavor being extracted from the spices, making it
look like you really needed less to begin with.

The basis for this observation from brewing is the addition of hops
to a beer.  The extraction of the only slightly soluble hop oils
and resins is dependent on time and the amount of sugars in the 
wort (pre-beer).  The more sugars there are, the less hop 
bitterness gets extracted for a given amount of boiling time.
This could also lead to the fact that if the composition of the
rest of the dish is not exactly the same in a larger size (more
water?  more oils?) that would also affect the extraction of the 
spice.  

For feast cooking, could the mineral composition of the water effect
the spice flavors?  Many sites where we have events are on well
water, which could have a different mineral profile than the city
water you used to cook your test batch.  

All of these are secondary effects, I'm sure, and the bottom line is
still to spice the dish to taste, as the master chefs of history surely
did.
	-----wade/Gille

At 08:37 AM 4/17/99 -0400, you wrote:
>LYN M PARKINSON wrote:
>> 
>> Hey, guys, we're doing apples and oranges here!  Scaling up a recipe
>> provides x quantity for x persons.  Spice scale up is not providing
>> quantity, but intensity of flavoring.  Ain't the same animal.
>
>The intensity of flavor you describe comes from essential oils found in
>the spice. It doesn't multiply like bacteria, nor make anything it
>touches radioactive. Either it's there, molecule by molecule, or it
>isn't, and the variables that would apply would have to do with the
>shape and capacity of the mouth and tongue, which vary from individual
>to individual, but not from case to case. Assuming the spice is stirred
>evenly into the mass, it is comparing apples and, well, apples.
>
>By the above logic, if  a chili recipe calling for one chili pequin (for
>example) is scaled up by  a factor of twenty, it would call for (again,
>just an example) five chilies instead of twenty. That simply isn't the
>case, for the reason detailed previously. If it were, and you made
>twenty individual pots of chili, all just fine in heat intensity, and
>then put them together in a giant bowl or pot, it would magically become
>too hot. It doesn't. 
	
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