[Sca-cooks] Corn Flakes (Was: Period Baklava)

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Thu Apr 5 06:46:20 PDT 2007


On Apr 5, 2007, at 8:06 AM, Martha Oser wrote:

> Actually, corn flakes came about by accident as the Kellogg  
> brothers at
> their health sanitarium in Battle Creek, MI were trying to process  
> corn and
> wheat into healthful foods for their patients.  Apparently, they  
> left some
> cooked material at some point, it thickened, and they shoved it  
> through the
> rollers anyway, hoping to produce a  long sheet, presumably to turn  
> into
> crackers of some kind.  Instead, the stuff came off the rollers in  
> flakes.
> These were toasted and then served for breakfast with milk and  
> marshmallows
> (talk about healthy!).  The Kellogg cereal company came about after  
> one of
> the brothers decided to market their cereal products for the  
> general public.

I've heard this story, but don't know how reliable the "accident"  
part of it may be. I know they had a bit of a project selling the  
product at first, and that the whole thing was apparently an occasion  
for a bit of a rift between the brothers. The one who ran the  
sanitarium was constantly pushing all sorts of patent foods with  
names like "protose"... I've got one of his books here somewhere;  
it's pretty amusing, actually. I _think_ protose was basically  
seitan, IIRC.

> In addition, I have a recollection of seeing a TV show a few years  
> ago where
> they profiled a gentleman (maybe in Turkey, I think?) making phyllo  
> dough by
> hand in the "traditional" way.  It involved a process rather like I  
> remember
> from my mother making strudel dough - gently stretching the dough  
> by hand
> into a large square.  The difference was that the table my mother  
> used was
> about 2x3 feet and the one this guy was using was probably 8x10  
> feet!  This
> is not to say that phyllo dough or baklava is period, but simply  
> that there
> was a time-consuming hand process for making the dough before  
> industrial
> methods were devised.

Well, that's my point. If this is a Turk making a pastry by hand (and  
is it cooked before filling and baking, as phyllo is?), from a ball  
of dough instead of batter, and presumably calling it something else,  
can it legitimately be said to _be_ phyllo, as opposed to _being  
like_ phyllo? You could probably make that claim and support it well,  
but I don't think it's a done deal.

I really don't feel strongly about the question, one way or the  
other, but I'm deeply interested in how nomenclature relates to  
conceptual identity in foods -- what makes a chowder a chowder, etc.

Adamantius



"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread, you have to say, let them eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04






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