The Anti-Gluttony Door in Portugal’s Alcobaça Monastery Shamed Plump Monks to Start Fasting

Con­sid­er that you eat the sins of the peo­ple

—inscrip­tion carved above the entrance to the Monastery of Alcobaça’s refec­to­ry

Appar­ent­ly, the Monastery of Alcobaça’s res­i­dent monks were eat­ing plen­ty of oth­er things, too.

Even­tu­al­ly their rep­u­ta­tion for exces­sive plump­ness became prob­lem­at­ic.

A hefty physique may have sig­ni­fied pros­per­i­ty and health in 1178 when con­struc­tion began on the UNESCO World Her­itage site, but by the 18th-cen­tu­ry, those extra rolls of flesh were con­sid­ered at odds with the Cis­ter­cian monks’ vows of obe­di­ence, pover­ty and chasti­ty.

Its larders were well stocked, thanks in part to the rich farm­land sur­round­ing the monastery.

18th-cen­tu­ry trav­el­er William Beck­ford described the kitchen in Rec­ol­lec­tions of an Excur­sion to the Monas­ter­ies of Alcobaça and Batal­ha:

On one side, loads of game and veni­son were heaped up; on the oth­er, veg­eta­bles and fruit in end­less vari­ety. Beyond a long line of stoves extend­ed a row of ovens, and close to them hillocks of wheat­en flour whiter than snow, rocks of sug­ar, jars of the purest oil, and pas­try in vast abun­dance, which a numer­ous tribe of lay broth­ers and their atten­dants were rolling out and puff­ing up into a hun­dred dif­fer­ent shapes, singing all the while as blithe­ly as larks in a corn-field.

Lat­er he has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sam­ple some of the dish­es issu­ing from that kitchen:

The ban­quet itself con­sist­ed of not only the most excel­lent usu­al fare, but rar­i­ties and del­i­ca­cies of past sea­sons and dis­tant coun­tries; exquis­ite sausages, pot­ted lam­preys, strange mess­es from the Brazils, and oth­ers still stranger from Chi­na (edi­ble birds’ nests and sharks’ fins), dressed after the lat­est mode of Macao by a Chi­nese lay broth­er. Con­fec­tionery and fruits were out of the ques­tion here; they await­ed us in an adjoin­ing still more spa­cious and sump­tu­ous apart­ment, to which we retired from the efflu­via of viands and sauces.

Lat­er in his trav­els, he is tak­en to meet a Span­ish princess, who inquires, “How did you leave the fat wad­dling monks of Alcobaça? I hope you did not run races with them.”

Per­haps such tat­tle is what con­vinced the brass that some­thing must be done.

The rem­e­dy took the form of a por­ta pega-gor­do (or “fat catch­er door”), 6′ 6″ high, but only 12.5” wide.

Keep in mind that David Bowie, at his most slen­der, had a 26” waist.

Alleged­ly, each monk was required to pass through it from the refec­to­ry to the kitchen to fetch his own meal. Those who couldn’t squeeze through were out of luck.

Did they have to sit in the refec­to­ry with their faces to the walls, silent­ly eat­ing the sins of the peo­ple (respicite quia pec­ca­ta pop­uli comedi­tis) while their slim­mer brethren filled their bel­lies, also silent­ly, face-to-the-wall, as a read­er read reli­gious texts aloud from a pul­pit?

His­to­ry is a bit unclear on this point, though Beckford’s enthu­si­asm waned when he got to the refec­to­ry:

…a square of sev­en­ty or eighty feet, begloomed by dark-coloured paint­ed win­dows, and dis­graced by tables cov­ered with not the clean­est or least unc­tu­ous linen in the world.

Accord­ing to a Ger­man Wikipedia entry, the monks passed through the por­ta pega-gor­do month­ly, rather than dai­ly, a more man­age­able mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh for those with healthy appetites.

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you are assem­bling a buck­et list of des­ti­na­tions for when we can trav­el freely again, con­sid­er adding this beau­ti­ful Goth­ic monastery (and the cel­e­brat­ed pas­try shop across the street). Your choice whether or not to suck it in for a pho­to in front of the por­ta pega-gor­do.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Medieval Monks Com­plained About Con­stant Dis­trac­tions: Learn How They Worked to Over­come Them

Moun­tain Monks: A Vivid Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Monks Who Prac­tice an Ancient, Once-For­bid­den Reli­gion in Japan

How Tibetan Monks Use Med­i­ta­tion to Raise Their Periph­er­al Body Tem­per­a­ture 16–17 Degrees

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Archaeologists Discover an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pompeii

Have you ever won­dered what gen­er­a­tions hun­dreds or thou­sands of years hence will make of our strip malls, office parks, and sports are­nas? Prob­a­bly not much, since there prob­a­bly won’t be much left. How much medi­um-den­si­ty fibre­board is like­ly to remain? The col­or­ful struc­tures that make the mod­ern world seem sol­id, the gro­cery shelves, fast food coun­ters, and shiny prod­uct dis­plays, will return to the saw­dust from which they came.

Back in antiq­ui­ty, on the oth­er hand, things were built to last, even through the fires and dev­as­ta­tion of the erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius in 79 AD. Archae­ol­o­gists will be dis­cov­er­ing for many more years every­day fea­tures of Pom­peii that sur­vived a his­toric dis­as­ter and the ordi­nary rav­ages of time. In 2019, a team ful­ly unearthed what is known as a ther­mopoli­um, a fan­cy Greek word for a snack bar that “would have served hot food and drinks to locals in the city,” the BBC reports. The find was only unveiled this past Sat­ur­day.

Images from PompeiiSites.org

You can see the exca­va­tion in a sub­ti­tled vir­tu­al tour at the top con­duct­ed by Mas­si­mo Osan­na, Pompeii’s gen­er­al direc­tor and the “mas­ter­mind,” Smith­son­ian writes, behind the Great Pom­peii Project, a “$140 mil­lion con­ser­va­tion and restora­tion pro­gram launched in 2012.”

Rich­ly dec­o­rat­ed with bright­ly-col­ored paint­ings, pre­served by ash, the Ther­mopoli­um of Regio V, as it’s known, fea­tures a scene of a nereid rid­ing a sea-horse. Sur­round­ing her on all sides of the counter are illus­tra­tions of the food for sale, includ­ing “two mal­lard ducks shown upside down, ready to be cooked and eat­en,” notes the offi­cial Pom­peii site, “a roost­er,” and “a dog on a lead, the lat­ter serv­ing as a warn­ing in the man­ner of the famed Cave Canem.”

Unde­terred and spurred on by the Romans’ famed love of graf­fi­ti, some­one scratched a “mock­ing inscrip­tion” into the frame around the dog: “NICIA CINAEDE CACATOR—literally ‘Nicias (prob­a­bly a freed­man from Greece) Shame­less Shit­ter!’” The mes­sage may have been left by a dis­grun­tled work­er, “who sought to poke fun at the own­er.” Also found at the site were bone frag­ments in con­tain­ers belong­ing to the ani­mals pic­tured, as well as human bones and “var­i­ous pantry and trans­port mate­ri­als” such as amphorae, flasks, and oth­er typ­i­cal Roman con­tain­ers.

Despite its elab­o­rate design and the excite­ment of its dis­cov­er­ers, the ther­mopoli­um was noth­ing spe­cial in its day. Such coun­ters were like Star­bucks, “wide­spread in the Roman world, where it was typ­i­cal to con­sume the prandi­um (the meal) out­side the house. In Pom­peii alone there are eighty of them.” Will future archae­ol­o­gists thrill over the dis­cov­ery of a Cinnabon in a thou­sand years’ time? We’ll nev­er know, but some­how I doubt it. Learn much more about this dis­cov­ery at the offi­cial site for Pom­peii, which hopes to reopen to vis­i­tors in the Spring of 2021. All images come via Pompeiisites.org.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

See the Expan­sive Ruins of Pom­peii Like You’ve Nev­er Seen Them Before: Through the Eyes of a Drone

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch 26 Free Episodes of Jacques Pépin’s TV Show, More Fast Food My Way

You need nev­er endeav­or to make any of the recipes world renowned chef Jacques Pépin pro­duced on cam­era in his 2008 series More Fast Food My Way.

The help­ful hints he toss­es off dur­ing each half hour episode more than jus­ti­fy a view­ing.

The menu for the episode titled “The Egg First!,” above, includes Red Pep­per DipAspara­gus Fans with Mus­tard Sauce, Scal­lops Grenobloise, Pota­to Gratin with Cream, and Jam Tartines with Fruit Sher­bet so sim­ple, a child could make it (pro­vid­ed they’re set up with good qual­i­ty pound­cake in advance.)

Deli­cious… espe­cial­ly when pre­pared by a culi­nary mas­ter Julia Child laud­ed as “the best chef in Amer­i­ca.”

And he’s def­i­nite­ly not stingy with mat­ter-of-fact advice on how to peel aspara­gus, pota­toes and hard boiled egg, grate fresh nut­meg with a knife, and dress up store bought mayo any num­ber of ways.

His recipes (some avail­able online here) are well suit­ed to the cur­rent moment. The ingre­di­ents aren’t too dif­fi­cult to pro­cure, and each episode begins with a fast, easy dish that can be explained in a minute, such as Mini Cro­ques-Mon­sieurAsian Chick­en Liv­ers, or Basil Cheese Dip.

Many of the dish­es harken to his child­hood in World War II-era Lyon:

When we were kids, before going to school, my two broth­ers and I would go to the mar­ket with my moth­er in the morn­ing. She had a lit­tle restau­rant… There was no car, so we walked to the market—about half a mile away—and she bought, on the way back, a case of mush­rooms which was get­ting dark so she knew the guy had to sell it, so she’d try to get it for half price… She did­n’t have a refrig­er­a­tor. She had an ice box: that’s a block of ice in a cab­i­net. In there she’d have a cou­ple of chick­ens or meat for the day. It had to be fin­ished at the end of the day because she could­n’t keep it. And the day after we’d go to the mar­ket again. So every­thing was local, every­thing was fresh, every­thing was organ­ic. I always say my moth­er was an organ­ic gar­den­er, but of course, the word ‘organ­ic’ did not exist. But chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­er did not exist either.

If you have been spend­ing a lot of time by your­self, some of the episode themes may leave a lump in your throat—Din­ner Par­ty Spe­cialGame Day Pres­sure, and Pop Over Any­time, which shows how to draw on pantry sta­ples and con­ve­nience foods to “take the stress out of vis­i­tors pop­ping in.”

The soon to be 85-year-old Pépin (Hap­py Birth­day Decem­ber 18, Chef!) spoke to Zagat ear­li­er about the pandemic’s effect on the restau­rant indus­try, how we can sup­port one anoth­er, and the beau­ty of home cooked meals:

People—good chefs—are won­der­ing how they will pay their rent. It is such a ter­ri­ble feel­ing to have to let your employ­ees go. In a kitchen, or a restau­rant, we are like a fam­i­ly, so it is painful to sep­a­rate or say good­bye. That said, it is impor­tant to be opti­mistic. This is not going to last for­ev­er.

Depend­ing on where you are, per­haps this is a chance to recon­nect with the land, with farm­ers, with the sources of food and cook­ing. This is a good time to plant a gar­den. And gar­den­ing can be very med­i­ta­tive. Grow­ing food is not just for the food, but this process helps us to recon­nect with who we are, why we love food, and why we love cook­ing. With this time, cook at home. Cook for your neigh­bor and drop the food off. Please your fam­i­ly and your friends and your own palate with food, for your­self. This is not always easy for a chef with the pres­sure of run­ning a restau­rant. Cook­ing is ther­a­peu­tic…

Many peo­ple now are begin­ning to suf­fer eco­nom­i­cal­ly. But if you can afford it, order take-out, and buy extra for your neigh­bors. If you can afford it, leave a very large tip. Think about the servers and dish­wash­ers and cooks that may not be able to pay their rent this month. If you can be more gen­er­ous than usu­al, that would be a good idea. We need to do every­thing we can to keep these restau­rants in our com­mu­ni­ties alive.

…this moment is a reassess­ment and re-adjust­ment of our lives. Some good things may come of it. We may have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get clos­er to one anoth­er, to sit as a fam­i­ly togeth­er at the table, not one or two nights a week, but sev­en! We may not see our friends, but we may talk on the phone more than before. Cer­tain­ly, with our wives and chil­dren we will be cre­at­ing new bonds. We will all be cook­ing more, even me. This may be the oppor­tu­ni­ty to extend your palate, and to get your kids excit­ed about cook­ing and cook­ing with you.

Watch a playlist of Jacques Pépin: More Fast Food My Way (they’re all embed­ded below) cour­tesy of KQED Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion, which has also shared a num­ber of free down­load­able recipes from the pro­gram here.

Atten­tion last minute hol­i­day shop­pers: the com­pan­ion cook­book would make a love­ly gift for the chef in your life (pos­si­bly your­self.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Julia Child Marathon: 201 Episodes of “The French Chef” Stream­ing Free (for a Lim­it­ed Time)

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essen­tial Cook­ing Tech­niques: From Poach­ing Eggs to Shuck­ing Oys­ters

His­toric Mex­i­can Recipes Are Now Avail­able as Free Dig­i­tal Cook­books: Get Start­ed With Dessert

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

When Italian Futurists Declared War on Pasta (1930)

We must fight against pud­dles of sauce, dis­or­dered heaps of food, and above all, against flab­by, anti-vir­ile pas­ta­s­ciut­ta. —poet Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinet­ti

Odds are Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinet­ti, the father of Futur­ism and a ded­i­cat­ed provo­ca­teur, would be crest­fall­en to dis­cov­er how close­ly his most incen­di­ary gas­tro­nom­i­cal pro­nounce­ment aligns with the views of today’s low-carb cru­saders.

In denounc­ing pas­ta, “that absurd Ital­ian gas­tro­nom­ic reli­gion,” his inten­tion was to shock and crit­i­cize the bour­geoisie, not reduce bloat and inflam­ma­tion.

He did, how­ev­er, share the pop­u­lar 21st-cen­tu­ry view that heavy pas­ta meals leave din­ers feel­ing equal­ly heavy and lethar­gic.

As he declared in 1930 in The Futur­ist Cook­book:

Futur­ist cook­ing will be free of the old obses­sions with vol­ume and weight and will have as one of its prin­ci­ples the abo­li­tion of pas­ta­s­ciut­ta. Pas­ta­s­ciut­ta, how­ev­er agree­able to the palate, is a passéist food because it makes peo­ple heavy, brutish, deludes them into think­ing it is nutri­tious, makes them skep­ti­cal, slow, pes­simistic… Any pas­tas­cuit­tist who hon­est­ly exam­ines his con­science at the moment he ingur­gi­tates his biquo­tid­i­an pyra­mid of pas­ta will find with­in the gloomy sat­is­fac­tion of stop­ping up a black hole. This vora­cious hole is an incur­able sad­ness of his. He may delude him­self, but noth­ing can fill it. Only a Futur­ist meal can lift his spir­its. And pas­ta is anti-vir­ile because a heavy, bloat­ed stom­ach does not encour­age phys­i­cal enthu­si­asm for a woman, nor favour the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pos­sess­ing her at any time.

Bom­bast came nat­u­ral­ly to him. While he tru­ly believed in the tenets of Futur­ismspeed, indus­try, tech­nol­o­gy, and the cleans­ing effects of war, at the expense of tra­di­tion and the pasthe glo­ried in hyper­bole, absur­di­ty, and showy pranks.

The Futur­ist Cook­book reflects this, although it does con­tain actu­al recipes, with very spe­cif­ic instruc­tions as to how each dish should be served. A sam­ple:

RAW MEAT TORN BY TRUMPET BLASTS: cut a per­fect cube of beef. Pass an elec­tric cur­rent through it, then mar­i­nate it for twen­ty-four hours in a mix­ture of rum, cognac and white ver­mouth. Remove it from the mix­ture and serve on a bed of red pep­per, black pep­per and snow. Each mouth­ful is to be chewed care­ful­ly for one minute, and each mouth­ful is divid­ed from the next by vehe­ment blasts on the trum­pet blown by the eater him­self.

Intre­pid host Trevor Dun­sei­th doc­u­ments his attempt to stage a faith­ful Futur­ist din­ner par­ty in the above video.

Guests eat sal­ad with their hands for max­i­mum “pre-labi­al tac­tile plea­sure” before bal­anc­ing oranges stuffed with antipas­to on their heads to ran­dom­ize the selec­tion of each mouth­ful. While not all of the fla­vors were a hit, the par­ty agreed that the expe­ri­ence wasas intend­edtotal­ly nov­el (and 100% pas­ta free).

Marinetti’s anti-pas­ta cam­paign chimed with Prime Min­is­ter Ben­i­to Mussolini’s goal of elim­i­nat­ing Italy’s eco­nom­ic depen­dence on for­eign mar­ketsthe Bat­tle for Grain. North­ern farm­ers could pro­duce ample sup­plies of rice, but nowhere near the amount of wheat need­ed to sup­port the pop­u­lace’s pas­ta con­sump­tion. If Ital­ians couldn’t grow more wheat, Mus­soli­ni want­ed them to shift from pas­ta to rice.

F.T. Marinet­ti by W. Sel­dow, 1934

Marinet­ti agreed that rice would be the “patri­ot­ic” choice, but his desired ends were root­ed in his own avant-garde art move­ment:

… it is not just a ques­tion of replac­ing pas­ta with rice, or of pre­fer­ring one dish to anoth­er, but of invent­ing new foods. So many mechan­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic changes have come into effect in the prac­ti­cal life of mankind that it is also pos­si­ble to achieve culi­nary per­fec­tion and to orga­nize var­i­ous tastes, smells and func­tions, some­thing which until yes­ter­day would have seemed absurd because the gen­er­al con­di­tions of exis­tence were also dif­fer­ent. We must, by con­tin­u­al­ly vary­ing types of food and their com­bi­na­tions, kill off the old, deeply root­ed habits of the palate, and pre­pare men for future chem­i­cal food­stuffs. We may even pre­pare mankind for the not-too-dis­tant pos­si­bil­i­ty of broad­cast­ing nour­ish­ing waves over the radio.

Futurism’s ties to fas­cism are not a thing to brush off light­ly, but it’s also impor­tant to remem­ber that Marinet­ti believed it was the artist’s duty to put for­ward a bold pub­lic per­son­ae. He lived to ruf­fle feath­ers.

Mis­sion accom­plished. His anti-pas­ta pro­nounce­ments result­ed in a tumult of pub­lic indig­na­tion, both local­ly and in the States.

The Duke of Bovi­no, may­or of Naples, react­ed to Marinetti’s state­ment that pas­ta is “com­plete­ly hos­tile to the viva­cious spir­it and pas­sion­ate, gen­er­ous, intu­itive soul of the Neapoli­tans” by say­ing, “The angels in Heav­en eat noth­ing but ver­mi­cel­li al pomodoro.” Proof, Marinet­ti sniped back, of “the unap­pe­tiz­ing monot­o­ny of Par­adise and of the life of the Angels.”

He agi­tat­ed for a futur­is­tic world in which kitchens would be stocked with ”atmos­pher­ic and vac­u­um stills, cen­trifu­gal auto­claves (and) dia­lyz­ers.”

His recipes, as Trevor Dun­sei­th dis­cov­ered, func­tion bet­ter as one-time per­for­mance art than go-to dish­es to add to one’s culi­nary reper­toire.

There is a rea­son why Julia Child’s Coq a Vin and Tarte Tatin endure while Marinet­ti’s  Excit­ed Pig and Black Shirt Snack have fall­en into dis­use.

Uh… progress?

As Daniel A. Gross writes in the Sci­ence His­to­ry Institute’s Dis­til­la­tions:

Marinet­ti sup­port­ed Fas­cism to the extent that it too advo­cat­ed progress, but his alle­giance even­tu­al­ly wavered. To Marinet­ti, Roman ruins and Renais­sance paint­ings were not only bor­ing but also anti­thet­i­cal to progress. To Mus­soli­ni, by con­trast, they were polit­i­cal­ly use­ful. The dic­ta­tor drew on Ital­ian his­to­ry in his quest to build a new, pow­er­ful nation—which also led to a nation­al cam­paign in food self-suf­fi­cien­cy, encour­ag­ing the grow­ing and con­sump­tion of such tra­di­tion­al foods as wheat, rice, and grapes. The gov­ern­ment even fund­ed research into the nutri­tion­al ben­e­fits of wheat, with one sci­en­tist claim­ing whole-wheat bread boost­ed fer­til­i­ty. In short, the pre­war dream of futur­ist food was tabled yet again.

Get your own copy of Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinetti’s The Futur­ist Cook­book here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book (1978) Reveals the Meals of Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Andy Warhol, Louise Bour­geois & More

Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Keeffe

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. See her as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Hertella Coffee Machine Mounted on a Volkswagen Dashboard (1959): The Most European Car Accessory Ever Made

Cur­rent auto-indus­try wis­dom holds that no car with­out cup hold­ers will sell in Amer­i­ca. Though this also seems to have become increas­ing­ly true across the rest of the world, I like to imag­ine there still exists a coun­try or two whose dri­ving pub­lic holds fast against that par­tic­u­lar design vul­gar­ism. Such places would, of course, lie deep in unre­con­struct­ed Europe, where nobody can go long with­out cof­fee. The solu­tion? The Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine, the first and only known dash­board-mount­ed cof­fee mak­er.

Man­u­fac­tured specif­i­cal­ly for the Volk­swa­gen Bee­tle, this high­ly civ­i­lized auto­mo­bile acces­so­ry has, 60 years after its intro­duc­tion, near­ly van­ished from exis­tence. Judg­ing by the few known exam­ples, it nev­er had the time to evolve past its tech­ni­cal short­com­ings. For one, it lacks a pow­er switch: “As soon as you plug it into the cig­a­rette lighter, it just gets hot,” writes The Dri­ve’s Peter Holderith. “And as far as the type of cof­fee machine that it is, well, you would have to be pret­ty des­per­ate for caf­feine to make cof­fee in this thing.”

“I always thought they were a per­co­la­tor, or espres­so machine like a Moka… but nope,” says Dave Hord of Clas­sic Car Adven­tures, who pur­chased his own Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine from an own­er in Ser­bia. It seems “you fill the ves­sel with water, put your cof­fee in the (dou­ble lay­er) screen, and heat up the unit. I pre­sume you heat the unit up with the cof­fee in it, which means this basi­cal­ly brews cof­fee as though it’s tea.” Per­haps only a transcon­ti­nen­tal road-trip­per in 1959 would grow des­per­ate enough to drink it.

Still, as Holderith notes, “the machine does have a few clever fea­tures. The porce­lain cups that came with it appar­ent­ly had a met­al disc on the bot­tom of them that allowed them to stick to the machine mag­net­i­cal­ly” and the unit itself “mounts to the dash with a sim­ple brack­et, allow­ing for the pot to quick­ly be removed and cleaned when nec­es­sary.” Per­haps today’s car design­ers, a group once again look­ing to the past for inspi­ra­tion, will resume the pur­suit of dash­board brew­ing begun by the Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine. If not, Wes Ander­son can sure­ly find a use for the thing.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

Wake Up & Smell the Cof­fee: The New All-in-One Cof­fee-Mak­er/Alarm Clock is Final­ly Here!

The Time­less Beau­ty of the Cit­roën DS, the Car Mythol­o­gized by Roland Barthes (1957)

178,000 Images Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of the Car Now Avail­able on a New Stan­ford Web Site

10 Essen­tial Tips for Mak­ing Great Cof­fee at Home

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

How Soy Sauce Has Been Made in Japan for Over 220 Years: An Inside View

Soy sauce has fig­ured into the cui­sine of east Asia for more than two mil­len­nia. By that stan­dard, the two-cen­tu­ry-old Fue­ki Shoyu Brew­ing has­n’t been in the game long. But in run­ning the oper­a­tion today, Masat­sugu Fue­ki can hard­ly be accused of fail­ing to uphold tra­di­tion: he adheres to just the same prac­tices for mak­ing soy sauce (shoyu, in Japan­ese) as the com­pa­ny’s founders did back in 1879. You can see the entire process in the Eater video above, shot at the Fue­ki fac­to­ry in Saita­ma Pre­fec­ture, just north­west of Tokyo. Fue­ki him­self guides the tour, explain­ing first the sheer sim­plic­i­ty of the ingre­di­ents — soy­beans, flour, and salt — and then the intri­cate bio­log­i­cal inter­ac­tions between them that must be prop­er­ly man­aged if the result is to pos­sess a suit­ably rich uma­mi fla­vor.

That we all know what uma­mi is today owes in part to the prop­a­ga­tion of soy sauce across the world. One of the “five basic fla­vors,” this dis­tinc­tive savori­ness man­i­fests in cer­tain fish, cheeses, toma­toes, and mush­rooms, but if you need a quick shot of uma­mi, you reach for the soy sauce. In bot­tles small and large, it had already become a com­mon prod­uct in the Unit­ed States by the time I was grow­ing up there in the 1980s and 90s.

It must be said, how­ev­er, that Amer­i­cans then still had some odd ways of using it: the now-acknowl­edged West­ern faux pas, for instance, of lib­er­al­ly driz­zling the stuff over rice. But wider aware­ness of soy sauce has led to a wider under­stand­ing of its prop­er place in food, and also of what sets the best apart from the mediocre — as well as a curios­i­ty about what it takes to make the best.

Fue­ki and his work­ers take pains every step of the way, from steam­ing the soy­beans to decom­pos­ing the wheat with a mold called koji to heat­ing the raw soy sauce in tanks before bot­tling. But the key is the kioke, a large wood­en fer­men­ta­tion bar­rel, the old­est of which at Fue­ki Shoyu Brew­ing goes back 150 years. Today, Fue­ki explains, few­er that 50 crafts­men in all of Japan know how to make them: hence the launch of the in-house Kioke Project, a series of work­shops meant to revi­tal­ize the craft. As he climbs down into an emp­ty kioke, Fue­ki describes it as “filled with invis­i­ble yeast fun­gus that’s unique to our place” — far from a con­t­a­m­i­nant, “the most impor­tant ele­ment, or trea­sure and our heart.” The care and sen­si­tiv­i­ty required, and indeed the indus­tri­al tech­niques them­selves, aren’t so dif­fer­ent from those involved in the mak­ing of fine wines. But it sure­ly takes a palate as expe­ri­enced as Fuek­i’s to taste “choco­late, vanil­la, cof­fee, rose, hyacinth” in the final prod­uct.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Short Fas­ci­nat­ing Film Shows How Japan­ese Soy Sauce Has Been Made for the Past 750 years

How Japan­ese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bam­boo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

The Right and Wrong Way to Eat Sushi: A Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Plastic Bag Store: A Pop Art Installation with a Whimsical But Deadly Serious Environmental Message

When COVID-19 explod­ed in New York City last March, it erased every­thing on the cal­en­dar, includ­ing:

All live the­ater

The city’s fresh­ly imple­ment­ed ban on sin­gle use plas­tic bags

And The Plas­tic Bag Store, a pop-up instal­la­tion that was prepar­ing to open in Times Square.

The the­aters remain dark, but the ban is back on, as of Octo­ber 19th. The 7‑month pause was has­tened by the pan­dem­ic, but also by an unsuc­cess­ful law­suit brought by flex­i­ble pack­ing man­u­fac­tur­er Poly-Pak Indus­tries.

The Plas­tic Bag Store was allowed to open, too, albeit in an altered for­mat from the hybrid art instal­la­tion-adult pup­pet show cre­ator Robin Fro­hardt has been work­ing on for sev­er­al years.

She has long intend­ed for the project’s New York pre­miere to coin­cide with the ban.

Not because she hoped to get rich sell­ing bags to cit­i­zens accus­tomed to get­ting them free with pur­chase.

There’s noth­ing to buy in this “store.”

It’s a per­for­mance of sorts, but there’s no admis­sion charge.

It’s def­i­nite­ly an edu­ca­tion, and a med­i­ta­tion on how his­to­ry can be doomed to repeat itself, in one way or anoth­er.

The Plas­tic Bag Store just end­ed its sold out 3‑week run, play­ing to crowds of tick­et hold­ers now capped at 12 audi­ence mem­bers per per­for­mance. The live ele­ments have mor­phed into a trio of short films that are pro­ject­ed after tick­et holders—customers if you will—have had a chance to look around.

There’s plen­ty to see.

The Times Square instal­la­tion space has been kit­ted out to resem­ble a roomy bode­ga stocked with pro­duce, baked goods, sushi rolls on plas­tic trays, shrink wrapped meat, and oth­er famil­iar, if slight­ly skewed items.

Rows of 2 liter soda bot­tles with icon­ic red labels are shelved across from the mag­a­zine rack. Tubs of Bag & Jerry’s Mint Plas­tic Chip are in the freez­er case.

The orig­i­nal plan allowed for cus­tomers to han­dle the goods as they want­ed.  Now such inter­ac­tions are pro­hib­it­ed.

Pri­or to March, New York­ers were pret­ty handsy with pro­duce, unabashed­ly press­ing thumbs into avo­ca­dos and hold­ing toma­toes and mel­ons to nos­trils to deter­mine ripeness.

The pan­dem­ic curbed that habit.

No mat­ter. Noth­ing is ripe in the Plas­tic Bag Store, where any item not con­tained in a can or card­board box has been con­struct­ed from the thou­sands of plas­tic bags Fro­hardt has col­lect­ed over the years.

The fac­sim­i­les are shock­ing­ly adroit.

“I hunt plas­tic bags on the streets of New York,” she said in an inter­view with cul­tur­al fun­der Cre­ative Cap­i­tal:

I’m a real con­nois­seur now. There are cer­tain col­ors I’m real­ly attract­ed to. Cer­tain bags are hard­er to find. I def­i­nite­ly look at trash dif­fer­ent­ly than most peo­ple. I’m always look­ing for reds and oranges and greens. Some­times I find a real­ly inter­est­ing col­or that I haven’t seen before, like salmon or laven­der. That’s always excit­ing.

This diver­si­ty of mate­ri­als helps with visu­al verisimil­i­tude, most impres­sive in the pro­duce sec­tion.

The prod­uct labels been rich­ly for­ti­fied with satir­i­cal com­men­tary.

A fam­i­ly sized pack­age of Yucky Shards appeals to chil­dren with sparkles, a rain­bow, and a bright eyed car­toon mas­cot who does­n’t seem to mind the 6‑pack yoke that’s attached itself to its per­son.

Every­thing about the “non-organ­ic, triple-washed Spring Green Mix” from “Earth­bag Farm” looks famil­iar, includ­ing the plas­tic con­tain­er.

Pack­ages of Some­times fem­i­nine pads promise “super pro­tec­tion” that will “lit­er­al­ly last for­ev­er.”

The cup­cakes on dis­play in the bak­ery sec­tion are topped with such fes­tive embell­ish­ments as a “dis­pos­able” lighter and floss­ing pick.

The tone is not scold­ing but rather com­ic, as Fro­hardt uses her spoofs to delight atten­dees into seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the “forever­ness” of plas­tic and its envi­ron­men­tal impact:

There is great humor to be found in the pit­falls of cap­i­tal­ism, and I find that humor and satire can be pow­er­ful tools for social crit­i­cism espe­cial­ly with issues that feel too sad and over­whelm­ing to con­front direct­ly.

It’s real­ly easy to turn away from images of tur­tles chok­ing on straws. That stuff comes up in my Insta­gram feed all the time, and I’m like “Whoa! Swipe on past” because it’s too hard to look at. So what I’m try­ing to do is to make some­thing that’s fun to look at, and fun to engage with, so you can think about it. Instead of just say­ing, “That’s fucked up! Ok on to the next thing.”

The Plas­tic Bag Store’s film seg­ments also wield com­e­dy to get their mes­sage across.

From the stiff shad­ow pup­pet Ancient Greeks who are seduced by the self-flat­ter­ing slo­gan of a new prod­uct, Knowl­edge Water, which comes in sin­gle use ves­sels, to the recip­i­ent of a mes­sage in a plas­tic bot­tle, dis­cov­ered so far into the future that he can only admire its crafts­man­ship, hav­ing no clue as to its pur­pose. (Let­ter car­ri­er is his best guess. Even­tu­al­ly, oth­er let­ter car­ri­ers are dis­cov­ered in the freez­ing equa­to­r­i­al ocean, and housed in a muse­um along­side oth­er hilar­i­ous­ly mis­la­beled relics of a long dead civ­i­liza­tion.)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of the Müt­ter Muse­um and Its Many Anatom­i­cal­ly Pecu­liar Exhibits

The Dis­gust­ing Food Muse­um Curates 80 of the World’s Most Repul­sive Dish­es: Mag­got-Infest­ed Cheese, Putrid Shark & More

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A New Swedish Muse­um Show­cas­es Harley-David­son Per­fume, Col­gate Beef Lasagne, Google Glass & Oth­er Failed Prod­ucts

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

A Digital Library for Bartenders: Vintage Cocktail Books with Recipes Dating Back to 1753

So, um… you look like you could use a drink… or anoth­er drink, or five…. I’ve giv­en it up, but I can still mix a mean cock­tail. How about a Stom­ach Julep (Julepum Stom­achicum). No white suit or veran­da required. It’s a “saf­fron syrup made with sher­ry, spir­it rec­ti­fied with mint, and a non-alco­holic mint dis­til­late” among oth­er “fas­ci­nat­ing ingre­di­ents.” Yes, this is a recipe from a 1753 phar­ma­col­o­gy text­book, but in 1753, one’s bar­tender might just as well also be the local alchemist, phar­ma­cist, and cap­tive audi­ence. Fear­ing a resur­gence of plague and oth­er mal­adies, lack­ing prop­er health­care or clean water, the Ear­ly Mod­ern British for­ti­fied them­selves with booze.

The New Eng­lish Dis­pen­sato­ry might seem like an odd text, nonethe­less, to include in an online library for bar­tenders, but it is per­fect­ly in keep­ing with the spir­it of the EUVS Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion, an appre­cia­ble sam­pling of man­u­als, cock­tail menus, recipe books, and his­tor­i­cal ephemera relat­ed to “a pro­fes­sion that has redis­cov­ered a jus­ti­fi­able sense of pride and pur­pose.”

This sense does seem to vary great­ly between estab­lish­ments, but the col­lec­tion does not dis­crim­i­nate, though it does dis­play a par­tic­u­lar fond­ness for Cuba in its cur­rent state of digitization—now up to a few dozen titles span­ning the years 1753 to 1959. More books will be com­ing online soon out of a phys­i­cal col­lec­tion of “over 1,000 vol­umes.”

It may be hard to imag­ine earn­ing a bar­tend­ing Ph.D. but one could cer­tain­ly find a dis­ser­ta­tion top­ic in the impres­sive breadth and depth of the col­lec­tion, even in its lim­it­ed state. Or, more like­ly, one could put togeth­er a unique­ly imag­i­na­tive cock­tail menu that no one else in town can boast of. Bar­tend­ing is both art and sci­ence. In his 1892 book The Flow­ing Bowl, New York bar­tender William Schmidt, also known as “The Only William,” com­ments:

Mixed drinks might be com­pared to music: an orches­tra will pro­duce good music, pro­vid­ed all play­ers are artists; but have only one or two infe­ri­or musi­cians in your band and you may be con­vinced they will spoil the entire har­mo­ny.

To the bartender’s list of sup­ple­men­tary roles in the lives of their cus­tomers, we can add anoth­er: con­duc­tor. William first came to promi­nence in the pro­fes­sion in Ham­burg, Ger­many before emi­grat­ing to Chica­go, then Man­hat­tan. His tastes, in music and liquors, remained Euro­pean. “The finest mixed drinks and their ingre­di­ents are of for­eign ori­gin. Are not all of the supe­ri­or cor­dials of for­eign make?” he wrote. Clear­ly he knew noth­ing of bour­bon.

The Only William did know that fine art requires show­man­ship and style. He was “renowned for his acro­bat­ic bar­tend­ing feats: throw­ing flam­ing and non-flam­ing drinks in grace­ful arcs.” The EUVS Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion presents William as a kind of bar­tend­ing folk hero, a larg­er-than-life fig­ure who was said to have invent­ed a new drink dai­ly. If this is so, it may not be so sur­pris­ing. William was not only total­ly devot­ed to his art, but he was also a schol­ar, “cred­it­ed with an ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge of the clas­sics.”

The Flow­ing Bowl con­tains Schmidt’s “his­to­ry of var­i­ous bev­er­ages, descrip­tions of his­toric Gre­co-Roman ban­quets, sam­ple menus with bev­er­age pair­ings, plus a live­ly selec­tion of poet­ry read­ings whose focus is on drink.” One gets the sense he rep­re­sents the ide­al patron of The Bartender’s Library. What would such a mod­el bar­tender do dur­ing the pan­dem­ic? I think he’d hit the books, espe­cial­ly giv­en that so many, like his own, are free online. And giv­en the ever-present pos­si­bil­i­ty of plague and oth­er calami­ties, I guess he’d offer spir­it­ed reme­dies to the peo­ple locked down at home with him.

Note: One com­menter on the Cock­tail archive site left these com­ments, which might prove handy:

Here is a list of con­ver­sions, with Impe­r­i­al mea­sure­ments (from the U.K), as well as few British ones–as both are found in many clas­sic cock­tail books and can be mighty con­fus­ing.

1 quart (Impe­r­i­al) = 40 ounces

1 quart = 32 ounces

1 bot­tle = 24 ounces

1 pint (Impe­r­i­al) = 20 ounces

1 pint = 16 ounces

1/2 pint (Impe­r­i­al) = 10 ounces

1/2 pint = 8 ounces

1 gill (Impe­r­i­al) = 4.8 ounces

1 gill = 4 ounces

1 dram = 1/4 table­spoon (found in the British met­ric sys­tem or Eng­lish recipes before approx. 1972)

1 wine­glass = 2 ounces

1 jig­ger = 1 1/2 ounces – 1 1/4 ounces

1 pony = 1 (flu­id) ounce = 2 table­spoons

1 table­spoon = 1/2 (flu­id) ounces

1 tea­spoon = 1/16 flu­id ounces

A dash is a tricky one. When applied to bit­ters, a “dash” makes sense: it’s what comes out the top of the bot­tle. But if you find a recipe call­ing for “dash­es of syrup,” check out sim­i­lar drink recipes and use your judg­ment in how much you need.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Sci­ence of Beer: A New Free Online Course Promis­es to Enhance Your Appre­ci­a­tion of the Time­less Bev­er­age

A New Dig­i­tized Menu Col­lec­tion Lets You Revis­it the Cui­sine from the “Gold­en Age of Rail­road Din­ing”

The Recipes of Famous Artists: Din­ners & Cock­tails From Tol­stoy, Miles Davis, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, David Lynch & Many More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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