Imponderables

by David Feldman

  We have all seen signs saying ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED. What is a minor credit card?

  Whichever credit card you happen to be carrying that they won't accept.

  Why do dinner knives have rounded edges?

  Since the purpose of a knife is to cut, why do dinner knives have rounded edges, necessitating “steak knives” to accomplish serious comestible surgery?

  Actually, knives, ancient eating utensils, did have sharpened points until the seventeenth century, when the renowned Cardinal Richelieu changed all that. Richelieu, an eater so finicky and fastidious as to make Felix Unger look like a slob, objected to a houseguest who used the point of his knife as a toothpick. The next day, Richelieu ordered his steward to round the ends of all the cardinal's knives. Richelieu's style of cutlery spread throughout France and most of the Western world. By the nineteenth century, most decent folks had a difficult time spearing their peas with their knives.

  Why is California or New York sparkling wine called champagne and Italian or German sparkling wine not called champagne?

  Sparkling wine has been available for over two thousand years. Although champagne is now renowned for its bubbles, the first champagnes were still wine; even today, a still champagne is produced in France.

  Dom Perignon, generally credited with inventing champagne, was a Benedictine monk who was put in charge of wine making from 1668-1715. Peasants would pay their tithes by contributing wines from the local vineyards. Perignon blended the wines in order to achieve the proper balance of sweetness, texture, and finesse.

  Before Dom Perignon, the practice was to cover wine bottles with bits of cloth soaked in olive oil. Perignon used a bark of cork to stop his champagne, enabling it to sparkle longer. By firmly sealing the wine after the first year's fermentation, the carbon dioxide, trapped in the bottle with no place to escape, went down into the wine and acted on the sugar in the fermentation process, creating the effervescent effect prized by champagne lovers. Most champagne makers believe that the smaller the bubbles (or beads, as the in-folk call them), the better the champagne. Most champagne is approximately 2 percent sugar. Often, yeast is added to help the sugar induce more effervescence in the second fermentation.

  The Champagne region of France is a delimited zone approximately 90 miles east of Paris—it is about the size of Brooklyn. Champagne is the northernmost section of France still capable of producing wine grapes. The soil of Champagne is chalky, which gives the wine its distinctive flavor. The vines used for champagne are the same used in Burgundy, to the south of Champagne, but the taste is quite different.

  You may have noticed that vineyard names, so prominently displayed on most wine bottle labels, cannot be found on champagne. The reason is simple: Champagne is still, centuries after Dom Perignon, a blend of different grapes, grown by different vineyards. The only three grapes found in French champagne are pinot noir and chardonnay (the same varieties grown in the Burgundy region) and pinot meunier, a black grape.

  What country is the world's largest producer of sparkling wine? Not France, but Germany. German sparkling wine is usually called sekt or schauwein and certain sparkling Rhine wines are called Sparkling Hock. Spanish sparkling wine is never called champagne, but spumanti.

  Clearly, the word champagne has such panache that any sparkling wine would love to be associated with it. California and New York wines are labeled as champagne even though they are by definition not products of the Champagne region.

  The European wine producers are not reticent about labeling their wares champagne out of modesty or circumspection but because of long-standing treaties with France that prohibit all non-Champagne-produced sparkling wine from bearing the name champagne. Spain was the first country to formally consent to this agreement, in 1875, with the Treaty of Madrid, but all Common Market countries have agreed to abide by this provision. Of all the wine-producing countries of any consequence, only the United States, Australia, and Soviet Union refuse to take off the word champagne in their wine labeling.

  Champagne labeling does not go unmonitored in the United States, however. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) classifies all wine. Labeling requirements on generic wines are rather loose, but on nongeneric wines, such as Medoc, or semigeneric wines, such as champagne, the rules are much more stringent. No wine can be labeled differently in this country than in its country of origin. And with domestic champagnes, the words New York State, for example, must appear in the same type size as Champagne.

  Still, modest attempts at deception persist. Some domestic champagne makers have attempted shortcuts in the methods of producing the wine. For example, when a domestic champagne label says “fermented in the bottle,” there is a good chance that the wine was not fermented in the bottle at all but in a large vat. When a label says “fermented in this bottle,” you can be assured that more traditional fermentation methods have been used. Can there be any other reason for the “this/the” switch than an attempt to deceive the public?

  Champagne has an image in almost every country as a beverage used for celebrations and special occasions. A good spumanti may be better than a bad champagne, but you would have a hard time convincing status-seeking customers. If the other European countries hadn't long ago ceded the right to the use of the term, we would probably be flooded with three-dollar champagnes on our supermarket and liquor store shelves.

  Why do we tie shoes to the back of newlyweds' cars?

  Most of us believe we tie shoes on the back of newlyweds' cars as a form of hazing, but our “practical joke” is actually an adaptation of an ancient ritual whose significance has been lost to its modern-day practitioners. Before the wide use of the automobile, members of the wedding party threw shoes at the departing bride and groom, but the meaning of the rituals is the same.

  Although Egyptians may have started the practice, the answer to this Imponderable was first recorded as a custom of the Israelites in the Bible. Jews used a shoe as a symbol of ownership, signifying possession or authority over property or persons. Instead of attaching a seal or signature to a contract, a Jewish seller would remove a shoe before witnesses to signify the closing of a business deal and hand it to the buyer. Shoes were actually placed on tracts of land to symbolize ownership of the property.

  The throwing of a shoe was also a gesture of renunciation. In the Bible, God says, “Over Edom I cast out my shoe,” meaning that Edom no longer received His protection.

  In biblical days, women were a form of property, and not always a valuable form at that. The brother of a childless man had first-refusal rights over his widow; she was not allowed to marry again until her brother-in-law formally rejected her. This rejection was acted out in public. If the brother-in-law did not want her, the widow took off his shoe and spat before him. Once he released his shoe, he abandoned any claim to possession of her. According to the Bible, when Ruth's first husband's brother refused her, he delivered his shoe to Boaz as a renunciation of his claim over her. This ritual enabled Ruth to marry Boaz and retain her sterling reputation.

  Christians adopted the shoe as a symbol of ownership. Historians have cited that when the Emperor Vladimir wanted to marry the daughter of Raguald, she refused with the gracious comment, “I will not take off my shoe to the son of a slave.” Martin Luther was reputed to have placed the groom's shoe at the head of the bed to indicate who was boss to the bride. In Anglo-Saxon marriages, the father of the bride gave her shoe to the bridegroom, who then touched his wife-to-be on the head with it, to signify the passing of ownership from father to son-in-law.

  Europeans eventually changed these shoe rituals and added new meanings. At first, parents threw shoes at the bride as a renunciation of their authority over her. Soon, other attendees at weddings threw shoes as well, and the practice became a good-luck ritual rather than a consummation of a business transaction.

  In England, particularly, a lot of shoes were thrown all over the place; just about anyone embarking on a trip was worthy of getting
pummeled for the good luck it supposedly bestowed.

  Ben Johnson wrote:

  Hurl after me a shoe,

  I'll be merry whatever I'll do.

  And Tennyson, in his “Lyrical Monologue,” states:

  For this thou shalt from all things seek

  Marrow of mirth and laughter,

  And wheresoe'er thou move, good luck,

  Shall throw her old shoe after.

  Sailors, always a superstitious lot, welcomed shoes tossed at them upon embarkation. Others burned old boots before leaving on a journey.

  Presumably some time before the price of leather skyrocketed, brides used to throw off their right shoe and fling it amid the competing hordes of unmarried guests. As with the latter-day bouquet, the catcher of the shoe was slated to be the next to wed. Today, we seldom see shoes being thrown at newlyweds, but the custom of tying shoes to the car is clearly a stepchild of these antecedents.

  The real Imponderable is: Why do these rituals endure when their original meaning has been obscured? Some historians speculate that many of the wedding rituals date back to the good old days when warriors stole their wives from under the noses of irate fathers and brothers and when the best man was really a bodyguard, protecting the groom's flank. The throwing of shoes, rice, and other objects can then be seen as a mock reenactment of the hostility between claimants on the bride. This explains why the bride and groom, who have been living it up at their postnuptial bash, all of a sudden dart toward their getaway car—it is a remnant of the time when bride and groom genuinely had to “make a run for it.” Freudians argue that these wedding rituals are ways for the families involved in the wedding to sublimate disturbing Oedipal feelings.

  Imponderables prefers a middle position. Weddings, like all rites of passage, are a way for a society to promote change and to mark transitions that might be traumatic without the aid of ritual. Even though most fathers, for example, no longer view their daughters as chattel, many still feel a deep sense of loss in giving away the bride. The whole wedding, to parents, serves as a renunciation ritual. In ancient times, fathers renounced their property rights; now parents, ambivalently, use the wedding to announce to society that they have renounced their authority over their daughter's life. The “tears of happiness” at weddings (see Imponderable “Why do we cry at happy endings?”) are usually tears of sadness, grieving the loss of an intimate, mutually dependent relationship that will never return.

  Why don't professional wine tasters get drunk on the job?

  Because they don't swallow any wine. Watch oenophiles drink. They sniff the bouquet of the wine, circling their prey like a bloodhound. Then, not ones to gulp down anything, they slosh their wine in their mouths like a dental patient before rinsing (indeed, the slang term for such tasting is gargling). To the wine fancier, these rituals are necessary to savor the beverage; to the uninitiated, they are just damn pretentious.

  Professional tasters don't give a whit about how their tasting rituals appear to others. Their job depends upon their ability to make fine distinctions between very subtle differences in taste, and they can perform their job perfectly well without swallowing a drop.

  There are about ten thousand taste buds in the human mouth. Taste buds are receptors distributed mainly on the tongue, but also in the mouth and throat. Taste buds can discriminate only four different tastes: saltiness, sweetness, sourness, and bitterness. The taste buds that are receptive to these four qualities are located in specific areas. Sweetness and saltiness buds are located at the tip of the tongue; sourness at the sides; and bitterness on the back anterior of the tongue. One of the reasons tasters slosh wine around in their mouths is because the movement ensures that the wine will hit each of the types of taste buds that signal the brain to recognize all four tastes. Some theorists even believe that the location of the taste buds accounts for other drinking habits. We may sip wine, for example, because the slow intake allows us to better taste the sweetness of the wine lingering on the tip of the tongue, while we may shoot back shots of whiskey and beer because bitter taste buds are located primarily on the back of the tongue. In either case, the taste has registered on the brain before the drink has been swallowed.

  As we age, our taste buds become less and less sensitive, and the buds at the tips of our tongues are the first to go. This explains why elderly people often regain the sweet tooth of their childhood—they need more sugar to taste the same sweetness that they liked as young or middle-aged adults.

  The sniffs of the professional taster are as important as the gargling in detecting defects in a wine, but the sense of smell continues to play a crucial part in tasting after the drink is in the mouth. Odorous components of wine rise through the throat into the nose. The professional taster judges the total sensory quality of the wine, and it is next to impossible, even for the professional taster, to separate taste from odor when judging flavors in complex beverages such as wine.

  Most of us judge food based on our olfactory sense. Perhaps some of you won science-fair competitions by having suckers try to tell the difference between apples and raw potatoes when their eyes were closed and nasal passages were blocked. Both are crunchy; both are sweet. Without the nose (and eyes) it is difficult to tell the difference between a cola and a lemon-lime soft drink. One of the reasons it is difficult to separate smell from taste is that the centers for these two senses are located right next to each other in the temporal lobe of the brain. Scientists haven't determined exactly how they interrelate, but their commingling is assumed.

  Many sensations that we assume are related to taste are in fact “touch” sensations. The tanginess of a lemonade or a sharp cheese is neither a matter of taste nor smell. Hot dishes such as curries or mustards cause chemical reactions rather than taste sensations. We use our gums, lips, hands, and eyes to taste and evaluate the texture of food and drinks.

  Our sense of taste is an extremely blunt one, possibly because nature intended taste to provide for the survival of the species rather than its aesthetic enhancement. Yet it is difficult not to admire professional tasters. Not only are they under pressure to detect characteristics in food and drink that the average person cannot, but they aren't given the soul-satisfying pleasure of swallowing their subjects.

  Why is a mile 5,280 feet?

  The word mile comes from the Latin word for one thousand, mille. So why aren't there 1000 feet in a mile? The Romans measured a mile as 1000 Roman paces (i.e., 2000 steps) by their marching soldiers; since the average marching stride was about five feet, the Roman mile was almost exactly 5000 feet.

  The British were partial to the furlong, a unit of measurement that is used now primarily at horse racetracks. Even before written records of land were kept, British farmers built stone walls to demarcate fields whose length was standardized—the plowmen dug furrows the equivalent of 220 modern yards. Furlong was the slurred pronunciation of furrow-long, and the furlong became the designation for 220 years.

  When Britain adopted the mile, farmers insisted that it be tied to their basic unit of measurement, the furlong. The Roman mile consisted of a little more than seven and one half furlongs. Rather than change their beloved furlong, the British changed the length of the Roman mile. Instead of 5000 feet, the British mile became eight furlongs, or 1760 yards, the exact measurement we now use today—5,280 feet. This also explains why the length of horse races is described in furlongs: Racetracks are exactly eight furlongs in circumference—a one-mile race is exactly one lap, and each furlong is an easy to visualize one-eighth of a mile.

  Why are milk packages so difficult to open and close?

  In the good old days, milk was marketed in glass bottles and, more than likely, delivered to your home. When the family was finished with the bottles, the used glass containers were returned to the delivery person for recycling by the milk company.

  In many ways, glass was the ideal packaging material for milk. Glass is inert, so it does not give off any taste of its own, and glass is durable enough
to withstand the many recyclings it underwent.

  When the economics of distribution led to the inevitable downfall of home delivery in most areas of the country, paper replaced glass in supermarket dairy cases. Round glass containers took up more space on the shelf than the rectangular paper milk cartons, and supermarkets were always interested in any packaging that helped preserve valuable shelf space. Paper was also considerably lighter than glass, making delivery easier.

  Most importantly, paper was much cheaper as a raw material for the dairies than glass. Paper could be sent to the processing plants flat, and machines could assemble the cartons and fill them quickly. Paper containers eliminated the costly step of rinsing out and sterilizing previously used glass containers.

  Untreated paper does not respond well to moisture, so it was necessary to insulate the paper to ensure the integrity of the milk carton. The first “solution” was wax, but that chipped off the inside of the container and ended up in the cereal bowls of unhappy children. The dairy industry soon discovered the miracle of plastic. Today's paper milk cartons are lined with polyethylene, a material that does not peel away from the carton and that has proven to be safe. Unfortunately, the very polyethylene that solved one packaging problem helped create another—the blasted milk cartons were difficult to open and equally as difficult to make airtight when closing.

  There is simply no way to close the usual paper milk carton and be sure that air is not entering. This is one reason why, in many areas, plastic containers with screw-on caps have replaced paper containers for half gallons and gallons of milk—although some air may infiltrate a quart of milk, a quart is likely to be used so quickly that it is unlikely to spoil before being consumed.