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1. What's in your recipe?

 

Discuss with your partner: in organising a meal, what is the order of importance of the following?

  • the lighting (dipped? candles? etc.)
  • the music
  • the dinner guests
  • the smell of the food
  • the appearance of the food
  • the table setting (table cloth, cutlery, crockery, etc.)

If you think it's an odd question, you may be interested to know that we consume 35 percent more food when eating with one other person, and 75 percent more when dining with three and that people who like strong coffee drink more of it under bright lighting. When you've finished, read the following text on Gastrophysics

Do it yourself

You are now going to read a text about Gastrophysics (the science of making a meal be more enjoyable). As you read, choose the correct letter for paragraph for each space.

a. a But there are hints of societal gains too. If you tint a drink pink, manufacturers can cut the sugar content, relying on our subconscious association between colour and sweetness to make up the difference . Meanwhile, Spence believes that our future cuisine could be shaped by his own finding that the louder the crunch of a crisp, the more its apparent freshness. “Playing on the sound of crunch might offer one way into the popularisation of entomophagy,” he writes as he gamely considers how to make insects more appetising.
b. This is accessible science at its best, fascinating to anyone in possession of an appetite. Crammed with discoveries about our everyday sensory lives, Gastrophysics is a book guaranteed to make you look at your plate in a whole new way.
c. The result is a buffet of revelations, from the finding that colouring white wine red can trick experts into describing the aromas of red wine, to more recent discoveries – among them that heavier cutlery encourages diners to pay more, that ginger biscuits taste spicier when served from a rough plate, and that serving a strawberry mousse on a white dish increases its perceived sweetness by 10% compared with a black one.
d. But while gastrophysics therefore seems a very modern field, its roots reach far back. In the 16th century, musicians were already composing music to complement feasts, while the 1930s saw a lively band of Italian futurists cooking up ingenious dinner parties. They sprayed perfume in diners’ faces, served frog’s legs to the sound of croaking, and even, Spence reveals, suggested parties where guests should be instructed “to stroke their neighbours’ pyjamas, made of different materials, while dining”.
e The pleasures of food lie mostly in the mind, not in the mouth. Get that straight and you can start to understand what really makes food enjoyable, stimulating, and, most important, memorable. Spence reveals in amusing detail the importance of all the off the plate elements of a meal.
f However, like so many illusions, once revealed, the tricks of the trade can seem screamingly obvious: call a Patagonian toothfish a Chilean sea bass, and it’s no surprise that sales will soar. Many people have also heard of how the humble Chines groundfruit benefitted hugely from a clever marketing campaign once it was renamed kiwi.

Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating by Charles Spence review – beyond food

 

Charles Spence is not afraid of stirring things up. “The pleasures of the table reside in the mind, not the mouth,” he writes, no doubt triggering much gnashing of teeth from cookbook writers the world over.In fact, while Gastrophysics is about solving the conundrum of the perfect meal, it has almost nothing to do with the nuts and bolts of cuisine. Instead, this is the science of the “everything else”, a blending of gastronomy and psychophysics to probe the myriad ingredients that influence our perception of flavour, steer our culinary choices and make all the difference between a memorable meal and one to be forgotten.

As head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford , Spence is ideally placed to reveal how our senses combine, and even influence each other, to affect our perception of what we eat.

Top chefs and food giants alike have been quick to grab a slice of the action. As Spence points out, restaurateurs have embraced multisensory trickery to boost the dining experience, spraying the scent of saffron over guests to enhance the flavour of lobster, or Googling their guests to tap into the powerful effect of personalisation. Supermarkets have labelled products with the names of bogus British-sounding farms, presumably to tap into consumers’ apparent willingness to pay more for an aura of authenticity.

Technology, too, is being embraced. Spence is among those exploring its potential, from the use of tablet computers as evocative plates to the creation of gadgets that release the smell of food to help those with Alzheimer’s eat regularly.

Spence goes from the importance of matching expectations to the taste of a dish to boost its appeal, to the perils of food porn, to the revelation that people tend to link blob-like shapes to sweet foods – which explains the furious accusations that Cadbury had changed the recipe of its Dairy Milk bars in 2013 when it had, in fact, only rounded off its corners.

 

Occasionally Spence strikes an unsavoury note. Romping through ever more theatrical concepts dreamed up in the world’s most exclusive modernist restaurants, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that gastrophysics is often about titillating the tastebuds of those wealthy enough to be bored of dining well. “Heston Blumenthal conferred with magicians while experimenting with a flaming sorbet that would ignite at the click of the waiter’s fingers,” notes Spence in one of his many flattering references to the chef’s experiments.

But what begins in top kitchens eventually trickles down to the home, and Spence offers suggestions for an unforgettable dinner, from popping candy in the mashed potato to changing the music and lighting of a room to subtly alter the taste of wine. Gastrophysics serves up a mind-bending menu of fascinating insights. But whether atomisers, scented cutlery and culinary soundtracks become ubiquitous might be a matter of taste.

 Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/26/gastrophysics-new-science-of-eating-charles-spence-review

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Look at these expressions from the text. What do they mean and why are they so appropriate in this text?

a. Charles Spence is not afraid of stirring things up.

b.“The pleasures of the table reside in the mind, not the mouth,” he writes, no doubt triggering much gnashing of teeth from cookbook writers the world over.

c.The result is a buffet of revelations.

d.Top chefs and food giants alike have been quick to grab a slice of the action.

e. Occasionally Spence strikes an unsavoury note.

 

Uses of the article the

1. When a singular noun represents a whole class

The donkey is a beast of burden. (Here the singular noun donkey is used to refer to all  donkeys.)

Note that when a plural noun is used to talk about things in general, articles are usually omitted.

Donkeys are stubborn animals.
People often think that.

Note that the article 'the' is never used before the nouns 'man' and 'woman' when they represent the whole class.

Man is mortal. (NOT The man is mortal.)

2. When speaking of something or somebody already referred to or specified by a following phrase.

Into the room stepped a boy. The newcomer was tall and thin with big round eyes and short brown hair.
The story that I'm going to tell you was passed on to me by my grandfather.

3. With an adjective to refer to a specific group of people, which is always plural.

The poor and the rich are always with us.

The injured were treated while the dead were buried.

4. The definite article with names:

We do not normally use the definite article with names:

Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe.   Berlin is the capital of Germany.
But we do use the definite article with:

• countries whose names include words like kingdom, states or republic:

the United Kingdom; the Kingdom of Spain; the People's Republic of China

• countries which have plural nouns as their names:

the Netherlands; the Philippines

• geographical features, such as mountain ranges, groups of islands, rivers, seas, oceans and canals:

the Alps; the Shetlands; the Pacific (Ocean); the Nile; the Suez Canal

• newspapers and journals (though not magazines):

The Times; The Guardian (but Time Out, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Hello!)

•With classic poems and holy books

The Mahabharata; The Iliad; the Bible, The Koran

Note that when the author's name is mentioned with the book, the article is usually omitted.

Homer's Iliad (NOT Homer's the Iliad)

• well known buildings and some very famous works of art:

the Eiffel Tower; the Taj Mahal; the Mona Lisa (but Guernika)

• organisations:

the United Nations; the W.H.O.; the Air Traffic Controllers' Union

• hotels, pubs and restaurants:

the Ritz (Hotel); the Black Bull; the Déjà Vu

5. When the reference to something is clear:

There is someone at the door.   I'm really angry with the government.    He's learning to play the guitar (= any guitar)

6. When we refer to imaginary geographical lines and unique things

The equator; the Tropic of Cancer; What is the latitude and (the) longitude of Madrid?; the Earth goes round the Sun

Do it yourself

Choose the most logical ending for each sentence. What is the difference in meaning between using the and not using it with these expressions?

1.a He's in hospital

1.b He's in the hospital
2.a Joe's dad went to prison
2.b Joe's dad went to the prison
3.a He is at school now
3.b He is at the school now
4.a He started going to church
4.b He went to the church
5.a She's in bed
6.b She sat on the bed
7.a Mr Smith is at sea now
7.b He's going to live by the sea
8. a. Come on, let's go to the pub
8. b Excuse me, is there a pub round here?

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Do it yourself

Complete the recipe using a/an, the or - (for no article)

Recipe for spotted dick

250g self-raising flour

pinch of salt

125g shredded suet

180g currant 80g caster sugar

finely grated zest 1 lemon  + finely grated zest 1 small orange

150ml whole milk, plus 2-3 tbsp

1.Put flour and salt in bowl. Add suet, currants, sugar, lemon

and orange zest.

2. Pour in 150ml milk and mix to firm but moist dough, adding extra milk if necessary.

3. Shape into fat roll about 20cm long. Place on large rectangle of baking paper. Wrap loosely to allow for pudding to rise and tie ends with string like Christmas cracker.

4. Place steamer over large pan of boiling water, add pudding to steamer, cover and steam for 1 1/2 hours. Top up pan with water from time to time.

5.Remove from steamer and allow to cool slightly before unwrapping. Serve sliced with custard.

some spotted dick

Imagen de Jem Stone en wikimedia. Dominio público. 

Source: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2686661/spotted-dick

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Contrastive stress

Contrastive stress is stress imposed on a word or syllable contrary to its normal accentuation in order to contrast it with an alternative word or syllable or to focus attention on it.

You don't need three hundred grammes of flour, you need five hundred grammes

 


Contrasted stress may affect the normal pronunciation of unstressed words: 

 

It's not the reason why but it is a reason.
He's not my teacher, he's yours.
John has said it, hasn't he?