Let me ask you a question first, if you had to choose between stinky tofu and chocolate-flavored, what would you choose?
I believe everyone will have the same choice as me, that is, stinky tofu, after all, although it smells stinky, stinky tofu is so good to eat.
If I was allowed to eat chocolate-flavored, I'd rather starve to death.
But soon, I realized how wrong I wasStinky tofu turned out to be just a little minions in the stinky rivers and lakes, the smell of snail noodle shops all over the street really opened my eyes.
Snail flour is a very amazing foodThose who love him are willing to eat it every day, while those who don't like it avoid it.
The smell of snail flour made the kitten think it was poop and hurriedly wanted to bury it.
"Who forgot to close the toilet door?!”
This is the most intuitive expression and the most appropriate metaphor for people who don't like the unique smell of snail noodles.
But it is such a controversial food, almost one of the most popular local snacks in the past ten years, and its domineering and fierce taste has made snail noodles a generation of grandmasters in the food rivers and lakes.
The achievement of snail noodles has left behind those older generations of stinky delicacies, opened a sect, developed an industry of nearly 10 billion, and even became an intangible cultural heritage!
There are stinky mandarin fish on the temple as a delicacy for the gluttony, and there are stinky tofu and snail noodles in the far reaches of the rivers and lakes.
But why do these foods stink and why do we like to eat them?
These make people"Can't stop".The reason why the food is so stinky is not because of corruption and deterioration, but when they fade their original taste and accept the baptism of wind and rain, who is not a little fresh meat.
For example, snail flour, which gives off a strange smellMainly from sour bamboo shoots.
InAccumulation of fresh bamboo shoots fermentedIn the process, the bamboo shoots that are decomposed by bacteria will release volatile gases, and the smell is close to thatRancid, quite thick and stimulating.
The smell of sour bamboo shoots is at most an ingredient in snail flour, not the protagonist, and anotherIt stinks to the extreme"Gastronomy" in comparisonThat's a small deal.
Blue cheese, can be called the stinky rivers and lakes, the frightening ruthless characters, and the notorious canned herring, and called"The smell is unique".(If there are warriors who have eaten, I respect you as a man!) ）。
In the opinion of the vast majority of people, the taste of blue cheese,It's tantamount to putting on wool boots in the summer and sweating on the playground, which brews a sour coolness.
Although it cannot be said that it is exactly the same, it can only be said that it is the same teacher.
This is not a deliberate attempt to exaggerate the smell of blue cheese, becauseThe bacteria that make blue cheese smell fierce and the bacteria that cause our foot odor are actually the same kind.
And such a domineering blue cheese is only the tip of the iceberg that we can see from the market, but the ultimate test for stink-loving people is not blue cheese, and certainly not beCanned herring
But there is a delicacy, but it makes the stinkers who dare to dare to be daunted, and even the courage to try is under the strong taste, and they are willing to bow down.
And this famous "delicacy" is the most cherished God-sent delicacy of the Inuit people who have lived in the extremely cold environment of the Arctic Circle for a long timeKiviak.
Kiwiak is not so much a food as it isDark cuisineMore appropriately, because Kiwiak also has a more well-known name:
Pickled puffins!
As the name suggests, the main ingredient of pickled puffins is puffin, but its cooking method is far beyond ordinary people's understandingAfter hunting seals and puffins, the Inuit would stuff hundreds of puffins into the seals' carcasses.
The belly of the seal is then sealed with needles and threads, pressed with stones, and covered with a thick layer of frozen soilIt wasn't until two years later that it was dug up and enjoyed.
Pickled puffins are an extremely precious food for the Inuit, just like the delicious meal that we looked forward to the New Year, which is usually difficult to eat.
But with the exception of the Inuit, few people can stand the pickled puffin, the stinking attack that goes straight to the brain.
The Inuit, on the other hand, was unusually calm at the puffin's assAffectionately gulpeduntil the abundant juice in the puffin's body is sucked away.
The heavy smell of the Inuit is far from satisfying by a pickled puffinIf pickled puffins are already the limit of our affordability, then I suggest you can skip the next "delicacy".
Chinese food is about the unity of nature and man, and this Inuit specialty delicacy pays attention to the perfect fusion of people and food, and the taste is different, so its name is quite apt.
Strange walrus fatUndoubtedly the best of the harmony between man and nature, the Inuit would preserve the thick walrus fat under their armpits before eating, and they could not take it out of it whether they were out to sea for fishing or foraging in the snow.
After the baptism of sweat, as well as the fermentation of the fat itselfAfter three or five days, you can sit around the fire and take it out and feast on it.
As for the taste, you need to imagine it for yourself.
can say so much, in the stinky food rivers and lakes, several peerless masters who can climb to the top of Huashan to discuss the sword, snail powder, blue cheese, pickled puffin, and strange walrus fat, the reasons for their stinkiness may be different.
If we trace the origin of their manufacture, we will be amazed to findThese bigwigs who dominate the stinky rivers and lakes all have the same experience.
That is:Ferment.
Biology textbooks in junior high school tell us that the human intestine spreads out and its area is sufficientMore than 200 square meters, that is,In our body, there are four rooms and two living rooms
Of course, this is just a joke, and the microorganisms in the gut that are responsible for processing food and food scraps are also staggeringMore than 400 trillion microorganisms.
In the process of degrading food, they constantly emit pungent odorsPhenol and skatosinetc., highly volatile gases.
The waste materials produced after degradation are feces and farts, which will be excreted from the body with the peristalsis of the intestines, and some smart students may find outThe production of feces is actually very close to the production method of many smelly foods.
Although close, butIn essence, there is a difference, intestinal digestion belongs to the absorption of nutrients from food, while fermentation belongs to the refining of food, as well as preservative storage.
I believe that most people will not like feces, butWhy are people all over the world so obsessed with this stinking food?
Isn't it because you want to experience the little life of the old eight?
If we want to understand why people like bad food, we can't just analyze it from the current living environment, we need to look back a long, long time ago and tell the story of our ancestors.
About 4 million years ago, people had to eat all the foods that provided energy in order to obtain enough nutrients to survive.
It is inevitable that it will be includedCarnivores eat leftover scraps, i.e., rotten meatBut even so, it's not easy to eat.
There are scavenging animals in the food chain, such as the hyenas that still live on Earth today, whose sense of smell is far greater than ours, not to mention the speed.
It is not easy to snatch food from these predators, and the slightest mistake can even cost you your life.
Fortunately, we will use tools and try not to waste any food that can easily obtain energy, and at that time, it was not a derogatory term, but a necessity.
Bone marrow is a nutrient that vultures and hyenas struggle to obtain, but humans have quickly embraced this garbage-picking lifestyle, and over a long period of evolutionOur gastric juice concentrations are already higher than those of our chimpanzees, and they are no different from scavenging animals such as vulture hyenas.
Among primates, such a concentration of gastric juice in humans is really an anomaly, and a high concentration of gastric juice is not useless, it can effectively kill various pathogens and bacteria in food, and digest and absorb food faster.
Nowadays, we no longer need to rely on rotten meat to feed our stomachs, but the remarkable characteristic of gastric juice has been retained in thousands of years of evolution.
That being said, it doesn't seem that difficult to accept rotten and smelly food, if we lived in ancient times and were faced with smelly but only food**, not eating it would mean that you would be eliminated by nature.
But this does not mean that all rancid meat can be perfectly digested by humans, the essence of fermentation and spoilage is the process of microbial degradation of organisms, and the distinction between them is very simple.
As long as it produces something that is good for us, the process is fermentation, and conversely, it does not produce something beneficial, even harmful, and we collectively call it corruption.
As ordinary people, it is difficult for us to discern which foods are infected by harmful bacteria by smellsWhat really saves us from eating rotten food is the wisdom of our predecessors that has been passed down through thousands of years of history.
It's all stinky, but we never eat feces, because there are a lot of harmful bacteria in the feces, but if the rancid food has the nutrients we need.
Then, this smell is enough to be completely ignored, and as long as we don't care about the smell, these foods that are considered "dark dishes" no longer seem so difficult to accept.
As we mentioned earlier, the Inuit who slammed at puffins' buttocks and ate fermented walrus fat under their armpits crossed the Bering Strait to North America 4,000 years ago.
Unfortunately, they were chased and intercepted by the Indians, and had no choice but to stay in the bitter cold ArcticAlthough the food in the Arctic cannot be said to be scarce, it can be regarded as a big fish and meat.
But if humans want to live a healthy life, they need not only meat and protein, but also vegetables and fruits that provide vitamins.
Long-term lack of vitamin supplementation will cause a series of diseasesOne of the most well-known is sepsis, and during the Great Voyage period, sailors would carry a large amount of citrus lemons to prevent sepsis.
And what can the Inuit people living in the Arctic do to prevent it?
Again, the answer is fermentation.
The most important reason why the Inuit like to eat slightly rotten meatsIt is the process of bacteria that breaks down proteins and produces a variety of vitamins.
That's why the Inuit are able to survive in the Arctic.
It can be said that the unbreakable taste memory in our genes is based on the accidental discovery of human beings in the long-term evolutionary process.
But is that really the case?
Not everyone can accept stinky food, and it doesn't mean that if you like durian, you will definitely like snail noodles, and if you like stinky tofu, you must like stinky mandarin fish.
Our preference for smelly food is not entirely dependent on our nature, but on the subtle nature of our long-term life and habitsIt is not so much subtle as "domestication".
Research at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows that human preferences for smells are largely influenced by experience.For example, a public toilet that hasn't been cleaned for two months is far worse than the smell of feces on a farm, even though the smell is the same between the two.
This is the cognitive bias that comes with our long-term cultural experience.
There is also snail noodles, as a special delicacy in Liuzhou, Guangxi, which was originally just a treasure on the tip of the hearts of the people of Guangxi.
It wasn't until 2012 that the popular food documentary "A Bite of China" was able to enter the public's field of vision, and then I was lucky enough to catch the live broadcast of e-commerce and the express train of the fast food economy.
PlusThis buff of intangible cultural heritageWith the blessing of , in 2020 alone, the total sales of snail noodles online shopping platforms have reached an astonishing level1.1 billion packs!
For a while, snail noodles quickly exploded out of the circle and almost reached it"Wherever there is a snack place, there is snail noodles".to the point where eating stinky food has become a national craze.
Under the cultural influence of such a large environment, people who don't eat stinky food have also begun to follow the trend, and the moment the snail noodles touch the taste buds, you can feel it firsthand, the magic Amway word of **
It smells bad and tastes good!
Smell is not just a sense of smell, it is also a sense of smell, or rather, it isA double resonance of taste and smellThis feeling is what we call it"Afterword".
Most foods smell bad.**,There is no escape from fermentationThis fermented food is not only unusual in terms of smell, but also in taste.
Just like the famous stinky mandarin fish in Hui cuisine, after the joint baptism of salt, air, and microorganisms, the slightly fermented mandarin fish smells a specious and wonderful taste, in the nasal cavity, hovering between stinky and not.
There is quite a kind of Jin Yong's martial arts**, when the top master comprehends the exquisite martial arts, the kind of mysterious and mysterious realm is almost like the Tao.
After fermentation, the protein in the fish meat is decomposed by microorganisms, a large number of acids are gathered, and the oil is boiled hot, the fish skin is charred and crispy, but the inside is rich and slightly sour, fresh and sweet, which makes people's appetite move.
A more extreme example, there is Guizhou's cow deflated hot pot, the cow in the process of digesting the forage, is an alternative fermentation, a bowl of cow deflated soup, the fragrance of the grass and a variety of seasonings Junchen Zuofu, perfect integration.
In the mouth, the senses of smell and taste resonate at the same time, summing up this wonderful taste into one simple word:Delicious!
The idea of instinctive rejection at first sight, under the effect of the delay mechanism of the human sense of smell itself, presents the last welcome salute for the feast of smell.
The smell of the river and the sea tide came, and today I know that I am me.
Once we get used to a certain smell, it's hard to detect it anymoreAt this time, the new generationStinkers".It was born quietly.
After breaking down the barriers of the original perception, the skunky people put the unacceptable taste behind them, and only thought about feasting on the fermented and rancid delicacies in front of them.
In fact, odor is not an anomaly, but a reasonable choice made under the influence of genes and culture.
Stinky tofu and chocolate, I believe that many people will choose the former without hesitation, not because the latter is unpalatable, but because it is difficult for us to break the inherent prejudices of society.
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Contemplation with a cold eye: Focus on society and meditate on history