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This week on mountain three, we bring you a sensational episode where each story hones in on one of the four senses that accompanies taste.

Many of the smells that we encounter in everyday life actually exists out there in the cosmos. Food carries all

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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network. I'm on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. We got John from a customer service joining you from the new lab in Brooklyn, the Stasio from Topanga Canyon where for reasons that are too complicated to discuss, she has to go outside to use the bathroom. I mean, at least for number two, we can talk about it later. Maybe if she wants to. We got Matt and his Rhode Island hidey hole doing the engineering. But today we have on special guest, Harold McGee. Thank you. nosedive a field guide to the world smells resent How are you supposed to say the title of the book Herald does it like like how do you want it emoted?

Boy, that's something I have not considered. I'll think about that and get back.

I mean, like, I only know how to do it and kind of like you know, the monster nosedive? That's all I can do. You know what I mean?

Yeah, but then, you know, a field guide to the world's smells and there's the world's smells kind of slows you down. Right? So maybe it should just

feel good to the world smells. You think the apostrophe s and the s and the smells is what do you think that's slowing me down?

It's slowing me down anyway.

Down? Is it what like? Do you want it to be more like? Do you want it to be more like in a world I like that kind of like, nose dive Field Guide to the world smells like that, like more like a little bit foreboding.

Yeah, I like that. I like that. Especially with the the American jacket. You know, it's kind of dark. Mysterious. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas the UK version, it's

got an incense.

Yeah, yeah, that's right smoke curling up into the, into the atmosphere. But the the English one is very, very different. It's a white cover. And it's got an Erlenmeyer flask with all all sorts of different things inside the flask.

Those lousy Brits as lousy Brits, so you're doing you're doing two editions at once the British and the American edition.

The two of them are coming out simultaneously. Yeah. And then there are a couple of translations in the works. One in the Netherlands. Amazingly. I thought and my experience has been that the Dutch all Dutch speak English better than I do. But but they like to read it in their own language. And then in Spain, a translation is also being done.

Nice into Spanish Spanish. Yes. Yeah. Not into like Catalonian. Or so like, that'd be that'd be on point. You know what I mean? Nice. All right. Well, I hope that it's a while before you have to deal with your persnickety Japanese translator that was a nightmare for you last time, right?

It was in a good way. And actually, I've been kind of going through that with the Dutch translator who is who's very good. He's a scholar of food history in his own right. And so he's had all kinds of questions. And some of them, you know, caught me out. So I've learned a lot dealing with translators.

So this book is not like, your other books, in that it is me you deal with me. You're a food person. So you you do talk a lot about food and cooking in it. But that's not what it's about. You want to give people the kind of nutshell of what were what you're what you've come out with it. First of all, how long you've worked on it, like, just give an outline of the project. All right.

All right. So it started out 10 years ago, as a book about flavor, taste and smell. You know, the what the things that make food delicious and interesting. To me anyway, and but as I began to write about taste, and smell, and foods and so on, other things kind of bubbled to the surface, I began to Well, first of all, it seemed to me that I wanted to focus on smell because taste is, of course really important. But we can detect maybe, you know, something on the order of a dozen tastes plus or minus, but we can detect hundreds 1000s Maybe more different smells. So smells are what give foods their particularities

and I must ask Wait,

who has the bell? Yeah,

I, I have the belt and I have not been able to track down where it's coming from. I'm sorry.

It's the sound of wisdom, man.

I did it kind of was going off. It was like to emphasize like, good point. Or you might learn something here which I've Okay, so listeners, that's what that is.

That's an only taste 1012 things. Dang, for

the rest of the show. This is intentional. SFX You're welcome.

Or, or what I can do is I'm pretty sure it's coming from the phone, which I'm using to record, I could just shut it off and not have that second not have that backup. So

sure, or turn down the volume on the phone.

It's, you know, it's not supposed to have notifications going so

the man just told you, man.

Okay, okay, then. Yeah, turn it off. I guess

I'll do this momentous decision right there.

Oh, no. Yeah, it's gonna bite us in the butt later. All right.

Okay, so give me a sec. Sorry about this.

It's okay. It's okay. It's off.

Anyway, so I was writing about thinking about writing about flavor, focused on smells, and then began to wonder why it was that smells kind of echo each other, you know, and I figured that it had to do with the molecules involved. So you know, parmesan cheese can smell like pineapple. And there are reasons for that. But then I began to wonder why it was that foods can smell like we're having aromas like things that are not foods. Okay, I'm being haunted.

Oh man, we also don't have

a recording and we have the bell, we're really going out today.

The man finishes the sound.

I'm haunted. I'm haunted early. I'm really sorry about this.

It's fine. We've addressed it enough that the listeners are just along for the ride now. Okay. Okay.

So, you know, wines, wine speak, people often talk about wines, having smells like, you know, sweaty saddles, for example, or rocks, minerals, anything? Yeah. So I began to wonder why these other things in the world have the smells that they do. And that ended up really grabbing my attention, you know, because people have written about the the olfactory chemistry, the volatile chemistry of foods and drinks, but not so much about the rest of the world. And I thought it would be fun to try to pull all those things together. And it ended up being fun in a way. I enjoyed those 10 years. But then I also didn't enjoy those 10 years, because I was, I was late in delivering my book for eight of those 10 years. And that's

not feast, I have no idea what that feels.

Anyway, so So the book is, is now a field guide to the world's smells, in which food and drink, play a part. But an important part because those are where we mostly encounter smells these days. But it does try to cover everything else that I can think of that there was data for

me speaking of data, so for those of you that this is a tome, this is not like, this is not like some sort of like pollen ask, like, you know, light read tore through like this is like on the order of not as long as but on the order of, of on food and cooking in that it like, you start with kind of this structures of like the early universe like volatiles that might be around and then the how the Earth Kind of like came to be, and then the building blocks, volatile smell building blocks that kind of life created, and then you kind of ramify from there, like here's what plants can do, here's what animals can do, and then go into an in depth kind of description of all that along with what the individual compounds are to do it. So it's one of those things where you kind of need to read it at least twice. When you say that's accurate or no. Well,

I guess I did mean it. Or it did turn out to be in the end. Something like a field guide, which is something that you don't necessarily read from cover to cover. It's something that you kind of browse in the first few chapters to get the idea of you know, what birds are, what, what beetles are that kind of thing. And then when you see something, or hear a bird call that interests you, then you go back home and open up the field guide and tried to figure out what it was. So that's how I intended to be used, although I did also try to make it readable. So that if you happen to be interested, for example, in herbs and spices or in incense or something like that, that you could sit down and spend half an hour learning something about those things.

Right, but you should really spit like, in other words, I think to really get the most out of it. There's a section near the beginning, I forget what you call it. Like that. It's not like building blocks. It's what is it? It's like, you have a chart and you take like a like a chapter two, what do you call it, and I have to flip through the book now because I have a copy of it here. You know, the basic building blocks and like, what the structures are, like the starter set, and then beyond the starter set into the first couple of things, and you kind of need to go over those a couple of times, because you're going to keep coming back to those again and again. And I think understanding those kinds of basic building blocks is going to help you understand the stuff you write later, don't you think so?

Yeah, I do think so. And I think it's just important, an important point in its own right to that there are such things as building blocks, you know, that life in with all its diversity does, when when you begin to fracture it and break it down, Break it back down into its smaller constituents, you end up with the same basic set of small molecules that are small enough that they're volatile that they can leave what it whenever it is there in, fly through the air and end up in our noses. which is the prerequisite for anything having a smell? So yeah, living things in general, tend to fall apart into these, this this starter set of different molecules, and we encountered them all the time.

And then you know, also you interesting in the section on plants, for instance, you say, Okay, listen, plants need to make these kind of structural and food storage molecules. And there's this kind of, there's these, uh, you know, specific pathways, and then on those specific pathways branching off, or all the side reactions that create all of these, like crazy volatiles, and you kind of go through and so it's, it's kind of a pathway by pathway. Kind of, look, here's what this pathway does, and it's gonna, it's interesting way to look at, and I think part of what you say in the intro is, is once, once you kind of start understanding these kinds of pathways and how they're related, it can actually make your experience of the whole world more interesting, you know,

yeah, that's, that's my hope. That's certainly the way I experienced it. Because going into it, you know, I knew food and drink pretty well, because I'd been writing about those things for a long time. But I had not been writing about plant biochemistry, I have not been writing about the early history of the Earth, and you know, the smells that come out of volcanoes and things like that. So I was learning all that stuff for the first time. That's why it took me 10 years. But what really intrigued me was, you know, why do these things exist? Why are those particular molecules there. And in the case of plants, which are stuck in one spot in the earth, and can't run away from predators, they have to defend themselves and deal with the world, essentially, chemically. And so they, they take advantage of the pathways that they use to make their physical structures to make chemical structures that can serve them well to repel predators or to, you know, to be come ons to animals to pollinate their flowers or to disperse their fruits. And knowing that all that kind of thing is going on, when you enjoy a mango, for example, I think adds to the experience of, of mango hood.

Yeah. And one other thing I'll note is that while you do not stint ever on using the names of the compounds and the families of compounds that are in it, because I guess you want you want people to know, right, you don't have to know this stuff you don't. In other words, you don't have to absorb everything to go to a later chapter and read about something and you can still get the main gist, the thrust of the argument without, you know, if you don't know, if you don't know, a terpenoid, from from a lactone, you can still get the general gist of what's kind of going on. So I would say, don't be frightened of the fact that it does have all of this actual kind of chemistry in it. Would you agree with that, or no,

again, that's certainly my hope. And I tried to arrange things to make it as easy as possible to skip over that stuff, if you don't happen to be interested in it. So there are tables of the components smells, that that make up the smell of a particular thing, like a mango, and then the molecules that are responsible for those smells, the molecules are there, you know, for for people who are interested in the chemistry, and I became interested so that's why I've included them, but also to make the point that these are not tasting notes. You know, these are not some person sitting down, smelling a mango and coming up with well, it's got, you know, a pine note and a strawberry note and this note into that note, it's not subjective, these are molecules that have been found in all these things that are responsible for the component smells that give us the overall smell. So it's there. The the molecules are there largely to make the point that these are not subjective notes. These are what science has found to have been involved in these wonderful smells that we enjoy.

So before I get to the listener questions, I know Anastasia wants to talk about one specific section of the books as

my favorite part in the Herald. You and I when we were having drinks explained it to me before the book came out, but that certain people, certain cultures don't have body odor or bad body odor. And I find that so interesting. Can you talk about that? Sure.

Yeah. And that's something that that I learned, you know, took a couple of months to make sure that I really understand. And it's, it's really fascinating. So turns out, I mean, I, I figured going into writing about the human body that most of the smells, that that, that we emit, are kind of accidental, you know, we have micro biomes, bacteria and yeasts and all kinds of little creatures that live on our skin and in the side us. And it's largely their activity that, that causes the breakdown of our molecules into small things that are volatile, and that we can smell, what I didn't realize was that our bodies have taken advantage of that fact. And so they actually make certain molecules that are brought to the surface of our skin, which which microbes then process in such a way as to give us our human body odors. And it turns out that certain groups of human beings on the planet have more or less of these kinds of specialty products that are meant for microbes to process to give us the smells that we have. And it turns out that Europeans who are so apparently, coming out of Africa and then spreading into Europe and into Asia, we started out with a pretty good complement of molecules that would end up smelling once bacteria on our skin, got a hold of them and release them. But as culture as, as people's evolved separately, some of those smells became for whatever reasons that still the biologists are still working on this, but forever, whatever reason became less useful, or maybe got in the way of something or other. And so it turns out that people in Asia tend to produce much less or even none of the molecules that people of African and European ancestry do. That ended up giving us a much stronger body odor than people in Asia have.

AZ crazy hazy and get another reason we are hated.

But Harold, Harold say the one thing when, when Asian smelled, or saw Europeans for the first time than they smelled them, they were like, Whoa, right.

Yeah, no, there there are terms in in Chinese that are essentially mean essentially, the smell of the barbarian. Or, and, and stories about Europeans who are able to turn from human and to Fox and vice versa, but they keep the same smell. And so that's how you know that.

Who are Oh, wow, yeah.

I get this. Am I gonna get us a listener questions? Because, you know, I could ask, you know, we could ask her a question all day, and then I will have asked people to ask questions in vain. And also, Matt, you're keeping an eye on the chat room in case people pop in. Right. Okay. Chris writes in, I have a question. Why does White and this is actually covered in the book, Chris. So if you buy the book, you wouldn't have to ask, Why does ground white pepper smell like horses? It does. That's what he says. That's his note. It does. I just say I don't use it. And Niels Norton, you know, you know, our old compatriot hates it because he thinks it smells like like death and mold he and first of all, like whatever so go give him some white pepper.

Correct. So black pepper is black because it has the, the fruit coat of the of the pepper fruit still intact surrounding the seed. And white pepper is white because that that fruit coat has been removed in the processing and the easiest way to remove the fruit coat on pepper fruit is essentially to ferment it to you know, make big piles and then wet the pile down. And then microbes get to work. fermenting the fruit pulp and it becomes very easy just to kind of wipe it off. And so that's how you get white pepper is to do this fermentation step and then Clean the the the fruit of the of the fruit pulp, and you're left with the seed, which is white. The problem is that that fermentation is usually taking place while I guess always taking place in tropical conditions. And those fermentations are wild so that they are sometimes less than pleasant. And when that happens, you can end up with volatiles that come from the fermentation, not from the pepper itself. And that's what you're tasting when you're tasting, like pepper that that is funky. And most white peppers are funky, some less than others, it depends on how that fermentation has been been controlled, if at all.

Now, follow up question. Is there any reason if you throw out black specks as a reason to use white pepper over black pepper? Is there any reason that white pepper exists?

Well, I can see. I mean, I'm not a huge fan. But I can see you know that it would if you in in small doses, it might give an interesting sort of background complexity to something. But you certainly want to wouldn't want it to be front and center and freshlyground.

And as a follow follow up, you quote Pliny at least twice in the book at the beginning of chapters, in one quote, he says that he detests the taste of pepper, why would you ever quote him again for anything?

Because I think he was asking in that passage, a very good question, which was why would human beings bother to be interested in this kind of thing? Why would they want to give themselves pain and, and value that kind of sensation, so much that the cost of pepper was comparable to the cost of gold? That's that's what he was talking about in that passage.

So you think he was actually being thoughtful and not just ragging on ragging on pepper? And

I think both I think both I mean, he was Yeah, I mean, he ragging and insight are not necessarily to be dissociated.

A fair point. If it if it Yeah, fair point. All right. Peter Stewart writes in I have a smell related question. Why does raw egg make dishes smell like wet dog? And is there a simple way to neutralize it? If it gets in the dishwasher undetected, it can spread to the whole load of dishes, which is a problem when you live with a nose, you want to talk about what a nose is? And then maybe if you have an answer to the question, okay,

well, a nose, I'm assuming that a nose in this context is a nose in the larger culture, which is someone who has been trained to pay attention, very close attention to smells, and that's usually someone who is working in the in the flavor or fragrance industries. And so this is an interesting question. I remember talking about it with Audrey Saunders years and years ago because she, to her it was a problem that comes up in any drink that's made with a shaken with a with an A quite the shelf life or the the the bar life for her was was very short, because that smell would develop very quickly. Dave, is that something that you would agree with? Yeah,

I mean, that's why like, we you know that the best solute The problem is, is that people like to see the egg freshly freshly cracked out, I mean, that that smell dissipates over the course of a couple of hours. So if you crack it out before service and let it kind of air out, it'll, it'll go away. But I don't think that'll stop the dishwasher smell, which might be a reification of the smell. I don't really, I never looked into it. I just, you know, I was like, I can't solve this. So, you know, Audrey's was to cover up the aroma. And mine was to either like not used to a way to wait, you know, and so I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

So ever since Audrey pointed it out to me. I've I've been interested in wet dog smell and eggs, and have been searching for an answer. And what I've come up with are, you know, little fragments of possibilities, but no unified theory for why it is that that eggs have that wet dog smell. People have studied the smell of wet dogs amazingly. In fact, that's that's one of the cool things that the that I was just amazed that over the course of the years I was writing this book is how many oddball things scientists have gone to the trouble to track down And, and figure out. So there have been, you know, gas chromatography, OFAC commentary studies done of wet dogs, among many other things and make to make a long story short because it is just, you know, a series of possibilities. Wet dogs themselves have actually, this molecule Crease all, which is also one of the culprits in the smell of white pepper that we were just talking about. And so, it's possible that because egg whites are basically all protein, protein plus water, and protein is rich in nitrogen, and resol is a byproduct of the breakdown of amino acids, that for some reason, there are just traces of, of that particular molecule in egg whites, which some people are really sensitive to, and others just aren't. But there are other possibilities. I mean, the the I came across a paper about the smell of the off smell of fish, and fish oils, which can be pretty nasty. Which discovered a molecule, which went isolated, according to the authors, and this is back in the 90s. Smelled like had the very characteristic smell of Marang. Which is egg egg whites, right. So and that turned out to be an aldehyde. Nothing to do with Chris hall but but an aldehyde. So I think basically what we're what we're chasing after is some trace compound that science has not yet tracked down completely. I don't understand why it is an I'll have to experiment with this what why it is that the smell would smell would spread in a dishwasher, which is you know, probably it's probably alkaline conditions in there. And so that's probably going to do something, something to the chemistry and the volatility of the traces that are still in there. But good question is

scrub steel, scrub steel has a similar smell. So you know, I can often confuse that egg smell with freshly scrubbed wet steel in a dishwashing situation. So I also wonder whether maybe there's some of that,

yeah, that's interesting, because the smell of of fresh metal surface is has again been, amazingly enough, carefully studied. And those are very particular aldehydes, again, and ketones, so not related to amino acids at all, but to actually what you're smelling is not, of course, the metal which is not volatile, but but volatile molecules that are generated by the contact of the soap molecules with the metal. So these are, you know, eight and 10 Carbon fragments that that we associate with the smell of metal, because that's when we smell them, but it's not the metal itself. It's these other materials that come in contact with it.

So I have a question here, from our friend up in Connecticut while he's out. He says not exactly aroma centric. But we'd love to hear Harold's thoughts about a serious eats article on D bittering. Olive oil and I looked it up it's Nick Sharma who's coming out with the flavor equation the science of great cooking, which is I guess due out this month maybe already out for Oh no, I haven't I haven't read it yet. Basically takes olive oil. And then to make emulsions that don't get bitter. He puts a lot of hot water into it which absorbs the polyphenols and then detox it and then makes an emotion with it. So I'm assuming that at that point, you're like, Why use the olive oil right? I'm I don't know, why don't you just tell me what you think about that idea. If you've if you've read about it or heard about it.

That's exactly my reaction. Why bother using olive oil. So that's a technique your what you're basically doing is washing out non oil materials from the oil by mixing it intimately with water and letting them letting the oil and water separate from each other, pouring off the water and then you're left with the oil and it no longer has those traces of bitter and other compounds including aromas. And that's a technique that has been used for centuries actually, to take rancid smelling oils and get rid of the rancidity. So you can find that that kind of procedure is called for in books going way, way back If it does work, and I think Nick also recommends that when using mustard oil, which which can be bitter and is used a lot in Indian cooking, but that's exactly my my question is if you're if you don't want the particular qualities of olive oil and mustard oil and by the way that the bitterness and olive oil is actually an indication of its poly phenolic content which is associated with good good things for our bodies then what you're doing is basically taking away the molecules that give those oils their specific identities and qualities and perhaps health benefits in order to have a kind of blank background and so you could do the same thing just by using canola oil.

Right, especially if you don't believe in any of these purported, I guess you're saying even the Health reported health benefits you'd be watching Alright, so so so why you maybe you have a surfeit of olive oil lying around? You know what I mean? Maybe you're swimming in olive oil and trying to find uses for it, whatever. By the way, what percentage of olive oils you think turned bad when you make a man is out of them?

Sorry, which percentage of olive oils

like get that like intensely bitter thing when you make mayonnaise out of

my experience is that it really depends on how you make it. So if you make the mayonnaise by hand, I find that you don't generally have a problem at all. It's when you use a blender. And so my my guess is that it maybe have has to do with the processing of the oil, the size of the droplets, how much of the stuff that's ins inside the droplets gets exposed on the surface of the droplets. That that might be what's causing the bitterness, but I think it's process dependent

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All right, we have a question from Rachel Meyer. I wonder whether that's the Rachel Meyer from shoots and roots. Interesting. She asked what's really behind smelling sweet. What a sweet smell mean?

So that's a really good question. I have a couple of pages about that. Because in the chemo sensory world, in the world of people who especially think about the the flavors of foods, it's often said that talking about sweet smells is actually a mistake, or a kind of uncalled for attribution, to smells of something that's actually due to an association with a taste. So we say that vanilla has a sweet smell because we always encounter it in sweets. And so we make that unconscious Association and we use that word for it. But my argument is that in fact, you know, if you just go back to the Oxford English Dictionary, and look at the history of the use of the word sweet is used to mean pleasant way way back but long before it was associated very specifically with with sugars. And I think that that there's a lot to be said for using the term sweet to mean soothing when it when it comes to smells. I'm talking about soothing smells, pleasant smells, smells that you know that you have pleasant associations with flowers can swell as it can smell sweet and and you know, we don't necessarily have a lot of experience with flowers, floral aromas in sweets, certainly in. In some parts of the world there is that association but for us not so much. So I think it's a perfectly useful word when describing smells. It's very general, but it essentially means pleasant.

What about in a related note? So like honey, remember, we used to do the demonstration together we you know, I guess John hasn't done it but like Anastasia and you and I have done the demo many times where you chew on or eat some Junie MC acid Jamia Silvestri leaves it wipes out your your sense of sweet and almost nothing tastes sweet Everything is ruined. exception being honey still tastes slightly sweet. I always assumed that that was an aroma situation that I was literally integrating in my mind is sweet now.

I you know, my guess with honey is because there's so many different sugars in there. You know, maybe something's getting by is you know something's triggering a receptor. The gymnemic Isn't somehow blocking. That would be my guess. But I think you're good. Well, let's see. We've done didn't we do marshmallows? And yeah, and they have some vanilla in them. And they were not so nice. So they're terrible. Yeah. So my guess is it's the bizarre range of sugars that you find in honey that that might be doing that.

I haven't done that in a long time because it's unpleasant. Yeah, question

in the chat window. Okay. Are there any moment? Are there any good resources on Esther's like a database specifically if you want to associate them with different spirits like rum or whiskey and then he explains that he finds it strange can't stand whiskey it smells like used baby diaper. I'm a dad he says whereas rum is like chocolate vanilla raisins kola nut and notes in between the camp play specifically. And he said he also like rose in that he's one of those people for whom coriander taste smells like some sort of soap or detergent. He wonders if there's a correlation

What are you feeding that baby

I gotta get that baby to go to sleep somehow you know

my my father when I was in my 30s with children finally admitted to me that you know I was regularly doped up as a as an infant to keep me quiet so

what was that noise

yes

oh I caught it is more of a man

no

well and I now use that as an excuse for all kinds of things so anyway

brandy baby brandy nice.

Anyway so Astra as well so the book does have a two page spread of the most common esters that are found in food and drink I'm not aware offhand of a kind of specialty chart for spirits but I wouldn't be at all surprised if one didn't exist somewhere other

make it sound so racy to pay to pay for

the when it comes to why it is that you experience whiskey the way you do and and possible correlation with your experience of coriander cilantro. You know, that's that's an aspect of the perception of smells that I chose deliberately to ignore in the book because it is so subjective and complicated. And the book was going to be long enough if I just paid attention to what's out there, whether or not or how we perceive it. So I can can't really come up with a good explanation there. And I'm not sure that that anyone else can at this point, except to say that you know, we we do all have different sets of receptors we all do have different processing circuits in our brain because those are are built by experience. And so I would take it as an occasion to think back to your infancy and early adulthood and see if you can come up with any interesting associations from from your own life.

John, you're not a whiskey guy. Do you get any diaper action out of your any baby poo out here?

No, I do not. Yeah, I don't I just I don't know. What about the flavor? I guess I've never really taken the time to just like sit and think about why I dislike whiskey so much I just know I don't like it when I tasted it.

Well, you told me it was a it was a it was a mental thing because of a bad experience bad

experience when I was young and silly. I think that has to do with it. Yeah,

what happened? I

just graduated from high school went down to Jamaica with some friends and gotten a hot tub with some Jack Daniels and some Spaghettios and needless to say things did not go well.

Whoa, whoa, give me that give me that. Give me that trifecta. Again. You're in a hot tub

Spaghettios Jack Daniels few

customers I stole a bottle of Jack Daniels but I could afford Spaghettios let's get not just that how that went was that that the

just no I don't I don't I don't really remember how it all happened it just was I remember the end of the evening did not go well on the next day.

I bet you do that's a that's a nice color. Yes floating on the top of that pool yeah

well thankfully made it into the bathroom not quite to the toilet but ah oh

Harold you still have not listened to the Dead Milkmen song have

you? No I have not

these are a few of my many smells off of their smash hit album. Beals a Baba.

Okay. Thank you for reminding me. I will do that today.

Yeah, yeah. I'm sure you have one of the Spotify or iTunes. I mean, it's not that it's a great song. But I mean, how many Dead Milkmen song relate directly to you know, a book that you've written? That's right. Yeah, you know, the dead I'm sure like none of you guys even remember who the Dead Milkmen were like that. You might know them. Bichon Camaro and punk rock girl were their two biggest songs anyways ashmit writes in Herald and also he wishes us well. So that's nice. Okay, is my question is about the difference in taste in butter of different animals cow and water buffalo in India. I don't know if it's present in the US. The butter from a cow is much more aromatic and stronger tasting in a good way than the buffalo kind which tastes fresher. I bought the two ties from the same brand and the difference is still quite noticeable. Both of them were uncultured, which removes the possibility of fermentation introduced diacid deal. Why do you think that is? What do you think disparity is? Is it related to the yellow hue of the cow kind? Or is it simply because they are two different animals? Am I thinking about this too much? And is this also the case in the United States we don't get buffalo butter here in the United States. And I will throw into this an added thing if bonus points Harold if you can talk about camel milk.

Well, I'm on the point of Camel milk. I myself have not tasted it. But I was shopping at a wonderful grocery store in Sacramento called Corky brothers, which I really want to take you guys to when that kind of thing becomes possible again. And they actually had dehydrated camel milk and dehydrated horse milk. So I bought a can of each. It was expensive stuff. It's like you know, 30 bucks a can something like that. But I gave them to my daughter Florence, who is a who spends her weekends with horses. That's kind of her. Her avocation is working at a horse ranch on weekends. And so I gave them to her as a kind of, you know, stalker oddball stocking stuffer. And she was grateful for them took them a home and then we have to lock down and we haven't been together since so. I hope she still has them. I will I will check and if she does, then I'll give you some notes on camel milk.

And then we'll we'll read them on the air you can come back You know you don't have to wait until you come out with a book to come on the show by me people enjoy when you come to the buffalo to the buffalo cow and and does it does the butter in the cows that they have in India differ from ours and an uncultured eccentric cetera.

So cow's milk and water buffalo milk are very different. And they're, there's a page in the book about about that difference. They're different than in all kinds of ways. Just the water buffalo milk is much higher in protein and fat both. But then the other thing about milk is that it really does get a lot of its flavor from what the animal is eating. And so I think probably a big part of the difference that color has experienced in between those two milks has to do with the, the feed the the milks themselves, I mean, we can kind of get an idea of it here. If we buy burrata, for example, which, which is sometimes made with cow's milk, sometimes made with water buffalo milk, and it's kind of you know, on the on the edge between cheese and butter, and they have very distinctive flavors. But it's, you know, it's not a huge difference. And I think if, if there's a huge difference in India, between those two, then it might have a lot to do with the typical feet that they have.

I will have to take a trip and find out once all this is over.

That's that's gonna be our mango trip. Right?

Yeah, we're gonna go down to the set. Hey, look, I'm game. We almost made it that one year, I forget what happened, you know? Because you had you still have your hookup?

Yeah, I still have friends there. And they're, they're happy to make arrangements for us.

Well, as soon as we're allowed to, what's the season there? When's the when's the

spring, late spring?

Yeah, nice. All right. Miguel Cepeda wrote in, I have a rotary evaporator to distill things, and I have the aromas that I pass them on to my dishes, but it occurs to me to try to distill rusty metal nails to get those metallic aromas. And so this is going to, you spent a lot of time several places in the book talking about what actual aromas and things like metals are. So it's why this is apropos of the book to get those metallic aromas similar to the, to the truffle, in which you also spend a good deal of time on and the question is, can I obtain those aromas and flavors? And are they safe to consume? If so what temperature? Do you recommend using the rotary evaporator to take care of the terpenoids? But I wouldn't know what terpenoids would be president if anyway, but so basically, that distilling the smell of rusty nails,