The Aphrodisiac Encyclopaedia

by Mark Douglas Hill

  If the phtalides provide celery’s aphrodisiac rhythm, the keening front man is without doubt androstenone. This sex pheromone is nature’s olfactory mating call. Broadcast at almost imperceptible levels from male armpits and groins, it touches a sensitive nerve in nubile nostrils, awakening the dark beast of female arousal. In an experiment, scientists secretly sprayed androstenone on to random seats in a theatre. Sending a gaggle of females into the theatre they observed where they sat. Unknowingly following their noses, our ladies nestled their behinds against the pheromone-scented seats. Celery is one of the few natural sources of androstenone. Putting away a few sticks of celery may increase a man’s natural production of this love drug, making him quite literally irresistible to women. It may also explain why women are so fond of crudités and houmous.

  Legend and history support the celery stick’s aphrodisiac swagger. The blind bard Homer alludes to its pulling power in the Odyssey. Calypso the seductress nymph lived in celery-filled fields on the island of Ogygia. Rendered ravenous by her celery-heavy diet she pounced on the shipwrecked Odysseus, detaining him from his journey home for five years of fabled fornication. Central to the Celtic legend of Tristan and Isolde is a celery-filled love potion. By accident they drink this magic philtre and soon are rampantly rolling around, having completely forgotten that Tristan is escorting Isolde on her way to her wedding with his uncle.

  Celery’s use as a folk remedy for impotence had a particular following in France. In the eighteenth century Grimod de La Reynière, the world’s first food journalist, warns of celery’s aphrodisiac properties, advising that it ‘is not in any way a salad for bachelors’. Madame de Pompadour, maverick mistress to Louis XV, fed celery soup to her monarch to raise the flagging royal standard. This practice continues today, in the potentially less elegant surroundings of the Ukraine. Brazen babushkas feed their pickled husbands hearty bowls of celery soup to ensure lusty performance.

  Without wanting to upset any Ukrainian matrons, I would steer well clear of soup and recommend raw celery as most likely to cause maximum aphrodisiac effect. If we are talking raw celery our options are limited. Celery combines classically with apple and walnut in a Waldorf salad. A plump stick revels in the hot bath of a staunch Bloody Mary. Apart from that we can only really be contemplating crudités. I assume most people are au fait with how to prepare raw celery so I will set my culinary crosshairs on the ideal dip. Celery has an almost pregnant affinity for peanuts. Contrast the cool, wet crunch of the celery with the warming fire of a spicy satay sauce, so much more seductive than houmous.

  Celery Crudités with Lime Satay Sauce

  Celery : ½ head

  Coriander : 10 g

  Shallot : 1

  Lime : ½

  Dry-roasted peanuts (unsalted) : 90 g

  Sunflower oil : 1 tbsp

  Fish sauce : 1 tbsp

  Tabasco : 1 tsp

  Palm sugar / caster sugar : 10 g

  Water : 75 ml

  Dark soy sauce : 1 tsp

  Toasted sesame oil : 1 tbsp

  Remove the coriander leaves from the stalks and skin the shallot. Zest and juice the lime.

  Crush the peanuts into small pieces using a rolling pin, then sauté the peanut pieces in a frying pan with the sunflower oil until golden brown.

  Roughly chop the shallot and coriander stalks and place in a blender with the fish sauce, Tabasco, sugar, lime juice, lime zest, water, soy sauce and toasted sesame oil. Add three quarters of the peanuts and blitz until smooth.

  Add the remaining peanuts and pulse to achieve a crunchy texture. If the sauce is too thick add a little water to loosen it.

  Roughly chop the coriander leaves, stir into the sauce and chill to allow the flavours to develop. The sauce should be nutty and spicy with a delicious balance between sweet, sour and salt. You can adjust the seasoning to taste by adding more sugar for sweetness, more fish sauce for saltiness or lime juice for tartness.

  Break the celery stalks away from the head, wash thoroughly and using a peeler cut off the strings that run along the ridges on the convex side of each stalk. Cut in batons about 10 cm long by 2 cm wide. Serve with the satay sauce for dipping.

  FENNEL

  Fennel is an under-appreciated ingredient. Like the pig, all its parts are deliciously edible. The seeds are a wonderful aromatic spice, the leaves an admirable herb, its fleshy bulb a versatile salad and vegetable side. Unlike the average curly-tailed snouter, fennel can drive women wild with desire.

  It would appear that this particular characteristic was well known to the ancient Greeks. In The Bacchae, the illustrious playwright Euripides warns of ‘brute wildness in the fennel-wands’. Fennel was closely associated with the disreputable Dionysus, god of wine and waywardness. Dionysus brandishes a phallic staff, or thyrsus; its shaft is a fennel stalk, its head a pine cone dripping with honey. His retinue is a rabble of wanton women and indecently aroused, prodigiously hung goat-men. At holy all-night raves, Dionysus’s devotees wore crowns of fennel leaves, and chewed on fennel seeds to bring on the sacred desire.

  Although this may well have worked for the wanton women, I suspect our engorged goat-men were on something else. Fennel’s active ingredient is a phytoestrogen called anethole. It evolved as fennel’s unorthodox defence against rampaging herbivores. Like a chemical kick in the balls, anethole zaps the male libido, ruining ruminant romance to keep the grazing population very much in check.

  In humans, fennel’s phytoestrogens have much the same effect. The literal translation of phytoestrogen, a Greek word, is a plant that creates sexual desire in women. These plant-generated oestrogens simply mimic the effect of animal sex hormones. In women, high oestrogen levels fuel a strong libido and womanly physique. In men it is a very different story. Normal oestrogen levels in males are very much lower. Increasing them sends men on a gender bender. Breasts swell, nipples enlarge, testicles shrivel and body hair falls out – interest in sex is an early casualty.

  The gastronomic merits of fennel are many, but for the male bon viveur they come at a high price. Fennel is clearly an unsuitable staple for maintaining manliness. In Italy, as well as meaning fennel, finocchio is a somewhat derogatory term for a homosexual fellow. The term originated in the fifteenth century and is used to this day. The Renaissance Italian, none too politically correct, clearly had noted the un-manning effects in this otherwise admirable vegetable. I very much doubt, however, the odd salad and occasional slice of fennel salami will put breasts on your chest and take you to the wrong part of town. I indulge and am still a paragon of masculinity, albeit a somewhat flamboyant one who likes cooking. Run the gauntlet of a fennel’s feminine charms and wow female companions with an exquisite fennel velouté served with a Parmesan and fennel-seed crisp.

  Fennel Velouté with Fennel-Seed Parmesan Crisps

  Fennel : 500 g

  Onion : 1 small onion

  Butter : 60 g

  Bouquet garni : 1

  Plain flour : 20 g

  Chicken stock : 400 ml

  Pastis : 1 tbsp

  Star anise : 1

  Egg : 1

  Double cream : 3 tbsp

  Salt : a pinch

  Cayenne pepper : a pinch

  Parmesan : 50 g

  Fennel seeds : 2 large pinches

  Whipping cream : 2 tbsp

  Preheat the oven to 180°C.

  Finely slice the fennel and onion. Melt 20 g of butter in a pan and over a medium heat fry the vegetables with the bouquet garni for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  Empty the pan and melt another 20 g of butter. Stir in the plain flour to make a white roux, then whisk in the chicken stock. Add the cooked vegetables, bouquet garni, pastis (Pernod is always a good one) and star anise. Bring to the boil and cook for 30 minutes at a light simmer.

  Fish out the star anise and bouquet garni, then liquidise the soup in a blender until very smooth. If you want to be especially professional, now pass the soup back into the pan through a very fine sieve.<
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  Crack and separate the egg, set the white aside and beat the yolk with the double cream.

  Remove the soup from the heat and stir in the egg and cream. Finally whisk in the remaining 20 g of butter to give the soup a luxurious sheen.

  Season with salt and a little cayenne pepper to taste.

  To make the Parmesan crisps, grate the Parmesan. Sprinkle the cheese on to non-stick baking paper in two even circles, just wider in diameter than the bowls of the soup plates you are going to use.

  Sprinkle the fennel seeds over each circle of Parmesan. Bake in the preheated oven for 5 minutes.

  Once melted, remove from the oven, allow to cool then transfer to the freezer to set firm.

  Serve the soup in warmed bowls with a swirl of whipping cream, dust with a little cayenne pepper and crown with the Parmesan crisp, which should hover over the soup like a lid.

  TOMATO

  Eighteenth-century France was a hotbed of decadence and debauchery. Bursting on to these licentious times, the scarlet tomato caused quite a splash. They were imported from Italy as pommes d’amour (love apples). The name, exoticism, sinful colour and juicy flesh were more than enough for them to be quickly accepted as powerful aphrodisiacs. Banished by the Catholic Church and unwelcome in polite society, they were embraced by everyone else.

  Over the years, the aphrodisiac reputation faded and the love apple became the plain old tomato. Only in Italy does something of the original colourful name survive. The flamboyant Italians call tomatoes pomodori, or golden apples. The tomato’s naughty French reputation turns out to have been a slip of the tongue. When the conquering Spanish returned from the New World, the Aztec tomatl that accompanied them were yellow not red. From Spain they spread to Italy and North Africa. Whereas in Italy the pomodoro remained yellow, in Moorish Africa a new red strain was developed. These were subsequently imported into Italy where they were known separately as pomo dei mori, apples of the Moors. When the French got their greedy mitts on them, this name was mistranslated into pommes d’amour, and so a slutty reputation was born.

  Tomatoes remain rampantly red, they still ooze juicily from their meaty flesh, but only the most imaginative and hopeful still call them an aphrodisiac. Modern science may soon change that. A study at Harvard University has shown that men who eat tomatoes are a third less likely to contract prostate cancer. The direct link to libido is as yet unclear. What is clear is that the prostate governs male sexuality and tomatoes make it tick. As an American scientist might say – you do the math. Make absolutely sure of aphrodisiac advantage with a Bloody Mary: tomato juice tooled up to the teeth with an X-rated arsenal of alcohol, chilli, pepper, anchovy essence, wasabi and celery. With that lot swilling around it is no wonder hungover sex is so splendidly satisfying.

  Preparing the perfect Bloody Mary is an art everyone should master. It will be a friend for life. The bon viveur gives his stamp of approval to Little Devil, an ingenious Bloody Mary essence that packs all the punch of an expertly crafted cocktail but with a good deal less complication. Perfect for parlous mornings when it all seems a bit much, still better when you are in a rush to return to an occupied bed. If you have time on your hands, kick off an evening with a classy Bloody Mary variant, the incomparable Bloody Margarita, made with tequila, tomato liquor and lots of love.

  Cheat’s Bloody Mary

  Vodka : 35 ml

  Bloody Mary essence : 1 tbsp

  (Little Devil pack in handy single servings)

  Freshly squeezed lime juice : ¼ lime

  Tomato juice : 200 ml

  Celery : 1 stick

  Pour the vodka, Bloody Mary essence, lime juice and chilled tomato juice into a glass. Trim the celery stick to an appropriate length, make a few lengthways incisions into one end, and use to stir the cocktail together.

  Bloody Margarita

  Cherry tomato essence : 50 ml

  (250 g cherry tomatoes and a stick of celery)

  Silver tequila : 50 ml

  Tabasco : ½ tsp

  Fish sauce : ½ tsp

  Amontillado sherry : 1 tbsp

  Freshly squeezed lime juice : ½ lime

  Celery salt : 2 tbsp

  Black pepper : 1 tsp

  Wasabi powder : 1 tsp

  Salt : to taste

  Ice : plenty

  Cherry tomatoes : 2

  Make a tomato essence by pulsing 250 g of ripe cherry tomatoes and a stick of celery in a food processor until they are very finely chopped. Season with salt and pour into a sieve placed over a bowl. Refrigerate for 3 hours, during which time a clear thin liquid will have collected. Press the sieve to extract any remaining essence.

  Shake the tomato essence with ice, good-quality silver tequila, Tabasco, fish sauce, sherry and lime juice.

  Mix the celery salt with ground black pepper and wasabi powder. Pour this on to a saucer, wet the rim of a cold Martini glass and rub into the mixture.

  Pour the margarita into the glass and serve with a cherry tomato on a cocktail stick.

  TRUFFLES

  In gastronomic circles the mysterious truffle inspires an almost religious fervour. The illustrious French author Alexandre Dumas described them as ‘the holy of holies for the gourmet’, adding as an aside that they also ‘make women more tender and men more lovable’. D’Artagnan’s creator was not the first to notice this inimitable connection.

  All the ancients were aficionados. Pyramid-potty Pharaoh Cheops is said to have enjoyed truffles basted in goose fat. The Babylonian kings preferred their truffles wrapped in papyrus and cooked in ashes, like a ludicrously luxurious baked potato. The enlightened Greeks and Romans were more absorbed by the truffle’s aphrodisiac properties. From Pythagoras to Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius to Aristotle, the great minds were as one – truffles make you horny. This electric quality and the truffle’s inscrutable biology led to the belief that truffles were supernatural, appearing where lightning bolts struck the ground.

  The Prophet Muhammad declared truffles to be a gift from Allah. Yet in Europe their consumption almost died out in the Middle Ages when the Church, bamboozled by obscure origins and ungodly groin goading, pronounced them evil. This embargo did not last long and with the Renaissance their popularity as gourmet guarantee of sexual satisfaction spread from royalty downwards. Soon the likes of Lucrezia Borgia, Catherine de Medici, Napoleon, Rasputin and the Marquis de Sade were all tucking in. Rehabilitation was complete when illustrious French gastronome Brillat-Savarin pronounced them ‘the diamonds of the kitchen’; and when some of the mysteries of truffle cultivation were finally deciphered.

  The truffle is the fruiting body of a microscopic fungal network that thrives among the roots of oak trees. Cultivation remains at best haphazard. Acorns gathered from truffle-bearing trees have a modest chance of growing into truffle trees themselves. The woolliness of the science is revealed when you learn that even today truffles are hunted as opposed to gathered; and that the truffle hunter is helpless without the keen nostrils of a four-legged friend.

  Nothing tracks down a truffle like the sensitive snout of a randy sow. Truffles are catnip to pigs. They contain mega doses of porky sex pheromones, more than enough to bring Miss Piggy running, panting at the prospect of making bacon. The one drawback to truffling with pigs is that once the sexual mist descends it is hard to prevent your sizeable sidekick from gobbling the prize. Dogs can also be trained to sniff out truffles, but between you and me they lack the necessary motivation.

  The truffle’s complex earthy flavour and aroma engage and activate the senses in a way that is downright erotic. The aphrodisiac status is no doubt glossed by the truffle’s lofty price tag. Money turns most people on and truffles cost a lot of wonga. Gambling tycoon Stanley Ho paid $330,000 for the world’s largest truffle – a white monster weighing a hefty 1.5 kg. Dr Ho is perhaps living proof of the truffle’s special powers. This Hong Kong-based octogenarian is a tango champion with four wives and seventeen children, the last of which he sired at the ripe old age of
seventy-eight.

  Those still doubtful can stick some science in their pipe and puff on that. It is not only pigs and truffles that produce the perfumed pick-me-up of androstenone. We also waft it from armpits and groins for much the same purpose. An experiment conducted by the University of Birmingham showed pictures of normally clad women to male and female subjects. Half of this group had been primed with a noseful of androstenone. The subjects were then asked to rank the women for sexual attractiveness. Those primed with pheromones gave significantly higher marks than the control group.

  The black truffles of the Perigord have more androstenone than the white truffles of Alba and Istria. White truffles, however, are more expensive so the jury is out as to which offers the most aphrodisiac appeal. I have a mild preference for the subtler earthy tones of the Perigord truffle, rather conveniently at its best around Valentine’s Day. Unleash its pulling power with a languorous linguine bathed in butter and spiked with an indecent amount of truffle. No point scrimping now, you may as well go the whole hog and wash it down with a classy red Burgundy of some pedigree and age.

  Truffle Linguine with Savoy Cabbage and Lardons

  Savoy cabbage : ½ head

  Lardons/diced pancetta : 75 g

  Butter : 50 g

  Dry linguine : 200 g

  Parmesan : 20 g

  Egg : 1

  Black Perigord truffle : 30 g

  Salt and pepper : to taste

  Remove any tough outer leaves from the savoy cabbage, then slice into thin linguine-like strips, lightly rinse and toss in a colander to dry.

  Heat a lightly oiled frying pan and add the lardons. Cook for 5 minutes until the lardons are coloured and crisp.

  Add the butter and once it has melted add the savoy cabbage. Toss in the butter for a minute then cover. Turn the heat down to low and cook for 8 minutes.