A Natural History of the Senses

by Diane Ackerman

  Wurtman and others argue that we crave chocolate because it’s a carbohydrate, which, like other carbohydrates, prompts the pancreas to make insulin, which ultimately leads to an increase in that neurotransmitter of calm, serotonin. If this were true, a plate of pasta, or potatoes, or bread would be equally satisfying. Chocolate also contains theobromine (“food of the gods”), a mild, caffeinelike substance, so, for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s just the serotonin and the relative of caffeine we crave, a calm stimulation, a culinary oxymoron few foods provide.* It might even explain why some women crave chocolate when they’re due to menstruate, since women who suffer PMS have been found to have lower levels of serotonin, and premenstrual women in general eat 30 percent more carbohydrates than they do at other times of the month. But if it were as simple as that, a doughnut and a cup of coffee would do the trick. Furthermore, there’s a world of difference between people who enjoy chocolate, women who crave chocolate only at certain times of the month, and serious chocoholics. Chocoholics don’t crave potato chips and pasta; they crave chocolate. Substitutes in any combination won’t do. Only the chocoholic in a household fresh out of chocolate, on a snowy night when the roads are impassable, knows how specific that craving can be. I’m not sure why some people crave chocolate, but I am convinced that it’s a specific need, and therefore the key to solving a specific chemical mystery to which we’ll one day find the solution.

  The Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan serves a chocolate bombe that’s the explosive epitome of chocolate desserts, two slices of which (the standard serving) few people are able to finish because it’s so piquantly rich. On the waterfront in St. Louis I once had a mousse called “Chocolate Suicide,” which was drug-level chocolate. I felt as if my brain had been hung up in a smokehouse. I can still remember the first time I had Godiva chocolates at a friend’s house; they were Godivas from the original factory in Brussels, with a perfect sheen, a twirling aroma, heady but not jarring, and a way of delicately melting on the tongue. One of the reasons why chocolates are superb in Belgium, Vienna, Paris, and some of our American cities is that chocolate candy is in considerable part a dairy product. The chocolate flavor may come from the plant, but the silken, melting delight comes from the milk, cream, and butter, which must be fresh. The people who create designer chocolates have learned that their confections must provide just the right melting sensation, and feel quintessentially creamy and luscious, with no grittiness or aftertaste, for people to be thoroughly wowed by them. In George Orwell’s 1984, sex is forbidden and chocolate is “dull-brown crumbly stuff that tasted … like the smoke of a rubbish fire.” Just before Julia and Winston risk making love, they eat real, full-bodied “dark and shiny” chocolate. Their amorous feast had its precedents. Montezuma drank an extra cup of chocolate before he went to visit his women’s quarters. Glamorous movie stars like Jean Harlow used to be shown eating boxes of chocolates. M. F. K. Fisher, the diva of gastronomy, once confided that her mother’s doctor prescribed chocolate as a cure for debilitating lovesickness. On the other hand, Aztec women were forbidden chocolate; what secret terror was it thought to unleash in them?

  IN PRAISE OF VANILLA

  Craving vanilla, I start the bathwater gushing, and unscrew the lid of a heavy glass jar of Ann Steeger of Paris’s Bain Crème, senteur vanille. A wallop of potent vanilla hits my nose as I reach into the lotion, let it seep through my fingers, and carry a handful to the faucet. Fragrant bubbles fill the tub. A large bar of vanilla bath soap, sitting in an antique porcelain dish, acts as an aromatic beacon. While I steep in waves of vanilla, a friend brings me a vanilla cream seltzer, followed by a custard made with vanilla beans that have come all the way from Madagascar. Brown flecks float through the creamy yellow curds. Though I could have chosen beans from the Seychelles, Tahiti, Polynesia, Uganda, Mexico, the Tonga Islands, Java, Indonesia, the Comoro Islands, and other places, I like the long, sensuous shape of the Madagascar vanilla bean, and its dark, rich, pliable coat, which looks like carefully combed tresses or the pelt of a small aquatic animal. Some connoisseurs prefer the shorter Tahitian bean, which is fatter and moister (even though it has less vanillin and the moistness is only water, not flavorful oils), or the smoky flavor of beans from Java (wood fires do some of the curing), or the maltier flavor of those from the Comoros.

  Most of the world’s real vanilla comes from islands in the Indian Ocean (Madagascar, Réunion, Comoros), which produce a thousand tons of vanilla beans every year. But we rarely taste the real thing. The vanilla flavoring we buy in the spice section of grocery stores, the vanilla we find in most of our ice creams, cakes, yogurts, and other foods, as well as in shampoos and perfumes, is an artificial flavor created in laboratories and mixed with alcohol and other ingredients. Marshall McLuhan once warned us that we were drifting so far away from the real taste of life that we had begun to prefer artificiality, and were becoming content with eating the menu descriptions rather than the food. Most people have used the medicinal-smelling artificial vanilla flavoring for so long that they have no idea what real vanilla extract tastes and smells like. Real vanilla, with its complex veils of aroma and jiggling flavors, makes the synthetic seem a poor parody. Vanillin isn’t the only flavor in genuine vanilla, but it’s the one synthetically produced (originally from clove oil, coal tar, and other unlikely substances, but now mainly from the sulfite by-products of paper manufacturing). Indeed, the world’s largest producer of synthetic vanillin is the Ontario Paper Company! Real vanilla varies along a spectrum from sweet and dusty to damp and loamlike, depending on the variety of bean, its freshness, its home country, how and for how long it was cured and in what temper of sun.

  When a vanilla bean lies like a Hindu rope on the counter, or sits in a cup of coffee, its aroma gives the room a kind of stature, the smell of an exotic crossroads where outlandish foods aren’t the only mysteries. In Istanbul in the 1970s, my mother and I once ate Turkish pastries redolent with vanilla, glazed in caramel sugar with delicate filaments of syrup on top. It was only later that day, when we strolled through the bazaar with two handsome university students my mother had bumped into, that we realized what we had eaten with such relish. On a long brass platter sat the kind of pastries we had eaten, buzzed over by hundreds of sugar-delirious bees, whose feet stuck in the syrup; desperately, one by one, they flew away, leaving their legs behind. “Bee legs!” my mother had screamed, as her face curdled. “We ate bee legs!” Our companions spoke little English and we spoke no Turkish, so they probably thought it odd that American women became so excitable in the presence of pastry. They offered to buy us some, which upset my mother even more.

  Walk through a kitchen where vanilla beans are basking in a loud conundrum of smell, and you’ll make some savoring murmur without realizing it. The truth about vanilla is that it’s as much a smell as a taste. Saturate your nose with glistening, soulful vanilla, and you can taste it. It’s not like walking through a sweetshop, but more subterranean and wild. Surely this is the unruly beast itself, the raw vanilla that’s clawing your senses. But no. The vanilla beans we treasure aren’t delectable the way we find them in the jungle. Of all the foods grown domestically in the world, vanilla requires the most labor: Long, tedious hours of hand tending bring the vanilla orchids to fruit and then the fruit to lusciousness. Vanilla comes from the string-bean-like pod of a climbing orchid, whose greenish-white flowers bloom briefly and are without fragrance. Since the blossoms last only one day, they must be hand-pollinated exactly on schedule. The beans mature six weeks after fertilization, but cannot be picked for some months longer. When a bean turns perfectly ripe, the pickers plunge it into boiling water to stop the ripening; they dry and process it, using blankets, ovens, racks, and sweating boxes; and slowly cure it in the sun for six to nine months. The glorious scent and taste don’t adorn the growing plant. It’s only as the beans ferment to wrinkled, crackly brown pods that the white dots of vanillin crystallize mellowly on their outsides and that famous robust aroma sta
rts to saturate the air.

  It was in 1518 that Cortés first noticed the Aztecs flavoring their chocolate with ground-up vanilla pods, which they called tlilxochitl (“black flower”) and prized so highly that Montezuma drank an infusion of it as a royal balm and demanded vanilla beans in tribute from his subjects. The Spaniards called the bean vainilla (“small sheath”), from the Latin vagina—the bean’s elongated shape, with a slit at the top, must have reminded the lonesome Spaniards of what they were missing. There would have been many boisterous jokes about Montezuma stirring his chocolate with a little vagina.* Cortés valued vanilla enough to carry bags of it back to Europe, along with the Aztecs’ gold, silver, jewels, and chocolate. A passion for vanilla, especially in combination with chocolate, raged in Europe, where it was prized as an aphrodisiac. Thomas Jefferson’s letters include an appeal to a Parisian friend to send him some vanilla beans, for which he had developed a taste during his tenure as the U.S. minister to France, and which he couldn’t find in American apothecary shops.

  Precious and desirable as vanilla was, no one could figure out how to grow it outside Mexico. The problem was typical of the delicate ecosystem in the rain forest, and a good example of how fragile all that lush green abandon really is, but no one realized it. Though insects, birds, and bats pollinate most plants in the tropics, the vanilla orchid is pollinated by only one type of bee, the tiny Melipone. In 1836, a Belgian figured out the vanilla orchid’s secret sex life when he caught sight of the Melipone bumbling about its work. Then the French devised a method of hand-pollinating the orchids and started plantations on their Indian Ocean islands, as well as in the East and West Indies. The Dutch carried vanilla to Indonesia, and the British to India. “Tincture of vanilla” didn’t appear in the United States until the 1800s, but when it did, it appealed to the American impatience and aversion to fuss, that sprint through life whose byword is convenience. Europeans used the vanilla bean, luxuriating in its textures, tastes, and aromas, but we preferred it reduced and already bottled. By the nineteenth century, demand flourished, vanilla became synthesized, and the world floated on a mantle of cheap flavoring. Vanilla now appears as an ingredient in most baked goods and in many perfumes, cleaning products, and even toys, and has insinuated itself into the cuisine of far-flung peoples, conquering their palates. Only saffron is a more expensive spice.

  When I finally emerge from the tub into which I climbed at the beginning of this discussion, I apply Ann Steeger’s vanilla body veil, which smells edible and thick as smoke. Then Jean Laporte’s Vanilla perfume, vanilla with a bitter sting. The inside of a vanilla bean contains a figlike marrow, and if I were to scrape some out, I could prepare spicy vanilla bisque for dinner, followed by chicken in a vanilla glaze, salad with vanilla vinaigrette, vanilla ice cream with a sauce of chestnuts in vanilla marinade, followed by warm brandy flavored with chopped vanilla pod, and then, in a divine vanilla stupor, seep into bed and fall into a heavy orchidlike sleep.*

  THE TRUTH ABOUT TRUFFLES

  “The world’s homeliest vegetable,” it’s been called, but also “divinely sensual” and possessing “the most decadent flavor in the world.” As expensive as caviar, truffles sell for over $500 a pound in Manhattan these days, which makes it the most expensive vegetable on earth. Or, rather, under earth. Truffle barons must depend on luck and insight. A truffle may be either black (melanosporum) or white (magnata), and can be cooked whole, though people usually shave raw slivers of it over pasta, eggs, or other culinary canvases. For 2,000 years it’s been offered as an aphrodisiac, prized by Balzac, Huysmans, Colette, and other voluptuous literary sorts for its presumed ability to make one’s loins smolder like those of randy lions. When Brillat-Savarin describes the dining habits of the duke of Orleans, he gets so excited about the truffles that he uses three exclamation points:

  Truffled turkeys!!! Their reputation mounts almost as fast as their cost! They are lucky stars, whose very appearance makes gourmands of every category twinkle, gleam, and caper with pleasure.

  One writer describes the smell of truffles as “the muskiness of a rumpled bed after an afternoon of love in the tropics.” The Greeks believed truffles were the outcome of thunder, reversed somehow and turned to root in the ground. Périgord, in southwest France, produces black truffles that ooze a luscious perfume and are prized as the ne plus ultra of truffles, essential black sequins in the famous Périgord goose-liver pâté. The best white truffles come from the Piedmont region, near Alba in Italy. Napoleon is supposed to have conceived “his only legitimate son after devouring a truffled turkey,” and women throughout history have fed their male companions truffles to rouse their desire. Some truffle dealers use trained dogs to locate the truffles, which tend to grow close to the roots of some lindens, scrub oaks, and hazelnut trees; but sows are still the preferred truffle hunters, as they have been for centuries. Turn a sow loose in a field where there are truffles, and she’ll sniff like a bloodhound and then dig with manic passion. What is the sow’s obsession with truffles? German researchers at the Technical University of Munich and the Lübeck School of Medicine have discovered that truffles contain twice as much androstenol, a male pig hormone, as would normally appear in a male pig. And boar pheromone is chemically very close to the human male hormone, which may be why we find truffles arousing, too. Experiments have shown that if a little bit of androstenol is sprayed into a room where women are looking at pictures of men, they’ll report that the men are more attractive.

  For the truffle farmer and his sow, walking above a subterranean orchard of truffles, it must be hysterically funny and sad. Here this beautiful, healthy sow smells the sexiest boar she’s ever encountered in her life, only for some reason he seems to be underground. This drives her wild and she digs frantically, only to turn up a strange, lumpy, splotched mushroom. Then she smells another supermacho boar only a few feet away—also buried underground—and dives in, trying desperately to dig up that one. It must make her berserk with desire and frustration. Finally, the truffle farmer gathers the mushrooms, puts them in his sack, and drags his sow back home, though behind her the whole orchard vibrates with the rich aromatic lust of handsome boars, every one of them panting for her, but invisible!

  GINGER, AND OTHER MEDICINES

  On a voyage to the Antarctic in tempestuous waters, I become seasick and crawl into my cabin for a rest. But my cabin is aft and high on the cruise ship, and rolls far around the moment arm of the ship, then leaps up with each wave and crashes down, rolls and leaps again, occasionally throwing in a shimmy for good measure. Unscrewing a small jar of stubby brown knots, I roll one out, place it in my mouth, suck on it to soften it, then methodically begin to chew as a pleasant searing oozes over my tongue. Ginger has a long history of medicinal use in China, where they drink ginger tea for colds, flu, and other ailments. Chinese fishermen chew on ginger root to prevent seasickness.

  Over the past few years, researchers around the world have been testing ginger’s folkloric reputation, and have found this knotty root to live up to its legend. Researchers in Japan discovered that ginger is indeed a good cough suppressant; furthermore, it acts as an analgesic, lowers temperature, stimulates the immune system, and calms the heart in general, while at the same time strengthening the beating of the atrium, just as digitalis does. Nigerian scientists found that it acts as an antioxidant, and can kill salmonella. In California, scientists discovered that it works as a potent meat tenderizer and preserver, In a joint study at Brigham Young University in Utah and Mount Union College in Ohio, researchers learned that ginger acts better than Dramamine to keep motion sickness at bay. In Denmark, experiments showed that ginger keeps the blood from forming clots. In India, they discovered that ginger lowers cholesterol.

  With all the edicts about what to eat when and what to avoid, it sometimes feels as if we’re medicating ourselves rather than dining. Aluminum pots are out, since microscopic particles of aluminum can get into the food, and aluminum has been implicated in Alzheimer’s disea
se. Butter, cream, and saturated fats are out, since they can lead to heart disease. Fiber is in, since it can help prevent rectal cancer, but not too much fiber, which can be equally damaging. Green, leafy vegetables are in for their antioxidant effect—but not if you’re on a blood thinner, because they contain vitamin K, which clots blood. Fish oils are in, because they’re important for the heart, but fish are often found to contain pollutants. Fresh fruit is important for its vitamin C, fiber, and other elements, although frequently sprayed with insecticide that’s carcinogenic. Beef is out because of its high fat content, which has been implicated in everything from polyps to breast cancer, and, anyway, grilling meat produces carcinogens. Poultry is often fed hormones that aren’t good for us, and frequently contains salmonella. Shellfish, as a light low-fat source of protein, is all right, but one must be careful to order oysters that haven’t come from polluted harbors; and is it really safe to eat lobster and shrimp, both high in cholesterol, which are scavengers, i.e., creatures who eat the putrid remains of other creatures? In this morass of paradoxes, how on earth can one guiltlessly consider taste?

  As a culture, we are mesmerized by the idea of the medicinal quality of food, swearing by yogurt, bean curd, carrot juice, ginseng root, raw honey, and many other items as they drift in and out of fashion. We forget that, in our not-too-distant past, the landscape was our pharmacy; it still is for many native peoples, as well as for the most sophisticated drug companies, who continue to send people into the rain forests to gather leaves for all manner of drugs. “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are,” Brillat-Savarin once said, but we understand his maxim in a broader sense than he did, picturing all the vitamins that heal, proteins that strengthen, fibers that scour and protect, carbohydrates that calm, sugars that energize. Children of the industrial age, we still think of eating as fueling our bodies, stoking the tiny furnace in each cell. We picture our body as a factory, and sometimes even use that word when we talk about its processes. Many of our creations resemble us. For a while, neurologists railed against comparing the brain to a computer, because it seemed terrifyingly automatic, amoral, and mechanistic. Now the computer simile is back in vogue, because the similarities are so obvious as to be undeniable. The brain is the computer; religion, prejudice, bias, and so forth are all software. The neurologists haven’t become more coldblooded all of a sudden; computers have just become more familiar and less frightening entities. Yes, we say, brains that needed to store more information than they could hold invented artificial brains that merely reproduced the filing system that was familiar to them. No surprise in that. When we wished to create energy outside of our bodies, we also copied the only model we knew: You put fuel into something and it empowers it for a while, excretes wastes, and needs to be fed again to do more work. What great analogizers we are. It’s part of our greatest charm as a species that we can look at the footprint of an elephant in the dried mud beside a waterhole, see how its steep sides trap water, and say: I could use one of those to carry liquids. In Henry IV, Part II, Shakespeare has Falstaff say that the body serves as our model of society as well, that the body has its own politics and classes. But analogies can run both ways, like an alternating current. Not only do we create mechanical powerhouses on the principle of the body, we eat candy bars called Powerhouse to power our body. And, whatever our age, we all eat some foods we secretly detest, because we suspect they’re therapeutic. We prescribe foods: “Eat your broccoli,” we insist, thinking of its gifts of vitamins and fiber, not that it looks like a small forest floating in the pot. “It’s good for you.”