Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 27, 1994 TAG: 9411150001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL ACHENBACH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A: We were eating some top-shelf cream-intensive ice cream the other day, letting it soften to a perfect lubriciousness, and suddenly we came up with a brilliant question: If we write about this stuff, doesn't that mean we can put it on our expense account?
And secondly, why is it that if it warms up too much it becomes unbelievably disgusting? Why does temperature matter that much?
Now some of you may say ``But of course, pea-brain. It has to be eaten cold because it's ice cream. If it is was warm, it wouldn't be ice cream.''
Right. It would be cream, with milk, sugar and egg yolks added to make it completely disgusting. What we need to find out is precisely why are temperature and texture so darn important.
John Harrison, official tester for Dreyer's Edy's brand ice cream, pointed out that frozen ice cream has lots of air whipped into it, which is lost when the ice cream melts. But that's too simple. Fortunately, we found Gail Vance Civille, president of Sensory Spectrum, a New Jersey firm that consults with companies about the taste and smell of their products.
Civille says that as food warms up, the molecules ``volatilize.'' They become more mobile. Smells rocket into your nose. Sugars bathe your tongue. Most importantly, the fats loosen up and swish around, turning into a goopy, sloshy lard. When cold, that heavy cream has a nice mouth feel, but when warm it's like ... well, like heavy cream.
``The fat is too obvious when it's melted,'' Civille says.
Another big problem: Ice cream can't melt in your mouth if it's already melted. We like to feel the melting, to create it, to make it happen. We have an innate desire to keep the ``action'' in mastication.
``Control is a very very big issue in food,'' Civille says. ``People like to manipulate things, have things under control, and experience things. Part of the reason people like potato chips is that they can experience the rupturing and the moisture getting in. You're changing it. Babies don't like that, but adults like process in their food, and complicated process.''
The fear of losing control of the food, she says, is ``why people historically don't think they'll like oysters or cherry tomatoes. Because it might gush out of their mouth.''
Q: Why is Venus never high in the sky?
A: As you know, Venus is called the Evening Star. Or is it the Morning Star? It's one of those. But it's never the Midnight Star. In fact you have to be on your toes to catch Venus, because it never hangs around more than a couple of hours. (Our editor claims he has never seen Venus. He's a real ``city person.'')
The answer to this question is insanely obvious but we have found that many people--the kind of people who think a ``veal'' is a type of animal -don't think much about the positioning of celestial bodies.
Venus does pass overhead, but only during the day, when you can't see it. Venus is the second planet from the sun and Earth the third, meaning that if we want to look at Venus we have to look in the general direction of the sun. So we always see Venus shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, if we can see it at all.
If Venus were directly overhead at midnight, that would mean it was farther from the sun than is the Earth. If that happens, call 911.
Another factoid that should be obvious to everyone is that the full moon always rises right around sundown, give or take roughly an hour. That's because the moon is only full when we are looking at it with the sun directly ``behind'' us--when the Earth is between the moon and the sun.
But why are we wasting our breath. You will go on thinking that all these things are random. You can't shake the thought that something like a full moon just happens, that -as with a teen-ager who suddenly gets a nose ring -it's just a ``phase'' the moon goes through.
The Mailbag:
Why do people feel so passionate about the weather? We are constantly getting letters from readers who are unsatisfied or appalled by our weather-related items, even though as far as we can discern those items adhere to our usual strict standard of accuracy (``Better Wrong Than Boring'').
Recently we said that meteorologists don't predict the amount of rain that will fall because thunderstorms are these localized, vertical phenomena, and that one town might get soaked while another in the same broadcast area might stay dry. But several readers correctly noted that thunderstorms only account for some of the rain we get, that a lot comes from larger weather systems.
One of those readers was a real weatherman, Bob Ryan of WRC-TV (Channel 4) in Washington, and he wrote, ``The real reason we don't predict how many inches of rain will fall (except when we expect possible flooding from heavy rain) is that we have enough trouble in the winter predicting snow amounts,'' he says.
In other words, weatherpersons must predict snow amounts, because snowfall can close schools, shut down public agencies, and so forth. But they don't really relish those predictions, since if the snowfall is greater or less than expected, people get gripey. With rain, meteorologists usually decide that the better part of valor is discretion.
Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB