In November, I put up a post about famous Antarctic explorer Earnest Shackleton…or rather, about two cases of scotch whiskey left behind from his 1908 expedition and chilled for over a hundred years in antarctic ice!
Happily, in addition to the two crates of liquor previously found frozen beneath the compound, the expedition has uncovered three more. In addition to whiskey, there are two crates of brandy: one from Mackinlay & Co, and one from Australia’s Hunter Valley Distillery. The Heritage Trust is hoping to extract some well-preserved specimens, but many of the bottles will have to remain below the ice for historic purposes, according to the to conservation guidelines set by the 12 Antarctic Treaty nations.
Whyte and Mackay, the distillers who now distribute McKinlay and Co. products, are eager for samples of Shackleton’s scotch, in order to conduct a series of tests that will determine whether they can recreate the lost blend…or whether it’s worth it.
Perhaps Newton’s theory of gravitation didn’t arise from a bonk on the head from a pomaceous fruit, but an apple might have been his inspiration after all. In William Stukeley’s biography, Memories of Isaac Newton’s Life (1752), the notorious scientists relates how an apple falling in his garden puts him in a “contemplative mood,” especially to ponder the properties of gravity.
Although Stukely’s biography may have been written over 2 and a half centuries ago, it’s taken on new interest for scholars. As part of their Turning the Pages project, The Royal Society has fully digitalized the memoir for all to peruse online.
On January 1st, 1908 Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Nimrod, departed from New Zealand’s Lyttleton Harbor. It’s destination? Antarctica. After being towed 1,650 miles by steamboat, Nimrod reached Antarctic ice, and Shackleton’s team began their push to be the first humans to reach the South Pole.
They never made it. Grappling with poor weather conditions and supply shortages, Shackleton and his men missed their mark by roughly a hundred miles. However, aside from gathering valuable information about conditions in Antarctica, the Nimrod expedition produced one notable success; on January 16, 1909, a group of Shackleton’s explorers discovered the approximate location of the South Magnetic Pole.
But lately, Shackleton’s expedition has produced a fruitful discovery of a different nature. During his 1908 expedition, Shackleton’s group set up camp on Ross Island — a camp he and his crew abandoned hastily in the March of ‘09. Although Shackleton’s 1908 mission produced no human casualties, it did include the loss of two cases of McKinlay and Co. whiskey (and some other supplies), left behind at the camp. In 2006, this whiskey was found buried beneath Shackleton’s Ross Island hut.
Shackleton's Hut at Cape Royds on Ross Island from Wikipedia
Now the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust plan to launch an expedition of their own to cut the crates of century-old whiskey from the ice. This could be a boon for Whyte and Mackay, the distillers who own McKinlay and Co. The company sees the extraction as a potential means to sample or recreate the now extinct blend of scotch.
The following is a video on YouTube from touristpictures. It briefly recounts the history of American warfare from WWII through the present. Although it deals with sensitive topics, such as the bombing of Hiroshima and the destruction 0f the World Trade Center, it is very creatively done. Sometimes it’s good to get some comic relief when confronted with tragedy and I hope you enjoy it.
Oversize watermelons, cherubic children, and blushing maids grace the pages of the Smithsonian’s Seed Catalog Collection. This collection of catalogs, dating from 1830 onward, is housed in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, but you can view the collection online at your leisure.
Recently, the remains of 11,000 year old food silos were found during excavations at Dhra’, near the Dead Sea in Jordan. The discovery was announced in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists who discovered the food storage centers believe that they predate the full domestication of plant food by about 1,000 years and were built to store wild plant food collected by inhabitants. Wild oats and barley were probably part of the stores.
photo by freephotouk
The silos at Dhra’ were constructed of stone and mud and capped with wattle (woven reeds or sticks). They had elevated floors, a technology that promoted air circulation and protected food from rodents. The primary or sole function of these silos was storage, as opposed to living or working space; the buildings were among residential structures, where food processing took place.
These storage units were built and used around a time period when the proto-Neolithic inhabitants of the Jordan Valley were establishing more long-term settlements around areas where food was most available. Like their predecessors in the early Natufian period (15,000 to 12,800 years ago), the inhabitants of this settlement were partially sedentary. Scientists suggest that food storage could be an important precursor to more manipulative techniques of plant domestication. This early ability to keep stores and to plan ahead for the future could have been an important step toward the implementation of agriculture, setting the stage for larger, more sedentary, and class-based civilizations, thereby changing the structure of human society forever.
Kuijt, I., & Finlayson, B. (2009). Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (27), 10966-10970 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0812764106
As I perused the aisles of SuperTarget today, I was struck by the sheer number of varieties of frozen orange juice concentrate on display. It made me wonder: how did Americans develop their peculiar penchant for this bizarre convenience food?
Turns out the story starts during WWII. During the war, the American food industry developed new technologies in order to provide easy-to-preserve foodstuffs to U.S. soldiers stationed overseas. After the war ended, food companies worked hard to convince consumers that the bland new processed foods were beneficial–a more convenient and nutritious answer to the American meal.
WWII soldiers didn’t have the benefit of orange juice concentrate. They had to endure dry, powdered orange juice that reportedly tasted terribly. In 1946, Minutemaid introduced concentrated orange juice to the American household. Not only was concentrated OJ tastier than powdered OJ and easier to distribute than fresh OJ, it was also a terrific answer to wildly fluctuating annual crop yields in the Florida orange groves. Product sales were boosted by successful marketing campaigns that involved the likes of Bing Crosby crooning about the great taste of Minutemaid. In 1952, frozen orange juice sales beat out sales of fresh oranges! Orange juice was one of the first products to be marketed in frozen form, opening the door for many other frozen products to follow suit.
As I sit here and write, I’m sipping a cup of richly flavored iced coffee. Despite the fact that the drink is decaf (I’m trying to wean myself off caffeine!), I can still taste the overpowering robustness of coffee beans. But wait, what’s this? There’s another flavor in there; something subtle, sweet, and spicy. Actually, I know what I taste; I’m the one who sprinkled it in my drink in the first place. It’s cinnamon!
Or is it? In the U.S., another spice, cassia, is sometimes sold under the name cinnamon. Cassia, which is similar to cinnamon, originates from China and India. In Britain, spices labeled cinnamon contain only ‘true cinnamon’, or ceylon, from plants that are native to Sri Lanka, Malabar, and parts of the Indian coast. Although cassia has its own rich history and its own functionality as an ingredient, it isn’t considered as fine as cinnamon, having a harsher flavor and thicker quills. If you’re trying to distinguish the two, cinnamon quills will be light or yellowish brown with thinner bark:
photo by Luc Viatour
Cassia quills will have slightly thicker rolls and will be darker and more grayish:
Ceylon is often more expensive than cassia, but it’s worth it!
For more details on Cassia and Ceylon check out this well-organized book:
Loewenfeld, Claire, and Black, Philippa. Complete Book of Herbs and Spices. New ed. London: David & Charles Newton Abbot, 1979.
And this one, which is great for the armchair historian, and has the benefit of still being in print:
