One day, in comments on the recipe of beaten egg whites on my site, someone asked if a lady could beat egg whites when she have one's period, a friend of her told him not!
A bit later another comment say that with mayonnaise it was scientifically proven that a woman in the same situation could not succeed...
In the 3rd millennium it is always stupefying to read that kind of things but I guess, and I hope, there is a lot of "continuity" in those sentences: it is
something that we have heard in the past, maybe when we where much younger, from an adult and we where in an age that everything coming from adults sound right.
The fact that women during their periods can be more stressed, or strunged of course it's true, but that could act on something they even touch it's a kind of magic.
In addition to these medieval sayings about women (and this one sound a lot like a macho-man words don't you think so?) there is still many other sayings in cooking starting by: everybody knows that ...
You know those already made sentences like "it is imperative to cover a pan that heats as it boils faster", or "we must leave the avocado pit with the avocado so he does not blacken". And I'm sure you know yourself lots of others, I wondered if they were true? And especially how to check?
For this, I opened shortly on my site a new category of recipes (not that it is really recipes but almost) devoted to sayings, legends and beliefs in the kitchen. The principle is rather simple: I take one of these sayings and I try to verify in a simple way, is it true or false? Of course I do not pretend to tell scientific truths, it's just a matter of common sense, the proverb says that: OK, then do it to see if it is right and do exactly the opposite to see if it is false and therefore a rule to apply.
As I do not have sophisticated equipment available, it is in everybody kitchen, I try to do that using ordinary cooking tools like: thermometer, scale, etc...
I started with a saying which I was convinced that it was true "it is imperative to cover a pan that heats as it boils faster," I heard that phrase many times, and even in some chefs mouth on television.
To try to see if it's true I'm simply measure the time to boil of a pot of water covered and uncovered, and then surprise! Whether covered or not, it changes nothing (or so small that it's negligible). I would have bet big that it was true, so it seemed obvious.
If you're thinking of sayings of the same kind that you want to check, please send them to me.
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