We don’t pretend to fully understand all the technical details, but the latest issue of Scientific Reports (a division of Nature) includes a somewhat mind-bending study that takes all the recipes from Epicurious, Allrecipes.com and Menupan (a Korean site), and throws them in a blender with a computational model of food chemistry (don’t ask) to arrive at (something like) the fundamental difference between North American cuisine and East Asian cuisine. Whereas North American cooking tends to pair ingredients that share a lot of flavour compounds (like butter and vanilla), Asian cooking tends to do the opposite, pairing ingredients that don’t taste a whole lot like one another (like soy sauce and scallion). Confused? The paper has all sorts of fancy visualizations to explain things. Read the entire story [Scientific Reports] »
The comprehensive index of every blog post, magazine story and restaurant review that appears on Torontolife.com
All stories relating to Epicurious
The world’s best whisky, Circa on brink of bankruptcy, the first lab-grown pork
(Photo by Danielle Scott)
• Since before Circa even opened in 2007, club watchers wondered endlessly if Peter Gatien’s enormous party palace could possibly draw in enough of a crowd to survive. Gatien left the club last March, followed by a number of original staffers, and the mega-club has been inching ever closer to bankruptcy since. Now it looks like it may go over the brink, as Circa has just sent out letters to its estimated 100 creditors. The fact that no self-respecting 416er over the age of 24 would be caught dead there is partially to blame for the club’s demise, though Circa will try to continue operations after restructuring its debt load. [BlogTO]
Read the rest of this entry »
Gourmet magazine has balled its last melon
The magazine of good living dies (Photo by SuperFantastic)
Gourmet is no more.
The food world is mourning the loss of the magazine, which has been a cornerstone of North American culinary journalism for nearly 70 years. Publisher Condé Nast announced yesterday that the final issue will hit newsstands in November. Turns out that while Gourmet was talking about foccacia, it was no longer bringing in the bread. Fans of Gourmet may find solace in the fact that Condé Nast’s other food rag—and Gourmet’s biggest competitor—Bon Appétit, is off the chopping block for now, and that the company also plans to keep Gourmet‘s book and TV projects going, as well as preserve its recipes on their sprawling food Web site, epicurious.com.
Here’s the word about Gourmet from news outlets across North America:
Read the rest of this entry »
Follow Toronto Life on Twitter, Facebook and via RSS