Text 13923, 96 rader
Skriven 2007-04-11 09:51:06 av CAROL BRYANT (1:123/140)
Ärende: Hey Ian!!!
==================
Look what I found in today's New York Times.  Interestingly, one of the
variables was not the quality of the bacon....What to they know?

April 11, 2007
London Journal
The Perfect Bacon Sandwich Decoded: Crisp and Crunchy 
By ALAN COWELL
LONDON, April 10 — Should it be slithery or scrunchy, glutinous or grilled? The
answer, British scientists say, may be divined by a formula: N = C + {fb(cm) ·
fb(tc)} + fb(Ts) + fc · ta.

That is the scientific answer to the question: what makes the perfect bacon
sandwich?

And, no, it is not April 1.

Researchers at Leeds University spent more than 1,000 hours testing 700
variants on the traditional bacon sandwich, which many Britons refer to as
a bacon butty (eschewing the term sandwich, said to have been coined to
honor the fourth Earl of Sandwich’s habit of eating meat between slices of
bread around 1762).

For Britons, butties come in a variety of guises — chip butties (French
fries between slices of bread), crisp butties (ditto with potato chips) or
even sugar butties, which are self-explanatory. None are viewed as
especially healthful.

There are some finer points in the language, if not the cuisine. A sandwich
containing sausages, for instance, is likely to be referred as a sausage
sarnie, while sausages served with mashed potatoes are called bangers and
mash. 

There is no easy explanation for this.

Even the bacon butty, though alliterative, is sometimes etymologically
challenged, as in a recent posting on the Web site of The Yorkshire Post
relating to the study at Leeds University. 

“Perhaps another few minutes on research would have told them that a butty
is a slice of buttered bread with a topping; a bacon sarnie is what they
are describing,ö said a contributor who signed himself Joey Pica.

But Graham Clayton, who led the research, said the endeavor had been an
earnest attempt, commissioned by the Danish Bacon and Food Council, the
British subsidiary of a Danish pig producers’ organization, to determine
what degree of crispiness and crunchiness made the perfect sandwich. 

The company’s announcement of the research last Sunday made no reference to
other criteria like cholesterol, carbohydrates or other dietary attributes
of the perfect butty. Chloe Joint, a spokeswoman for Danish Bacon’s public
relations company, Porter Novelli, declined to say how much the study cost.

The research combined four types of cooking, using grills, pans and ovens,
three kinds of oil and four types of bacon — smoked, unsmoked, streaky and
thick cut — to establish the preferences of 50 tasters in such matters as
the butty’s tactile and aural crunchiness. The study also considered a
broad range of condiments (like ketchup and brown sauce) and spreads. 

It concluded that the best bacon butties were made with crisply grilled,
not-too-fat bacon between thick slices of white bread. 

Eureka!

“We often think that it’s the taste and smell of bacon that consumers find
most attractive,ö Dr. Clayton said in a news release. “But our research
proves that texture and sound is just, if not more, important.ö

In a telephone interview, he also acknowledged that tasters made comments
about fat. “If there was too much fat from the cooking process, that was a
turnoff for people,ö he said. Leathery bacon was a no-no, too, he added. 

“We are programmed to avoid leathery food as old and not very good,ö he
said. That wisdom does not seem to prevail, however, among some of the more
basic vendors of bacon butties at roadside halts or cafes known generically
as greasy spoons to denote their customary modes of cooking and hygiene.

In the experiment, some of the tasters sampled between four and six bacon
sandwiches a day for three or four days.

And so the formula evolved to establish the amount of force in the bite,
expressed in newtons, and the level of noise, expressed in decibels, to
make the perfect crunch. 

Ideally, Danish Bacon said, 0.4 newtons should be applied to crunch the
sandwich, creating 0.5 decibels of noise. The formula uses these values: N
= force in newtons; fb is the function of the bacon type; fc is the
function of the condiment or filling effect; Ts is the serving temperature;
tc is cooking time; ta is the time taken to insert the condiment or
filling; cm is the cooking method and C represents the breaking strain in
newtons of uncooked bacon.

“It’s not a hoax,ö Dr. Clayton said, acknowledging that, a few days ago —
on April 1, to be precise — it might have been taken as one.

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