Eating sustains life. However, our tongues also enable us to taste foods, so we eat the foods we like; and our cultures assign values to foods, so we often eat as part of a ritual. In this episode, series host and naturalist Diane Ackerman explores the biology and the rituals of taste around the world. In France, a master chef divulges his secrets; in Mexico, a family prepares a meal for the Day of the Dead; in a Japanese restaurant, Ackerman looks into why some people consider potentially poisonous fish to be a delicacy; and in Connecticut, a scientist maps our taste buds.
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00:00Mystery of the Senses
00:03A NOVA miniseries with Diane Ackerman
00:30Tonight, the sense of taste
00:34In Brittany, the Mont Saint-Michel Bay is known for its rugged coastal beauty
00:56It's seafarers and for one great cook
01:00When Chef Olivier Rolinger was a small boy
01:11He came to this beach to play
01:13Now he comes here to work
01:19Every day he hunts through this living larder
01:24For the wild herbs he will use to make magic at night
01:27Rolinger is one of Europe's top chefs
01:31A star in the highly competitive world of fine French cuisine
01:36All life forms must eat to survive
02:03But at his restaurant, the Maison de Bricourt near Saint-Malo
02:07Rolinger isn't concerned about the laws of nature
02:11His food is an art form
02:19And he hopes his creations will surprise and delight
02:22For the first time, Rolinger has allowed cameras in his kitchen
02:32Tonight, his most cherished secrets will be revealed
02:36Meals like these satisfy more than hunger
02:48They offer a hint of paradise for our sense of taste
02:52And that leads to an important question
02:55If we only need food as fuel
02:58Then why bother inventing such elaborate cuisine?
03:02Part of the answer may be exquisitely physical
03:05Our biological need to create art out of everything that touches our lives
03:10We adore our senses
03:12There are houseguests, our explorers
03:14At times, even our pets
03:16And of course, we love to give them treats
03:18This is my idea of a delicious meal
03:22But certainly good food doesn't have to be fancy
03:25Fast food can be mighty appealing as well
03:34Linda Bardyshock studies the biology of taste
03:41Fast food is her special temptation
03:58And delight
03:59Hi, chicken kebab?
04:05Yes, ma'am
04:06Everything on it
04:08Everything, yep
04:17These food carts offer her some of the best
04:21And cheapest places to get lunch in New York City
04:24Yeah
04:25Yes
04:27Bardyshock also finds here a clue to our past
04:35A glimpse of the biological forces that have shaped our sense of taste
04:40The fact is, there are very few things in life that you can repeat as often
04:48And with much variation and get as much pleasure out of
04:50As taste and eating
04:52I love junk food
04:54I like eating street food
04:56I like eating at food stands
04:58And you'll notice that I'm not the only one lined up
05:00There are a lot of people out there
05:02And a lot of people are eating it
05:03And the reason food is given to us in this form is it's salty
05:07It's sweet
05:08It's got a lot of fat in it
05:09This is very basic biology
05:11Newborn baby is born loving sweet, hating bitter
05:15And in a few days when its salt receptors are mature, it also loves salt
05:19And that basic biology is why all of us are out there lined up eating salty french fries
05:24My own favorite top of the list is a cheesesteak
05:29So fast food tempts us with its salty taste, its fat and calories
05:34Irresistible things that satisfy ancient longings and needs
05:39John, I'm going to put methylene blue on your tongue now
05:46On one side and hold it
05:47But how do we actually detect the sensations of taste?
05:51Fungiform papillae are showing up just
05:55Tastes are detected by the taste buds
05:57chemical receptors lying on the tongue in mounds called fungiform papillae
06:02John, I'm going to look at your tongue through the magnifying glass
06:05And I see the fungiform papillae very clearly pink against the blue background
06:11Taste buds are highly precise
06:13But they can only recognize a few stimuli
06:17Almost an inch back from the tongue
06:18Barda shock sees that simplicity as the key to their success
06:22They're so close to one another, I can't even see space between
06:24They're densely distributed all the way up to your lip
06:27Almost an inch back from the tip of your tongue, down at the tip
06:30They're so close together, there's almost no space between them
06:33They look to me like they're ringed, like we expect
06:36On a super taster tongue
06:38Beautiful
06:39Fundamentally we have four channels of information in taste
06:43Taste is the real nutritional sense
06:45We taste salty, sweet, sour and bitter
06:48Each one of these has an important role in keeping us alive
06:51Taste is the sense that keeps us going, keeps us surviving
06:55Very primitive function
06:56Sweet, mother's milk is sweet
06:58It makes certain that a baby starts nursing after it's born
07:01Salty, very important macromineral, essential for us
07:05For muscle function, brain function
07:07You get wounded, you have to take in salt and water fast to survive
07:10Hardwired, biologically significant mechanism
07:13Bitter, poison detector
07:15There are a lot of poisons in the world, most of them we know are bitter
07:18Sour, we're not so sure about
07:20But maybe it's there to help us detect unripe fruit
07:22Tastes may begin on the tongue, but they end up in the brain
07:26It's even possible to see the brain as it processes taste
07:38John has volunteered to be strapped into an MRI machine
07:42The tubes contain salty and sweet solutions
07:50That's fine
08:05Great
08:07Okay, we're going to start at P...
08:09The team, led by neurobiologist Joy Hirsch
08:12Is the first to observe how the human brain responds to taste sensation
08:27This is a very important new technology because it allows us to extend our traditional view of the brain
08:37That is, a look at the structure of the brain to now look at brain organization
08:42So we can see not just what a brain looks like, but what a brain does
08:48This was such a new area, it was all striking first
08:55It was the first time that we had ever seen the human brain responding to taste stimuli
09:01We really didn't know what to expect at that point
09:04We thought we might see all taste qualities occurring in the same place
09:08Or we thought that they might be separated
09:12This is John's brain as the MRI sees it
09:18The team first looks at John's brain sliced into images about a quarter of an inch thick
09:31We've taken about a third of the brain in the center regions in order to cover all of the possible areas
09:46That we think of could be involved
09:51Spreading those slices out, the computer maps the locations where brain activity occurred
09:56When John sipped his taste samples
10:02Red marks a salt response
10:06Three layers away, the region that recognizes sweet shows up as yellow
10:11For Hirsch and her team, this is the first glimpse ever of the entire taste system in action
10:18What they traced is a direct physical link between the tongue and the brain
10:23The two tastes tested thus far, sweet and salt, trigger nerve impulses that move up a single pathway
10:31These different taste stimuli enter the brain at the same point
10:36But each taste then goes its separate way
10:40These connections are so direct, taste signals move fast with little chance of error
10:46This work, although it's very preliminary
10:49Is beginning to show us that the brain has distinct pathways that are devoted to taste information
10:56The taste system, like any sensory system, has as its goal to get it right
11:02I mean, a sensory system allows us to perceive and understand the world around us
11:07And so, certainly this organization is designed for us to get the taste distinct and correct
11:14And it looks like we're beginning to see the brain actually doing that
11:18So, our sense of taste recognizes just four elements
11:24Sweet and sour, salt and bitter
11:27But ultimately, they can inspire all the delights of an enchanting dinner party
11:33To good friends and good food
11:35Cheers
11:36Cheers
11:37To good friends
11:41I heard that the reason that one clinks glasses together when we make toast
11:52Is that that's the only sense that's missing from the meal and from the wine
11:56You can see how beautiful the color is and how it glistens
11:59And you can taste the delicious flavor of it and you can smell it
12:02But sound is missing
12:04So we clink our glasses
12:06Taste is the social sense
12:09The word companion even means people who eat bread together
12:23Every holiday, or holy day, centers around a meal
12:31In Mexico, people are preparing for All Saints Day
12:34November 2nd, the Day of the Dead
12:40The Day of the Dead is a solemn festival
12:42But one filled with joy as well
12:53Paths of yellow marigolds lead the spirits of the dead to their altars
12:57And their meals
12:59Like Thanksgiving or the Jewish festival of Sukkot
13:02The Day of the Dead is an important harvest festival
13:04The Day of the Dead is an important harvest festival
13:05The Day of the Dead is an important harvest festival
13:17This village is home to the Simbrone family
13:20Amelia Simbrone is a superb cook
13:26And for the Day of the Dead, she will cook one of the most important meals of the year
13:32She and her family begin to prepare days ahead
13:35The local cuisine is intricate, its secrets passed down from generation to generation
13:48Only the best will do
13:53As Amelia prepares the special feast to please both the living and the dead
13:59The way it works is that the dead have 30 days freedom
14:06They come to visit us and the people here will never abandon them
14:10We keep this tradition of worship because it has been left to us by our grandparents
14:23We never forget the holy offering of food each year
14:29As part of that offering, Juan Simbrone will slaughter one of his precious pigs
14:35The simple fact is that we must kill other life forms to eat
14:48And many of our rituals help distract us from that awkward moral truth
14:52The smell of cooking meat makes us hungry
15:11Our bodies crave the calories, although we crave the taste
15:14And that's what our sense of taste evolved to do
15:19Help us find the food we need to survive
15:28John, what we're going to do now is paint, I'm going to paint solutions on different parts of your tongue
15:33I want you to tell me how they taste and how strong they taste
15:35And the scale you're to use is one is very weak, five is medium, and nine is very strong
15:41Okay? You're going to hold your tongue out like this
15:43But one of the great mysteries of taste is how personal it can be
15:48Linda Bardischuk is studying individual differences in taste
15:52And their role in our survival
15:55I'm going to ask you to use this piece of gauze to pull your tongue out
15:59Pull it over to the side and use that finger to open your mouth
16:02She already knows that John has a much higher than average number of taste buds on his tongue
16:08And what did that taste like?
16:10That was sweet and five also
16:13What she wants to find out is what those extra taste buds do for John
16:19So hold your tongue out
16:25It was bitter and about a four
16:28Okay
16:30Now I'm going to give you a completely new solution
16:33And this is a test for genetic status
16:36I want you to take a sip of this, swish it around in your mouth, and judge it on the same scale
16:40So if it's twice as strong as the quinine just tasted, you call that a four, give it an eight
16:46If it's half as strong, give it a two
16:47That was about a, if the quinine was four, that was about at least 16 or more
17:04Excellent
17:06Well this confirms what we saw when we looked at your tongue
17:08You had a lot of fungiform papilla
17:10You're tasting this solution as intensely bitter
17:11All of this is very consistent with your being a supertaster
17:18Bartoszak's survey of hundreds of tongues identified three types of people
17:23Non-tasters with few taste buds
17:26Average tasters
17:28And supertasters like John, whose tongues are covered in taste receptors
17:35Evolution, I think, has a motive for both supertasters and non-tasters
17:39And it may be why we still have both kinds
17:43Supertasters have the advantage of being better poison detectors
17:47Possibly better off at the beginning of life
17:50By being sensitive to sweet
17:52On the other hand, a non-taster has a huge food world to sample from
17:57In a world where most food is safe
18:00A non-taster would have a tremendous advantage
18:02Because a non-taster can eat just about anything
18:04And I think I'm a very good example of that
18:06On the other hand, in a world that has threats
18:10A supertaster might be a very, very, much better survivor
18:14The supertaster would detect certain poisons and avoid them
18:17That a non-taster might take in
18:18There are poisons everywhere in nature
18:28And even now, in the most gracious of settings
18:32Danger can still lurk within a meal
18:34Mmm, thank you
18:49Thank you
18:51In a moment I'm going to gamble
19:06This may look benign, more or less
19:09It's sashimi, Japanese raw fish
19:12But there is a potential death trap here
19:14This is the rarest sashimi in the world, fugu
19:20Japanese pufferfish
19:23I've heard that it tastes sweet and mild
19:25And a little bit like pompano
19:27But I haven't dared to try it yet
19:30The reason? Fugu can kill
19:33Among pufferfish species, fugu are poison factories
19:38Their livers, guts and skin are flooded with poisonous nerve toxins
19:42The very best fugu chefs leave just a hint of the poison in the flesh
19:49Enough so that the diner will feel his lips tingle
19:53And know that he had a brush with his mortality
19:55But not actually die
19:57No one's perfect though
19:59And every year a few fugu diners do actually die at the table
20:03It really is a form of thrill-seeking with food
20:07If there's just enough poison left in
20:09Well the diner has all the exhilaration of survival
20:13If there's too much, he gets measured for his coffin
20:17Wonder if I should try some
20:19Nah
20:21Life is too short as it is
20:25Safer perhaps, but no less exciting
20:28Is a meal at Maison de Bricourt
20:30The pre-dinner routine moves like clockwork
20:33Chef Rolanger and his team expect to serve 70 people tonight
20:38Rolanger is the grand panjandrum of the kitchen
20:43The absolute ruler
20:45During meal service, only he speaks
20:51And in this kingdom, he is the final arbiter of taste
20:55When you taste, don't taste only with the point of the tongue
21:00But with all the spoon
21:02Because you taste only the acidity here
21:05If there are not enough sugar or not
21:09Taste, you have to taste with all your mouth
21:16We never taste with the finger
21:18Because when you taste with the finger
21:21We taste only with the pound of your tongue
21:24And when you eat something, you eat with a spoon
21:28Like your soup
21:30Rolanger's meals capture the flavor of the tiny corner of Brittany
21:37In which he grew up
21:41Lamb is a local specialty
21:42And here it has a unique flavor
21:45That comes from the salt meadows that grow in the shadow of Mont Saint Michel
21:55Mont Saint Michel Bay is extremely salty
21:58No major rivers drain into it
22:00And the ocean pours in some of the highest tides in the world
22:04Perfect conditions for producing the delicate briny oysters
22:09For which Brittany is famous
22:10These strong basic tastes enliven Rolanger's dishes
22:25And of course his ingredients are the freshest
22:28But to be a great chef, Rolanger must do more
22:32As food critic Nick Lander explains
22:34French cuisine has reached a kind of a crisis
22:40The old traditions, the old classic cuisine of French cooking
22:49Isn't exciting people in the way it used to do
22:52And it's also meeting competition from other chefs around the world
22:56And suddenly France is under siege
22:58France is under siege
22:59So three couverts
23:01The three of us are prepared
23:03So in the second place
23:05The three little tides
23:07Rolanger is breaking that siege
23:09By ignoring the rigid rules of French cooking
23:12To create his own radical style
23:15One drawn from the history of his boyhood home
23:17His restaurant used to be the house of the Brikour family
23:27Spice merchants with the French East India Company
23:30Founded here in Saint-Malo
23:32Three hundred years ago this was their drawing room
23:35The Brikour and the other seafarers from Saint-Malo
23:42Set out all over Asia
23:44Searching for strong exotic spices
23:47Startlingly new to most European cooking
23:50Tumeric, white pepper, cardamom, cinnamon and many others
23:58Rolanger's great breakthrough
24:01Is his use of these same exotic spices
24:03First brought to Brittany centuries ago
24:11His cuisine is rich with their complex Eastern flavors
24:25But just how sophisticated can our palates be?
24:29If we can only detect four tastes
24:31Where does our ability to savor such elaborate combinations come from?
24:38Well, not just from our sense of taste
24:41As Emily Kochsis is learning to her sorrow
24:45I was in an automobile accident about a year ago
24:48And I hit the back of my head
24:50And I lost my sense of smell
24:52She has come to Linda Bardashok's lab
24:54To find out how bad the damage is
24:56When did you first notice it was gone?
24:57About three days after the accident
25:00It was one of the first times I had actually gotten up to do anything
25:04And I went downstairs and my dad had ordered pizza
25:07And everyone was talking about how good the pizza smelled and I couldn't smell it
25:10And so I started to smell other things because it seemed weird that I couldn't smell a pizza
25:14And I couldn't smell anything else
25:15Can you tell me what effect that's had on liking food?
25:19A lot of my favorite foods before this happened
25:22I still eat them but nothing tastes the same
25:25I don't get the same enjoyment out of eating a lot of the stuff now that I used to like a lot
25:30Like SpaghettiOs used to be my favorite food
25:32And now it doesn't taste very good
25:34It's kind of plain
25:35Now what we're going to do next is we're going to actually test you for the contribution of olfaction to a flavor experience
25:42Something that you're actually putting in your mouth
25:47Emily, I'm going to give you a lollipop
25:50And I want you to shut your eyes and go ahead and see what you can get out of it
25:53I want to know all the sensations you experience
25:55She can identify the basic tastes but not the flavor grape
25:59It tastes sweet, just a little bit, a little sour
26:05Sweet and a little sour
26:07Okay, I'm going to give you another one
26:09Try this one
26:11Nor the flavor orange
26:17Just sweet
26:19Okay
26:21Here's another one
26:26Not even bubble gum
26:27Hers is a permanent loss
26:30Just sweet
26:32My patient Emily is a wonderful example of what happens to your experience of food if you lose your sense of smell
26:38Now you think you lose your sense of smell, you only lose your ability to sniff things from the outside world
26:44But when we look at a patient like Emily, we suddenly begin to understand that the nose has two jobs
26:49It both samples air from the outside world and identifies objects out there
26:53But it also samples air from the mouth and identifies objects in the mouth
26:58It's that combination of air coming from the mouth and bringing odorants up into the nose
27:04And true taste that makes what we call flavor
27:07Unlike most other animals which live on a few basic foods, rats are omnivores
27:13So are we
27:19And all omnivores need a well-honed palate to decide which foods may safely enter the body
27:25Omnivore is a species that can eat just about anything
27:27If you look at a simple species like a koala bear
27:30All it has to do is get enough eucalyptus leaves to survive
27:33But a human may eat a meal and the next meal may be the last one
27:37It could be fatal if you eat something that's really going to kill you
27:40On the other hand, you might die a slow death of not eating an optimal diet
27:45So we have to pick a diet that's both optimal, nutritious
27:48We also have to pick one that's safe
27:50This means we have to make a lot of choices
27:52And nature has given us the olfactory sense to help us make these choices
27:55Smell, the olfactory sense, also creates lifelong memories
28:01These rats have never seen cheese before
28:04If it makes them sick, they will never forget its odor
28:08If they like it, cheese swiftly becomes a rat delicacy
28:15It's the same with us
28:17Gail Seville is a flavor analyst with a rare gift
28:20She can identify the individual flavors in anything she eats
28:26Wheat complex
28:28Wheat complex
28:30Cooked white wheat
28:32Raw white wheat
28:34Toasted white wheat
28:36Yeast
28:39Tomato complex
28:41Cooked tomato
28:42I want everyone to take a piece of pepperoni
28:49Just a slice off the top
28:52I want you to hold your nose
28:54Put the pepperoni in your mouth and taste
28:57Seville studies how people learn to love or hate different flavors
29:01Think about what you can notice while you're holding your nose
29:03You can taste the pepperoni more instead of all the spice
29:09Because if like, instead, like if you have salsa, you can really taste the spice
29:13It's cheat
29:15Instead, and the pepperoni, it tastes better and plainer
29:18And it tastes better, a lot better
29:20You can't taste very much?
29:22Why don't you let go now?
29:24Now what do you notice?
29:25Ow
29:27Ow
29:28It's spicy
29:29It's like eating 10 pepperonis at one time
29:32How come?
29:33Because it's just so hot
29:34When you have a cold, and you say you can't taste
29:37In fact, you can taste just fine
29:39What you can't do is smell
29:41And you cannot pass air
29:44And if you look at chefs, or if you look at people tasting
29:48What they do is they
29:50Pump the air from the mouth up through the nasal passage
29:54So that they can get the biggest hit or punch
29:59So everybody take a piece
30:00Have a good taste
30:02Our ancestors relied on taste and smell
30:05To find nourishing foods
30:06And to avoid poisons
30:08But now we often use our senses just for fun
30:11To save us from the perils of boredom
30:14But it's like all creamy and gross
30:17It's creamy and disgusting
30:19Creamy and disgusting
30:21What do you think?
30:23I don't like broccoli
30:25Oh, you don't like broccoli
30:26So that's a lose all around, right?
30:29How about you? What do you think?
30:31It's good
30:32What in particular did you like?
30:34Like the way the cheese like blended with it
30:36Like sort of like drowned out the broccoli
30:38So like you can only taste a little bit of it
30:42It just tasted better than I expected
30:45Better than you expected
30:49Are you avoiding that broccoli?
30:51Yeah, trying the best I can
30:53We eat for pleasure
30:56But the pleasure we get from taste and smell is different
30:58The pleasure from taste is hardwired
31:00But the pleasure from olfaction is acquired
31:02One bit at a time
31:04When you start as a baby
31:06You develop pleasure by pairing
31:08Good experiences with particular odors
31:10As you get older, you add more and more to that
31:13You add social rewards
31:15The things that your parents eat
31:17Or Mikey down the street eats
31:18Become very, very palatable
31:19As we go through life
31:21We build up these bits of pleasure and displeasure
31:24And they produce our food preferences
31:26And preference leads to delight
31:29Delight to passion
31:32What food do you crave?
31:35Ask the question with enough smoldering emphasis
31:38On that last word crave
31:40And the answer is bound to be chocolate
31:43When chocolate arrived in Europe well
31:45It hit like a drug cult
31:47People started demanding it
31:49Right in the middle of church services
31:51And Louis XIV Queen used to nip out back
31:53For a little chocolate on the sly
31:55When she thought nobody was looking
31:57She was that addicted to it
31:59Of course, today, people who are still devoted
32:02To that sweet cult
32:04Don't have to do anything on the sly
32:06Chocolate zombies such as myself
32:08Haunt the streets of every city
32:10Waiting all day for that small plunge of chocolate
32:13And if they're very lucky
32:15They get to be marching around
32:17A city like this one in pursuit of chocolate
32:19I'm here in Bruges, Belgium
32:21Why am I in Bruges?
32:23Because this is chocolate heaven
32:37Chocolate has always been a food with special, even magical powers
32:40The Aztecs believed that chocolate was a gift from heaven
32:45From Quetzalcoatl, their god of wisdom and knowledge
32:48More recently, the great food writer MFK Fisher confided that her doctor prescribed chocolate as a cure for devastating love sickness
33:19This is the stuff of addiction
33:21This is the stuff of addiction
33:48To be continued...
33:54To be continued...
34:25Good evening.
34:33Hello.
34:34I don't know where to start.
34:36Maybe with those swans.
34:37What's inside of the swans?
34:39Pralines.
34:39Pralines.
34:41Good.
34:41I'll take four of those swans, please.
34:43The dark chocolate swans?
34:44Yes, the dark chocolate swans.
34:48Now, those are pralines.
34:50Yes.
34:52And what are the quilted ones?
34:53Uh, caramel.
34:56Caramel.
34:57Hmm.
34:58Five of the caramel.
35:01Um, could I just maybe sample one of those while you're putting them on the tray?
35:10Hmm.
35:12Ten of the caramel.
35:15Hmm.
35:16Oh, that's the best caramel I've ever had.
35:25And what's inside of the hearts?
35:27Marzipan.
35:28Oh, wonderful.
35:30Um, six of the marzipan.
35:32No, eight of the marzipan.
35:34Yes.
35:36Nine of the marzipan.
35:38Yes.
35:41Hmm.
35:41Did I say four caramel?
35:44Yes.
35:44Fourteen caramel.
35:46Yes.
35:47If chocolate is my passion, for others, it's chili, flirting with the perfect burn.
35:54Hola, buena tÃa.
35:55Un quanto de este guacio.
36:00Like chocolate, chili is a New World plant, one which so delighted Columbus that he wrote
36:05it was a better spice than our pepper.
36:12To Columbus, a new spice was a valuable find.
36:16For then, as today, a novel flavor, especially one as startling as chili, could be literally
36:22worth its weight in gold.
36:28Chilis were first used in places like this, the city of El Tijin in Veracruz, just over
36:35the hill from the Simbron's farm.
36:43About 10,000 years ago, our ancestors began to harvest fields of wild grasses, and agriculture
36:50was born.
36:51Wealth and power grew from those ancient fields of grain.
36:59Today, these modern cornfields still provide a safe, stable diet.
37:05Wealth and cornfields still provide a safe, stable diet.
37:07Wealth and cornfields still provide a safe, stable diet.
37:12Amelia Simbron is making tortillas, the flat corn cake served with every Mexican meal.
37:18Corn for tortillas is soaked in a solution of lye, a crucial step because it releases the vital nutrient
37:19niacin, a vitamin essential for survival.
37:20Corn for tortillas is soaked in a solution of lye, a crucial step because it releases the
37:25vital nutrient niacin, a vitamin essential for survival.
37:27Corn for tortillas is soaked in a solution of lye, a crucial step because it releases the
37:43vital nutrient niacin, a vital nutrient niacin, a vitamin essential for survival.
37:55This method predates the European conquest.
37:58When Cortes conquered Mexico, he brought corn back to Europe, but not the techniques of tortilla
38:10making.
38:11This was women's work, beneath the notice of a conquistador.
38:17But without the recipe, European peasants lacked the niacin they needed.
38:26Many came down with pellagra, a potentially fatal disease.
38:33So cooking techniques can be vital to the creation of healthy meals.
38:38But we cook for another reason, too.
38:42As omnivores, we crave variety.
38:46Through cooking, we subdue the tedium of a diet made from a few staple crops.
38:57Amelia Simbron uses four different chili mixtures in her version of a Mexican pork mole.
39:04Each is chosen to add a precise note of flavor and spicy heat.
39:12All cuisines do this.
39:14Combine a few foods, herbs and spices to create a kaleidoscope of exciting textures and tastes.
39:21It is good.
39:24It has flavor.
39:26I try to combine different tasters to create a good flavor.
39:31I learned how to do this from my grandmother and my mother.
39:45I've known how to do this since I was a small child, learning how to cook, how to make mole
39:51with chili.
40:04The quest for adventure in food can reach an extreme.
40:10Burning chili seeds may surprise even Mexican cooks.
40:17But surprise is the point.
40:21All this will invigorate a special pork mole from the Oaxaca region of Mexico.
40:26The ingredients are essentially the same as Amelia Simbron's, but the result will taste wildly
40:31different.
40:36Burning avocado leaves adds a finishing touch.
40:41And if you think that's a bit much, well, each to his own taste.
40:47What's mouth-watering to one culture may be truly loathsome to another.
40:53The French adore snails.
40:55The English hang grouse up on hooks until it rots.
40:58Other cultures smack their lips over fried locusts, sea snails, monkey brains, and my own personal
41:05favorite, ox hoof and cartilage in peanut sauce.
41:09As I recall, it was the combination of mucus and bone that troubled me.
41:14All of these are perfectly wholesome, though, and we omnivores can't be too picky.
41:19If it's edible, we eat it.
41:21To continually toast.
41:24When I grew up, there's three of us, my brother, my sister, and I.
41:27If we had one large fish, you know, there's only two eyes.
41:30And there's three of us, and of course my parents would defer to us.
41:33But it was always a fight over who would get the eyes.
41:36What did you do with the eyes?
41:38You pull them out, and you stick them in your mouth, and you suck off everything but the cornea.
41:41Please!
41:42I must!
41:44Take the whole head!
41:50Food lovers rejoice.
41:52These are remarkable times.
41:57For most of history, people were limited to just one cuisine.
42:01Their own.
42:04Today, delicacies from all over the globe appear in even small towns.
42:10Now we ask, where in the world should we eat tonight?
42:15Well, how about at Maison de Bricourt?
42:20The dinner rush is nearing its peak.
42:23The real test of Rolanger's skill.
42:26Cooking with the spices that Rolanger has discovered as a result of the tradition of star mallow is very rare.
42:32It's unique.
42:34It is very easy for any chef to take third-rate produce, a great dollop of heavy, unctuous spice, and turn it into something palatable.
42:46What is desperately difficult is what Rolanger tries to do and succeeds in doing every day, which is taking the freshest flavors, the lightest, most flavorful spices, marrying the spices in the right proportion, then combining them with a sauce, and then putting the two things together to make a dish that is utterly memorable.
43:09Rolanger trained as a chemical engineer, and he's always been fascinated by unusual combinations of spices.
43:19His sauce for lobster roams across Asia for its flavors, but the cooking technique is Rolanger's own, neither entirely Eastern nor French.
43:30Traditionally, French sauces are simmered slowly, but Rolanger does just the reverse, another secret.
43:40All these spices will be cooked quickly at high temperatures to produce the exact flavor that he seeks.
43:47And tamarind is for the acidity, galanga is for the fresh flavor, ginger is for the oat and lemon flavor, and vanilla is for the velvet and very round flavor.
43:59It's a fresh bouillon with little red crab that you find under the stones when you play like a child.
44:20We're going to put some drop of Roku oil for the coloration and the sweet flavor too.
44:29And all the time you have to taste, and you have a very big progression of this flavor, of all this combination.
44:39Heat alters the flavor of spices incredibly fast.
44:45A sauce can go from perfect to inedible in seconds.
44:49And you have to stop when it's good.
44:52Okay?
44:53Amelia Simbron also is cooking a special dish, tamales flavored with sugar instead of chili.
45:14The delightful scorch of chili is an adult taste.
45:29Children everywhere love sweet.
45:33The child she lost loved sweet foods.
45:39So each year, on the Day of the Dead, Amelia prepares her daughter's favorites.
45:48My daughter and my father have died.
45:55That's why we always prepare food with good will.
45:59We pay tribute with food, bread, and chocolate.
46:03Everything in harmony.
46:05Everything with love and good will.
46:07The food must be well prepared for them to be happy.
46:11And for us, we're still alive, to enjoy.
46:14Nourishment is Amelia Simbron's job.
46:26Like most mothers, she cooks to feed her family's hungers, to fill their bellies and their hearts.
46:33Tamaales are just one delicacy on the Day of the Dead.
46:50These sweet ones, filled with corn batter and shrimp in a green pumpkin seed sauce, are prepared especially with children in mind.
47:02At Maison de Bricourt, the next course is almost ready.
47:17There was a fine haul of lobsters today, and Rolanger's guests are eager to sample them.
47:26Rolanger creates a fresh sauce and personally finishes each order.
47:32Every plate is a performance.
47:36In the latest Michelin Guide, Rolanger has two stars. The top is three.
47:41What difference to him it will make to get that third star is, I think, quite easy to understand.
47:47It will be the pinnacle of his profession, and like everybody else, he'll be absolutely thrilled to get it.
47:53But the pressure on him once he gets three stars will be enormous.
47:57People will flock to him and they will be looking for mistakes.
48:01But they will not find any tonight.
48:03His goal is always the same, to create an unforgettable sensation, art good enough to eat.
48:10Tonight, he's satisfied.
48:17It's very, very fresh and quite nice flavor for this lobster.
48:23I'm quite happy for him.
48:25It is November 1st, the eve of the Day of the Dead.
48:48When it comes to food, it's not just the exotic we seek.
48:54Sometimes we crave the familiar, the flavors of home.
48:59With this feast, the Simbrons tempt their dead out of heaven to return to the remembered joys of life.
49:12The incense is the signal.
49:15And the altar says, come home, dinner is ready.
49:25There is a group of children here with us, a group of dead children.
49:38They listen to the songs, hear everything, conversations, singing, everything.
49:59At nightfall, singers go from house to house, announcing the arrival of the Day of the Dead.
50:08They call to the spirits, welcoming them, reminding them that they are cherished and never will be forgotten.
50:26The art we make of food, the rich flavors, the heartfelt sharing of a meal, these are the rewards of our senses.
50:49Although our senses evolve to guide us through the hazards of nature, we're not simple, automatic creatures trapped in the emotional quicksand of our biology.
50:58We think, we feel, we dream, we hunger.
51:01And among the things we hunger for are good friends and good food.
51:06We say the word food as if it were a simple thing, an absolute like rock or rain.
51:11But actually, it's a complex realm of pleasure that's both physical and emotional, and often conjures up childhood memories of love and fun.
51:20So when we invite someone over for dinner, what we're really saying is, this food will nourish your body as I will nourish your soul.
51:29One last ritual remains.
51:54In the local graveyard, the Simbrons leave dinner for Amelia's mother.
52:09The dead consume the essence of the food, its flavor, its tradition, its love.
52:21Perhaps this is the truest feast, an offering of joy and sorrow presented through the medium of taste.
52:28You are in our hearts, this meal says, and you deserve nothing but the best.
52:36This meal says, and you deserve nothing but the best.