[HN Gopher] Silphium
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Silphium
Author : benbreen
Score : 124 points
Date : 2021-04-08 23:58 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| mckirk wrote:
| Fascinating! I'd heard the name in 'Paranormal' (an Egyptian TV
| show I would recommend), but didn't know it was an actual thing.
| Or used to be, anyway.
| grumblepeet wrote:
| Max Miller on YouTube's Tasting History channel did a recipe with
| modern replacements. It was allegedly an aphrodisiac so could be
| popular if a specimen could be found...
| https://youtu.be/D-QHd4_1geE
| mcguire wrote:
| His pullum particum (Parthian chicken) is delicious. And uses
| asafoetida as well as garum, although I substituted Thai fish
| sauce.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| An aphrodisiac AND a contraceptive? Helluva plant...
| djxfade wrote:
| Tasting History is an excellent channel, very interesting
| history and food.
| fireeyed wrote:
| I read that as Siphilium ;)
| [deleted]
| jchrisa wrote:
| Any luck reviving this? Seems like it'd be worth doing if it is
| possible.
| mallomarmeasle wrote:
| If it is like asafoetida ("devil's dung"), as mentioned on the
| linked page, I'm out. The only spice I know that can manage to
| seep out of a closed container in a spice drawer and infest the
| rest of your spices.
|
| Given the roman taste for garum [0](also notably pungent), I'd
| have to guess that the similarity is real.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum
| mcguire wrote:
| I keep my jar in two zip-lock bags, in the freezer.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Lots of cultures have fish sauce. Its really not that weird.
| Worcestershire is a fish sauce.
| vivekv wrote:
| asafoetida is a standard item in most Indian cooking if you
| have eaten dal you have had asafoetida
| mallomarmeasle wrote:
| Yes I know. I have bought it and used it in cooking. Takes
| a pretty light touch to not offend many (most?) western
| palates. Very easy to overdose, but I have loved it in my
| Indian friend's home cooked food.
| hirsin wrote:
| Huh. We usually joke that hing (the Hindi name) is like
| bay leaves - mostly there for tradition but largely
| tasteless. I couldn't tell you what it tastes like and
| use the traditional "big pinch" of hing in most of my
| cooking.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Bay leaves definitely have a flavor. Adding more than you
| need can really unbalance a dish.
|
| If you want to learn what they taste like by themselves,
| you could make a cup of tea by steeping a few dried
| leaves in boiling water.
| mcguire wrote:
| The one memory from a short trip to Jamaica years ago is
| fresh Bay leaves. They're amazing.
| gkop wrote:
| Has anyone here tired any culinary experiments with the
| California Bay leaves that are pervasive in much of
| California?
| antattack wrote:
| Just use Turmeric :)
| dangerbird2 wrote:
| Asafoetida is probably the closest substitute, as it's made
| from the same plant genus that silphium belonged to.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafoetida
| antattack wrote:
| Turmeric is purported to have all of the qualities
| attributed to Silphium where as Asafoetida does not.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _[A]safoetida, was used as a cheaper substitute for
| silphium [by the Romans], and had similar enough
| qualities that Romans, including the geographer Strabo,
| used the same word to describe both._ " -- the article
| riffraff wrote:
| it may even be still existing, i.e. it got to the brink of
| extinction and then by the time it recovered we had already
| lost the knowledge of it.
|
| There is a ton of wild plants or animals that you can eat and
| probably normally don't (dandelion, wild fennel, portulaca,
| nettles, jellyfish etc), I wouldn't focus too much on one that
| may be extinct.
|
| Taste changed a lot over the centuries, and I wouldn't bet that
| something highly prized in ancient Rome would still be as
| appreciated today.
| auntienomen wrote:
| Indeed, Roman banquet food could be flat out crazy by modern
| standards: sows udders, fried dormice, peacock tongues,...
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/20/712772285/th.
| ..
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Oblig. Monty Python reference: https://youtu.be/H5ofIBw3uMM
| riffraff wrote:
| Ah, I feel I have to point out that dormouse was still
| eaten until recent times (i.e. decades ago) in
| Italy/Slovenia/Croatia.
|
| They are now a protected species, but I would expect they
| are still eaten from time to time to this day.
| umbra1135 wrote:
| Every July I watch eagerly a certain country graveyard that I
| pass in driving to and from my farm. It is time for a prairie
| birthday, and in one corner of this graveyard lives a surviving
| celebrant of that once important event.
|
| It is an ordinary graveyard, bordered by the usual spruces, and
| studded with the usual pink granite or white marble headstones,
| each with the usual Sunday bouquet of red or pink geraniums. It
| is extraordinary only in being triangular instead of square, and
| in harboring, within the sharp angle of its fence, a pin-point
| remnant of the native prairie on which the graveyard was
| established in the 1840's. Heretofore unreachable by scythe or
| mower, this yard-square relic of original Wisconsin gives birth,
| each July, to a man-high stalk of compass plant or cutleaf
| Silphium, spangled with saucer-sized yellow blooms resembling
| sunflowers. It is the sole remnant of this plant along this
| highway, and perhaps the sole remnant in the western half of our
| county. What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they
| tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to
| be answered, and perhaps not even asked.
|
| This year I found the Silphium in first bloom on 24 July, a week
| later than usual; during the last six years the average date was
| 15 July.
|
| When I passed the graveyard again on 3 August, the fence had been
| removed by a road crew, and the Silphium cut. It is easy now to
| predict the future; for a few years my Silphium will try in vain
| to rise above the mowing machine, and then it will die. With it
| will die the prairie epoch.
|
| The Highway Department says that 100,000 cars pass yearly over
| this route during the three summer months when the Silphium is in
| bloom. In them must ride at least 100,000 people who have 'taken'
| what is called history, and perhaps 25,000 who have 'taken' what
| is called botany. Yet I doubt whether a dozen have seen the
| Silphium, and of these hardly one will notice its demise. If I
| were to tell a preacher of the adjoining church that the road
| crew has been burning history books in his cemetery, under the
| guise of mowing weeds, he would be amazed and uncomprehending.
| How could a weed be a book?
|
| This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora,
| which in turn is one episode in the funeral of the floras of the
| world. Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his
| progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he
| must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all
| teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future
| citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good
| life."
|
| --Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Posts like these are why I visit HN. I've never heard of the
| author or his book, but will check if my local library has a
| copy based on this excerpt.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You have probably heard of the Wilderness Society he founded.
|
| Edit: mistook for Sierra Club
| jihadjihad wrote:
| I have not! It seems I have some catching up to do.
| mathewsanders wrote:
| Stora Skuggan is a Swedish perfumer that has tried to recreate
| the scent. From their website:
|
| > There were many attempts to cultivate Silphium, but they
| inevitably failed. It would only grow wild in a limited area of
| the north African coast. This, in combination with its qualities
| as seasoning and medicine made Silphium the most valuable spice
| in the world, outshining both saffron and cinnamon. The demand
| for Silphium eventually became so overwhelming that it was
| harvested to extinction, and the taste and smell of the once
| greatest spice in the world were lost in time.
|
| > Our rendition of this historical plant is created by
| researching surviving assumed relatives of Silphium, using
| aromachemicals (the molecular building blocks of scents) to
| create an accord that we feel represents what descriptions
| remains. This is set against a background of ancient incense,
| woods and leather.
|
| I only wear perfume maybe a few times a month, but when I do this
| is one of my favorite fragrances to wear because it's not
| strongly masculine or feminine.
|
| Here is a scent profile for anyone curious:
| https://www.basenotes.net/ID26151758.html
| mcguire wrote:
| The culinary replacement (mostly) is asafoetida, which is not
| something I would think of as perfume.
|
| My personal description is "somewhere between sulpher, skunk
| and death." It's not really that bad, but it is pungent and
| will not leave your nose.
| Erwin wrote:
| While their normal perfumes are 130 EUR, they offer a 5-sampler
| for 30 + shipping, with their 4 other perfumes also having some
| quite interesting branding histories:
| https://www.storaskuggan.com/collections/all -- I suppose a
| parfume you learned about from a wikipedia page is quite the
| hacker thing to wear!
| doh wrote:
| Where do I find the sampler? I think I checked every page and
| nothing.
| ivosaur wrote:
| I could only find it through Google
| https://www.storaskuggan.com/products/sample-set
| doh wrote:
| Thank you. I didn't even bother trying as I thought they
| just removed it.
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(page generated 2021-04-09 23:01 UTC)