[HN Gopher] Paris's Catacomb Mushrooms (2017)
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Paris's Catacomb Mushrooms (2017)
Author : jihadjihad
Score : 96 points
Date : 2024-05-28 19:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| gniv wrote:
| Some things seem to have changed since then. All the button
| mushrooms that I buy from the supermarket say "Origine France".
| averne_ wrote:
| The mushrooms are imported from China or Poland as mycelium,
| and the harvest is done in France. Since the law distinguishes
| between mycelium and mushroom, the mushroom were technically
| produced in France.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240121180131/https://www.reddi...
| surfingdino wrote:
| Three questions:
|
| 1. Is the Paris Metro so shallow because of the quarries?
|
| 2. Do mushrooms still grow in the quarries? Has anyone checked
| recently?
|
| 3. When is a Tim Traveller's video on the subject coming out?
| kergonath wrote:
| > Is Paris Metro so shallow because of the quarries?
|
| The Paris metro is a mixture of deep, subsurface, and surface
| tracks. There are a lot of shallow tunnels mostly because cut-
| and-cover was easier and cheaper than digging deep underground.
|
| Paris is very complicated underground. Besides the quarries
| there are the sewers, catacombs, some underground lakes,
| reservoirs, etc. It is definitely a complicating factor when
| planning new metro tunnels.
|
| > When is Tim Traveller's video on the subject coming out?
|
| You'd think exploring the closed parts of the catacombs would
| be right up his alley (actually I would be surprised if he did
| not try, even though he might not want to put that on YouTube).
| They've been cracking up on trespassers recently but it still
| is fairly popular with the urban exploration crowd.
| surfingdino wrote:
| > Paris is very complicated underground. Besides the quarries
| there are the sewers, catacombs, some underground lakes,
| reservoirs, etc. It is definitely a complicating factor when
| planning new metro tunnels.
|
| I wonder if the French are considering digging underneath all
| those obstacles? Seems to be the way London has gone with the
| Elizabeth Line. Although that may still be shallower than
| Paris' quarries and lakes.
| _notreallyme_ wrote:
| > I wonder if the French are considering digging underneath
| all those obstacles?
|
| The problem is the Seine phreatic zone, which starts
| usually between 15 to 25m below the surface. Some GRS
| galleries are actually completely inundated and others have
| a level of water that varies between the seasons.
|
| In order to have some metro going underneath the Seine
| river, they had to freeze it first. It is not an easy task,
| so there must be a real advantage to going under the Seine.
| sofixa wrote:
| > I wonder if the French are considering digging underneath
| all those obstacles
|
| Paris has been doing it for decades. All new lines in Paris
| (such as metro line 14, opened in 1998, RER E) have been
| dug by tunnel boring machines, and are at a depth below
| 20m. Same goes for all new lines outside of Paris proper,
| like most of the Grand Paris Express 200km+ new lines.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Tim-like pedantry corner: the quarries and the catacumbs are
| actually the same thing. Catacumbs are parts of the quarries
| that have been turned to ossuaries, and are reachable from
| the wider quarry network.
|
| > You'd think exploring the closed parts of the catacombs
| would be right up his alley
|
| I'm not that sure, since he does not want to do illegal stuff
| (like for the belgian test track where the factory is now
| closed to the public). As for visiting those parts legally,
| well, I'm only aware of a few instances where there has been
| the media granted access. But it was more for documentaries
| about how the police works down there, not for a general
| history lesson. Both the police nor the IGC (the french
| administration managing the quarries) will bother with Tim
| sadly. So yes it'd be up his alley if he could do it legally.
|
| > They've been cracking up on trespassers recently
|
| It's actually the opposite. There's a constant cat-and-mouse
| game going on, and they're switching strategies recently,
| which I could experience first-hand. Current strategy is
| about prevention because they know they cannot prevent people
| from getting down there, so they're emphasizing safety and
| not hurting yourself because they "don't want to get woken up
| at 9AM a sunday morning because someone got lost".
| kergonath wrote:
| > Tim-like pedantry corner: the quarries and the catacumbs
| are actually the same thing. Catacumbs are parts of the
| quarries that have been turned to ossuaries, and are
| reachable from the wider quarry network.
|
| Fair enough. It's still useful to distinguish them because
| they evoke different things. Also, aren't the bits we can
| visit physically separated from the broader quarry network
| due to cave-ins?
|
| > I'm not that sure, since he does not want to do illegal
| stuff
|
| He certainly used to do this sort of things (and I did not
| check recently but in the past he posted some videos filmed
| in places where he was not allowed to be).
|
| There are places that are normally closed off but that can
| be open occasionally like during the heritage days. At
| least one quarry, the Montsouris reservoir, and I think
| parts of the old sewers as well. Those are already quite
| cool and interesting.
|
| > It's actually the opposite. There's a constant cat-and-
| mouse game going on, and they're switching strategies
| recently, which I could experience first-hand.
|
| There's always a bit of both. I don't have a recent first
| hand experience, it's just a mate who works with the
| Parisian fire brigade. There are near misses regularly,
| though rarely as bad as the teenagers who got lost for 3
| days a couple of years ago.
|
| > they're emphasizing safety and not hurting yourself
| because they "don't want to get woken up at 9AM a sunday
| morning because someone got lost".
|
| Makes sense. Going on a rescue mission before the morning
| coffee is just not done :)
| tuetuopay wrote:
| > Also, aren't the bits we can visit physically separated
| from the broader quarry network due to cave-ins?
|
| The bits that can be visited legally is the museum, and
| it's isolated with man-made walls, not accidental cave-
| ins. It's very much on purpose. There have been several
| occurences of people digging holes from the illegal part
| to the museum for fun (like doing parties), swiftly fixed
| by the IGC. Speaking of the IGC, their sole purpose is to
| avoid said cave-ins.
|
| And to expand a bit about the pedantic distinction: there
| are multiple ossuaries in the largest network of
| quarries: the official one, and two others only
| accessible illegally. There's one under the Montparnasse
| cemetery (the one visible in most catacumbs youtube
| videos), and another one near porte d'orleans.
|
| > At least one quarry, the Montsouris reservoir, and I
| think parts of the old sewers as well. Those are already
| quite cool and interesting.
|
| Yup! Those are definitely worth a visit. And fun fact,
| there are two "layers" to the montsouris reservoir: the
| top one with the water, that can be visited, and the
| bottom ones, which are the foundations of said water
| "tank". It's a forest of large pillars with a few
| artifacts. AFAIK those are not visitable legally, but
| were illegally due to a crawlspace between the illegal
| part of the quarries and it. It was quite fun :)
|
| > There are near misses regularly
|
| Indeed. Most of the times where the fire brigade is
| called is when there are accidents in the accesses to the
| quarries: opening manholes, falling off ladders, etc. And
| whenever such an accident occurs, the authorities closes
| off the access to avoid further accidents. Well, unless
| it's a safe one to avoid more dangerous ones to be opened
| by people. I've used several such accesses that where ...
| not smart to use, to say the least :)
|
| (oh and pass the bonjour to your mate from someone I hope
| he'll never have to rescue!)
|
| > teenagers who got lost for 3 days a couple of years
| ago.
|
| this is very rare; usually from a combination of drug use
| and sheer bad luck. given how many people there are
| dwelling during the weekend, it's rare for noone to
| stuble on you when lost.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| I'll reply only on the second point because that's a topic I
| know (I happen to wander quite often in those quarries). And
| no, there is no mushroom production anymore in the quarries.
|
| The paris area is too crowded now, and for economies of scale,
| existing quarries are too hard to use, and will use old
| quarries further away (but not _as_ old as the "catacumbs" to
| have larger tunnels easier to work in). Also, what's often
| called the catacumbs are quarries dating back to the middle
| ages, and thus are narrow, turny, wet, etc. Just a pain to work
| in.
|
| Oh, and don't forget the dwellers that like to go down there,
| and would be sure to spoil all the crops.
| netsharc wrote:
| I read "mushrooms" as "museums" and thought this is about the
| catacombs where they stored all the human bones, because the
| cemeteries were full... It's open for public tours:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CfazQ2P8D8
|
| I've been there, and thinking back to it, the amount of bones is
| horrific. Each skull used to have a brain in it, and was an
| individual...
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| The catacombs in Naples are worth a visit too
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_San_Gennaro
| mchinen wrote:
| I'm assuming the mushroom in question is agaricus biosporus in
| white button form. Interesting to hear the 3 star Michelin chef
| say there is a huge difference between paris mushrooms and
| industrial mushrooms of the same species due to the natural way
| it grows, because mushroom foragers often find this species in
| the wild and it's cousin agaricus campestris, but I never hear
| anyone mention it is particularly better than store bought
| mushrooms. The wild ones I've tried tasted fairly similar. For
| other cultivated mushrooms like lion's mane or oyster, foragers
| also don't claim huge taste benefits to the wild ones, and there
| is usually some fly larvae even if they look good.
|
| Do the catacombs provide some extra benefit in substrate or
| environment for the taste? I'm now curious about trying these,
| and I also wonder how they would do in a blind test.
| Kaijo wrote:
| The article claims that it does, because of the limestone
| terrior. But I don't have much confidence in that claim,
| because the author is obviously at pains to make this mushroom
| sound as special as possible for the sake of a story, calling
| it a "unique species" when it is just another cultivated
| variety of the same old Agaricus bisporus.
| thsksbd wrote:
| "Ledoyen attributes this to the elusive French idea of terroir.
| No translation accurately explains this concept [...]"
|
| Terroir means earth, hence land (as in Terra for the name of
| planet Earth). Every peasant everywhere throughout all time
| understood and understands that the local soil and conditions
| affect the final agricultural product.
|
| There's nothing elusive or untranslatable about the French word.
| verisimi wrote:
| 'Territory', would surely be the almost perfect, single word,
| translation.
| alex_duf wrote:
| I don't know if territory captures the entirety of the
| meaning. There's a notion of culture and tradition that isn't
| captured by the kinda geographic meaning of territory
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| It seems like it's a bit like "home soil" which has
| cultural connotations.
|
| I can't think of an exact single word in English for the
| translation but I imagine every large country has the
| concept of regional cuisines and farming traditions feeding
| into a regional identity
|
| British people often point out that other languages don't
| really have a word for "fair play" but it's not like these
| cultures don't understand and respect the importance of
| integrity, respect, justice etc.
|
| In general this don't-have-a-word-for thing is massively
| overplayed (hygge probably the worst example). We're all
| the same species of ape.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Id say the word "regional" is a closer fit to capturing the
| original meaning.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Notably you didn't translate the meaning, or, at least, "earth"
| or "land" is certainly too narrow.
|
| Terroir is very broad, including the plants growing nearby, the
| climate, the topography, nearby features (grown near a river?),
| sunlight, and so on. I'm not a wine expert, but I know there's
| even further things which can be included, some contentious,
| like tradition / process, microbes, etc.
|
| "Growing conditions" is a bit closer
| tuetuopay wrote:
| see my other comment, but terroir is not only applicable to
| wine. it's more about stuff that's made in some specific
| place. and the people with their traditions are, I would say,
| as important to the notion of terroir.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| This is a very very restrictive way to explain "terroir".
|
| The simplest way I could describe this word as we use it in
| france is "a region along with its traditions and local
| peculiarities". So yes, the earth is part of it, but the
| culture, the traditions, the people, the crops, are part of the
| terroir.
|
| For example, anyone can grow ducks. But the southeast of France
| has a long tradition of duck breeding and food products made of
| ducks, and is renowned for it. There is knowledge and
| craftmanship involved in the notion of terroir.
|
| Or, hunters will often turn their game into terrine (i'll let
| you google that), and pretty much anyone will make it roughly
| the same. Granted boar may be tastier in the south due to the
| sun and the soil, but I have really no idea. But the notion of
| terroir enters there because each region will add its own
| twist; like the cognac region often making "terrines au
| cognac", or normandy "terrines au calvados".
|
| Another example is "saucisson" or dry sausage. Regions will
| often make produces of terroir by adding local stuff; like in
| savoie where you'll find saucisson with beaufort or other
| mountains cheese in it. Or in normandie you'll find barbecue
| merguez (hot sausage) with bits of camembert inside.
|
| We tend to use the term quite loosely, and it's pretty common
| to hear about humans being pure products of the terroir they
| grew up in.
| thsksbd wrote:
| (Nothing here is to cast aspersions to France or the French
| whom Im rather fond of)
|
| Again, English words for dirt, e.g. land, can be used for the
| exact same meaning. The word terroir is not elusive; rather
| this is just another case of upper class English speakers
| fetishizing French culture mixed with French cultural conceit
| all too eager to oblige.
|
| Italians have the exact same concept of "terra" when they
| explain why a little village in Umbria makes the best
| prosciutto (it hits the best humidity level allowing for
| optimal drying rate). Or why not all the land in Montalcino
| bear the same quality wine (mostly due to the quality of the
| amount of sun/shade)
|
| And the Spaniards have the same concept with their "Tierra",
| including to describe people's attitude from those regions
| (just go to Euskal Herria)
|
| In fact, your entire message is basically the definition of
| the EU's DOC.
|
| The idea that terroir is an elusive French concept is also
| incredibly Eurocentric. Im European (origin) so I only have
| European examples; but do you really think that advanced
| civilizations like the Chinese or Japanese don't have the
| exact same concept as "terroir"?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| No "terroir" has not the same meaning as earth or land.
| It's wider and related to both the local environment and
| local practices.
|
| Wikipedia says:
|
| _Terroir is a French term used to describe the
| environmental factors that affect a crop 's phenotype,
| including unique environment contexts, farming practices
| and a crop's specific growth habitat. Collectively, these
| contextual characteristics are said to have a character;
| terroir also refers to this character._
| adammarples wrote:
| Yes, he clearly knows that, he gave multiple specific
| examples of local environment and local practices. I
| agree, terroir is not an elusive and untranslatable
| concept, it's a well understood and widely translated
| concept.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Except he provided an inaccurate translation so it seems
| to me that the concept is not so well understood...
|
| IMHO it is indeed untranslatable in the sense that there
| is no single word in English with the same meaning so
| that a translation requires a description (illustrated by
| my quote from Wikipedia that spends a whole paragraph
| explaining what it means).
| kergonath wrote:
| The concepts are not hard to understand and it is not
| uniquely French, far from it. That said, I cannot think
| of a single-word equivalent in English.
| adammarples wrote:
| I can't think of a single-word translation for
| schadenfreude either, but that doesn't mean anything
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| As a French, and native French speaker, I would think
| that I should know... The reaction of the HN crowd is
| hilarious sometimes.
| nkoren wrote:
| > do you really think that advanced civilizations like the
| Chinese or Japanese don't have the exact same concept as
| "terroir"?
|
| No, they do not. But they _do_ have other concepts which in
| turn cannot be translated into European languages. The
| great thing about human consciousness, culture, and
| language is that not everybody is working off the same
| epistemological map. There really _are_ concepts which don
| 't translate 1:1 from one language to another. That doesn't
| mean they can't be understood across cultures -- just that
| they may take many paragraphs of text to convey the meaning
| accurately, whereas in their original cultural context that
| meaning is embedded in the shared experience of how that
| word is used.
|
| Think about Greek words for "Love"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love). With
| a short paragraph of text you can at least the _gist_ of
| their meaning (but there are definitely shades of meaning
| which will nevertheless be missed, barring greater
| immersion in its use). Suffice it to say, simply mapping
| those words onto "Love" will lose a huge amount of
| meaning.
|
| Agreed that it's annoying to present words that aren't
| directly translatable as incomprehensible mysteries, which
| could never be understood by the non-French mind. Of course
| it can be understood, it just takes a bit of work to
| understand this. But equally, I don't think it's
| appropriate to go the other direction and think that
| there's a straightforward 1:1 mapping, when there
| definitely isn't.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I agree that saying it's an elusive uniquely French concept
| is wrong. It is a fairly common concept. But at the same
| time I don't think English has a good word for it.
|
| Culturally that's not that surprising. The idea that a
| sausage from one region of the country is materially
| different than a similarly produced sausage from the a
| different part of the country is common in France, Germany
| or Italy, but doesn't seem common in England or the USA.
| And since it's not a thing in their culture it's not a
| thing in their language.
|
| Which in English/American modus operandi means importing
| the word from the first place they heard it (usually
| France) and claiming it originated there.
| merry_flame wrote:
| I was extremely pleasantly surprised by the fact that
| Ethiopians seem to sharre a proper understanding of terroir
| for qat and honey and, boy, are there major differences
| from one region to the next. (Astonishingly I didn't
| perceive anything similar for coffee, which was dark
| roasted almost everywhere I went, despite astounding
| bioclimatic and genetic conditions throughout the coffee
| belts.) The Chinese certainly have something like it, but
| probably more refined and articulated around much higher
| social classes. Certain teas were paired with mineral
| waters from a specific source for instance -- that far
| exceeds the more rustic French notion of terroir.
|
| That being said, terroir is something more that just "land"
| and includes the idea of common rules or ways of doing
| things, and of course genetics.
|
| When a type of cheese can only use the highly creamy milk
| from a specific breed of cow, the result is highly specific
| and tasty, yet it doesn't express anything that's really
| related to the land itself at that stage. Camembert is
| widely understood as a typical terroir-expressing product,
| yet it would be pretty much the same if it were produced
| elsewhere than in Normandy with the same production
| methods, breeds, yeasts, and same access to pasture for
| cows for instance. It's the common approach that lends
| terroir to it. (Well, theoretically, because the an
| unpasteurized Camembert fermier will actually be more
| similar to a creamy, soft-ripened farmer's Brie than a
| pasteurized industrial Camembert, the slight difference is
| butterfat content notwithstanding).
|
| The fetishizing actually transformed the way local products
| are perceived and grown, by lending importance to the idea
| that instead of going for something generic, we should be
| aiming to express something more, the way some grape
| varietal can express the underlying mineral bedbrock (as
| with Chardonnay in Burgundy's Chablis area, which is
| geologically a region of Kimmeridgian limestone). It's posh
| to some extent. I remember meeting a old wine producer from
| the Loire region at a wine tasting a few years back who was
| befuddled by some of the audience's questions and that
| basically asked us to keep the complex questions for his
| son because he had only been trained to make wine that was
| nice to drink in the same way his forefathers did and just
| had no idea in what way his soil and grapes were special
| because those were the only ones he knew.
|
| A lot of it is fake/commercial gatekeeping and poring over
| details of DOC regulations can be quite disturbing at
| times. For instance, DOC foie gras produced from Barbary
| ducks, which cannot naturally deliver fat liver like geese
| and that were never used before being hyperselected by the
| French agricultural research institute INRA in the postwar
| era. Meat products or cheese that use generic methods that
| could be applied anywhere seem to be the worst offenders.
| DOC cheese with clonal lines of moulds, give me a break...
| DOC wine in Italy seems to be similarly impacted if I'm to
| believe Jonathan Nossiter of 'Mondovino''s fame.
| Interestingly, one of the Italian winemakers in his follow-
| up documentary 'Natural Resistance' actually says something
| along the lines of "there's no concept of terroir in
| Italian"" and basically everyone in that documentary use
| the French word. I really do think it's an interesting,
| elusive concept, but one that intuitively clicks with
| people throughout the globe that don't necessarily have as
| mature a word for the same ideas and that most French
| people don't necessarily understand either because of how
| commercialized it is and how prevalent the paradigm of
| uniformization has become. Everyone wants terroir, but
| Camembert uses albino moulds because everyone wants them
| perfectly white, cider comes with labels mentioning how the
| liquid might be cloudy but it remains perfectly safe to
| drink, etc.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| In Japanese we have the word Feng Tu (Fuudo) which is a
| compound of Feng "fuu" which means in this context
| "manner/style" (it can also mean "wind") and Tu "do" which
| means "earth/soil". Like "terroir" it describes the
| interplay between the physical land, local customs, and
| spiritual aspects.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > Again, English words for dirt, e.g. land, can be used for
| the exact same meaning.
|
| Yeah, no, you don't get it. The stuff you can hold in your
| hand is maybe a quarter of it.
| kergonath wrote:
| > There's nothing elusive or untranslatable about the French
| word.
|
| Indeed. But "terroir" also encompasses things like climate,
| techniques, and processing (and therefore indirectly people,
| know-how and tradition). Not only the land. It's a bit broader
| than just the place of origin.
| g15jv2dp wrote:
| "Terroir" does not mean "earth". The word for "earth" is
| "terre". They are obviously related, but not the same thing.
| Terroir is about much more than just the soil. Your translation
| is inaccurate.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| So... then these mushrooms are composting human remains, right?
| advisedwang wrote:
| Only bones were interred in the catacombs.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Why the downnote?
|
| Aren't human bones human remains too?
| advisedwang wrote:
| I didn't downvote, but to further explain: a pile of bones
| won't compost and won't grown mushrooms.
| notorandit wrote:
| A similar thing can be found in Napoli Sotterranea
|
| https://www.napolisotterranea.org/il-percorso/il-percorso-or...
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