The history of 'bain-Marie'.
"...and terminology like “bain-Marie” jumped from the laboratory into the kitchen." - Andrew Coletti
Welcome to the section called What's the word? Here I share (every now and then) links to work from other content creators that I find interesting, edifying, and worth checking out. I love to add some comments to these links, as a preamble to the amazing substance they bring. I hope you like it. Make sure to hit like, leave your comments, and subscribe (for free) to get notifications whenever I post something new.
One of my favorite websites/newsletters to find interesting things about food is called Gastro Obscura. It is part of Atlas Obscura, an even awesome-er place for lovers of curiosity. I am fascinated by their content.
One of those places that I aspire to write (something) for and get published someday, at least once.
Not all cooking methods, or tools have their origin in the kitchen. What does history have to say about the ways we cook our food?
Andrew Coletti, an editorial fellow for Gastro Obscura (part of Altas Obscura) explores one of the theories about how a technique that has allowed us to enjoy delicious meals for quite a while came to be. The double boiler or as we like to call it ‘bain-Marie', may have had its origins in alchemy.
As a child I used to watch my mom and my grandma making flan, and I loved it whenever they mentioned this method (Baño de María). I was always curious about it but never dared to ask. Imagination took me to the think of a woman called Maria, naked, taking a bath in a hot tub. And sometimes I thought of a woman being boiled to death. A child's imagination, am I right?
(Apparently) Mary did exist, and her story is not about how she liked to bathe herself in hot baths, but how she was an alchemist who invented something called kerotakis, a method to melt metal that has ended up becoming part of our culinary arsenal.
True, history won’t make a meal taste better, but knowing these things brings a deeper level of appreciation for cooking and food. An elevated sense of intellectual taste.