The Religion of the Fire

'Tis the Season of Ozmozome Worship

Gas and electricity have killed the magic of fire, the kindling of live flame from inert wood. Simone de Beauvoir

For most of man’s time on earth, nature delivered feast or famine in seasonal cycles. Survival depended on storing calories in the fat times to get through the lean. Even late in the 20th century, body weight dramatically varied from season to season in temperate zones, more because of genetic memory than necessity. A Playboy photographer in the 1980’s told Iowa reporters that he should never have scheduled a trip to Ames when subjects were fattened for winter.

What does still vary with the seasons is our method of cooking. In summer, we still move the fire outdoors, as our ancestors did. For this reason, half of the hot dogs and hamburgers consumed in Mid America, are eaten in the hot season. Over three fourths of the charcoal is burned then.

Michael Symons’ “The History of Cooks and Cooking” tells a four thousand year tale of a disrespected magical art. Cooks have intermingled the destinies of humans with the plants and animals they eat, and the fuels they burn. In one interesting take on pre Enlightenment history, Symons believes that cooks practiced the true, feminine science of healing -- trial and error -- while masculine physicians practiced unscientific dogma. For this, cooks were marginalized as insignificant and condemned as witches.

Non-sustainable agriculture is nothing new. Man has always pushed the limits of his environment and then adapted to depleted resources. During the Trojan War, Homer’s heroes consumed an ox, over an open fire every 300 verses and disdained fish as a food of destitution. However, by the Golden Age of Classical Athens, fish was a luxury, meat was almost unheard of, and wood had become so scarce that braziers were invented and charcoal had become a major industry.

Most of the great inventions in cooking compensated for exhausted supplies of wood.Cauldrons, fireplaces, braziers, ovens, ranges, clay pots, woks and kitchen cutlery were invented to cook more food with less fuel. French and English cooking developed according to different resources. Until the end of the 17th century, wealth at the table was synonymous roasts, which consumed precious fire wood. Rich in forest and pasture, England’s gourmet class was content to throw a dead animal over a fire and rip apart the results. In France, only the south coast produced olive oil and only the north coast supported dairy farms, so cooks put more fat in the diet by extracting stock from bones and turning it into sauce. Ragout, stew, soup and braised dishes then invaded England, which by the 18th century was feeling quite inferior.

James Boswell defined man as the cooking animal. “Beasts have memory, judgment and the faculties and passions of the mind, but no beast is a cook.” In an era when most cooking is out of sight, what possesses this animal to spend billions on outdoor grills that he only uses three months a year?

Probably we cook with fire, outdoors, for the aromas. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin coined a word for the smell of beef searing on a fire - “ozmazome.” Chemists today deduce over 600 flavor compounds in roasted beef, but most backyard chefs relate better to the mysterious “ozmazome.”

Browning by fire changes food chemistry dramatically. The high temperatures that cause browning are not possible in boiling, steaming or micro waving. Infra-red radiation from charcoal sears meat at 2000 degrees F, from open flames at 3000 degrees F. Ovens and pans can’t get nearly hot enough to produce the delicate flavors that real roasting achieves.

There are more romantic explanations for our attraction to cooking outdoors. Fire is elemental and contrary, the burn of Hell and the light of Paradise. The ancient Egyptians believed that it was a living creature who devoured whatever it feeds on, and died when it was full. Philosopher Gaston Bachelard called it a terrible, contradictory divinity.

That explains both the lack of trust and the awe of other thinkers before a fire. Heraclitus believed it the source of the entire world. Empedocles altered this view of the elements, to include water, air and earth, and his opinion held for 2000 years. The 20th century replaced it with the Periodic Table -- “Ozmazome” taken to a laboratory and deconstructed.

Some scientists prefer the mystery. Harold McGee put it this way:

“In the sip of roast coffee, or the taste of crackling, there are echos of flowers and leaves fruit and earth, recapitulation of moments from the long dialogue between animals and plants.”