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Doctoral thesis on marinated chicken not necessarily such a half-baked idea
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MARINATED chicken and doctoral dissertation may seem poles apart, but Sun Lingxia managed to straddle the poles in the most unlikely way.
The doctoral candidate at Shaanxi Normal University in Xi’an, capital of northwestern China’s Shaanxi Province, recently shot to fame over her 80,000-word doctoral dissertation that analyzes the effect of spices on the taste of marinated chicken, a household delicacy.
It is probably the first study ever to have examined the correlation between anis and fennel, two widely used condiments in Chinese cuisine, and the chicken dish.
Initial curiosity over how a cookbook recipe made its way into a supposedly serious doctoral dissertation quickly turned to disbelief and sarcasm, in the form of criticism directed at Sun for wasting precious research time on something so mundane, or worse, for writing a dissertation totally unworthy of a doctorate.
Their criticism might have been misplaced, because to start with, Sun is a major in food science. To be precise, her resume indicates that her scholarly interests include the development and exploitation of animal resources. So it should have surprised no one that she would produce such scholarly work.
In effect, her work is as meaningful as it is illuminating. Chinese cuisine has been long described as an art. And art by definition defies the usual quantitative approach of science.
Viewers of the immensely popular TV documentaries “A Bite of China” must be impressed by the delicateness of how Chinese food is prepared, often the result of the mastery of chefs, rather than industrialized quality control.
The equation behind the perfect combination of ingredients is memorized, not through scientific experimentation but through trial and error, through years of practicing as an apprentice in the kitchen.
A dose of standardization
What Sun has done is to add a dose of standardization to the often capricious art of Chinese cuisine, so that the fare — in her case marinated chicken — will be consistent in taste, no matter where it is served — in Xi’an, Shanghai, London or Tokyo. This may be laughed off as a clumsy move by gourmets, for standardization is a process that kills the beautiful variety of cuisine. But as many a commentator has observed, it is actually good for mass production and promotion of Chinese cuisine.
As Ma Dan commented in the Monday edition of the Xinmin Evening News, despite the current food-safety mayhem afflicting foreign fast-food joints, they are still expanding, whereas the only Chinese fast-food chain with a national, let alone global, footprint appears to be Shaxian Delicacies, an eatery with humble roots from Fujian Province.
The scholarly obsession of Sun, and others like her, may one day really become “key” to food standardization and forays of Shaxian Delicacies into Western markets, wrote Ma.
Of course, our interest in the news item is not culinary only. Sun’s study and the ridicule it incited are a typical example of how Chinese academic mind has gone wrong. In the minds of her critics, a dissertation is inherently inferior, flawed, or altogether worthless, if it does not present a far-ranging analysis of the biggest topics of the day, or to borrow the jargon of academia, “grand discourse.”
A case study that dissects a cookbook recipe in such great detail is naturally frowned upon, for it “cheapens academic pursuits.” But it is often these trivial yet more relevant case studies that address the remaining mysteries in quotidian life and make it better.
For instance, do Sun’s critics know that French scientist Louis Pasteur, founding father of microbiology and after whom pasteurized milk is named, owed his achievement in crystal science to his fascination with winemaking?
According to a 2010 survey by the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, the number of Chinese citizens with a basic scientific knowledge represented a woeful 3.27 percent of the entire population. The figure is expected to reach 5 percent by 2015, said a story published by the Beijing Morning Post.
Of course, figures don’t convey the full picture. The embrace of science has always been there. But it is perhaps not at its most feverish, and the way people embrace it is somewhat misguided.
Science is not as distant and far removed from us as might have been shown in the latest US blockbuster “Interstellar.” It is a lifestyle we ought to live, not the robots, 3D printing, nanotechnology that we admire from afar.
In human history, science first started as a response to our most immediate needs — for instance to tame floods, to harness fire, to extract salt from saline water. Today, science is still intimately and ultimately about the way we structure our life.
In my boyhood, I gained scientific knowledge mostly through reading the famous book series “A Hundred Thousand Whys.” They explain such matters as why alcohol can help to overcome the fishy taste of meat and seafood in cooking. Every book is a practical scientific primer in the eyes of a 9-year-old.
These books are now less readily available, or less popular, since our children are made to recite “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and munch on a slice of marinated chicken without wondering about the chemistry that makes it so tasty.
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