The days are getting longer and the sun is warming up the
Northern Hemisphere, which means that it's grilling season. The
smell of a backyard barbecue makes our stomachs rumble in
anticipation of a burger, steak or even grilled vegetables. But why
are we so drawn to this primitive cooking method? Jim Shahin of
The Washington Post sets out to answer that question.
We have to travel back almost two million years to begin to
understand our attraction to smoke. Harvard biological
anthropologist Richard Wrangham, in his 2009 book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made
Us Human, theorized "that cooked food helped us evolve
because it took less time to digest, leaving more time for us to do
other things, like invent the wheel." He goes on to postulate that
"We are not like other animals...In most circumstances, we need
cooked food."
According to Marcia Pelchat, a sensory scientist at the Monell
Chemical Senses Center, "That smoky smell is a really strong
stimulus," because the scent appeals to a primitive part of our
brain "called the limbic system, which houses emotion and long-term
memory. Smells trigger personal memories as well as atavistic, or
ancestral, ones."
Even non-meat eaters admit to loving smoke. Paul Breslin, a
professor of nutritional science at Rutgers University, tells this
story. Several years after swearing off red meat, he saw two halves
of a skinned goat hanging in a butcher's window. "It was really
gross to me," he says. "The very same day I saw this, I remember
walking through West Philly and someone was having a barbecue, and
the smoke wafted over their back yard, so much so that it made me
start salivating and even made me a little dizzy." He pauses. "How
is it possible: the idea of being repulsed by meat, but smelling
smoked meat made me weak in the knees?"
Our love of smoke is borne out by recent cookbook
award nominations, which include Smoke: New Firewood Cooking, and Where There's Smoke: Simple, Sustainable, Delicious
Grilling, along with an EYB pick for 2013, Smoke and Pickles by Edward Lee. The
Washington Post article linked above includes a quote from
Chef Lee as well as more detailed science. Now if you'll excuse me,
I need to go light up the grill.
Photo by Deb Lindsey courtesy Washington
Post