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In many restaurants, particularly Chinese ones, all the dishes and beverages are numbered so that the less linguistically adept among us need suffer no embarrassment when making our order.
My proposal is twofold.
Firstly, that this system be adopted by all purveyors of comestibles.
Restaurants, pubs, greengrocers, supermarkets et al.
Secondly, that the numbering system be standardised so that everyone uses the same number for the same product and that a standard reference book, The Gastronome Codex, be created. The Codex could be divided into several sections, perhaps starting with raw ingredients (e.g. menu item 000001, a potato) followed by soups, breads, sauces etc. You get the picture. Clearly there would be a lot of numbers to keep track of but that’s OK because there should be an inspectorate established in order to ensure that everyone is using the correct numbers on their product listing or menu.
You never know, some of the posh restaurants may even do away with menus altogether and take to wheeling up the entire Codex to your table when you’re ready to order, possibly secured with chains and accompanied by an honour guard of cowled monks, singing psalms and swinging incense burners.
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Croissant for the monks bit. Would the numbers of the individual ingredients be reflected in combination dishes? |
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Bizarrely, this tends towards having been partly-baked in catering text-books. Each ingredient is listed followed by the things you can do with it, so you might have:
1. Potato
1.1 Boiled [instructions for boiling a potato.]
1.1.1 Mashed - Boil potato as above, then... [etc] |
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What happens if you create a new dish? Would you have to apply to a bureau to get a number, like with a bar code or ISBN? This would stamp down on culinary innovation, which might not be a bad thing, judging by all the chefs trying to create duck in chocolate sauce and the rest. |
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I don't know if this is a *good* idea, but it's interesting enough to vote for. I think you'd need a "dot" in the number, to account for individual variations on the standards, e.g., number 155402 = coq au vin, 155402.019 = coq au vin chez Jacques. |
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pottedstu, please let's not stamp down on culinary innovation, because sometimes it is a good thing, and after all, isn't it safer to have us halfbakers occupied in the kitchen/bakery than out in the real world? |
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As long as we're only feeding ourselves, yes. (Exception made for [UnaBubba], who, by all accounts [all of which are his own admittedly] is a bit of a kitchen wizard.)
He'll have his hands full with strained lamb and vegetables for the next few months, though! |
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Interesting angel. Yes that makes sense if the various ways of preparing an ingredient were listed that way.
stopup: Sort of. I thought that certain basic preparations like, say, an omelette would have it's own listing but any extras (parsley garnish for example) would each be seperately identified. So, for pottedstu's example we would have...
Number 666.6.6 Duck, Mallard - baked, coated in no.7215 milk chocolate sauce, with a hint of no.80.3 pistachio nuts - ground.
The only reasons to petition for a change in the Codex, 'stu, would be if you discovered a new raw ingredient or if you thought that a particular recipe should get it's own entry as a basic preparation.
Having thought about this idea a bit this afternoon, I'm firmly convinced that I can get this idea baked (the Codex that is, not the duck - heaven forbid!) by submitting it to the EU Food Standards Commissioner. |
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Perhaps, rather than having ingredients numbered - 00001 = potato, 00002 = lamb, 00003 = creamy sauce, etc. - you could have them signified by bits - 00001 = potato, 00010 = lamb, 00011 = lamb + potato, 00100 = creamy sauce, (and of course, 00101 = lamb + cream, and 00111 = lamb + potatoes + creamy sauce). These would still appear on the Codex in decimal format, but it would mean that a restaurant could increase its range of recipes by adding a new ingredient to the system, and all the potential variations would be automatically generated by the numbering system itself. |
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Bitmasked menus for vegetarians? |
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What Guy Fox said. Numerologists and diet-mongers would come up with arcane explanations fo what to eat what days for what results. |
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But really - 'potato'? We need to distinguish between the waxy and floury ones at least, and really ought to be able to tell a Rose Finn from a Yukon Gold, etc. |
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Shouldn't this be called the Gastronomicon? Big book with "How to Serve Man" on the cover... |
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hello_c. Agreed, so number 1.1.3.2 Potato - King Edward - Chips - Slightly soggy. |
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IP addressable food, anyone? I have no thoughts on how to bake it. <g> |
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[angel], it's probably a little difficult for me to obtain independent verification of those skills, when all of those 'bakers who have actually met each other are half a planet away. I don't believe there's another in my city of two million. You are welcome to stay whenever you are in my city. I promise I'll do something unusual with an aubergine, just for you. |
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//something unusual with an aubergine// |
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UB wrote: «IP addressable food, anyone? I have no thoughts on how to bake it.»
With an IP addressable oven, of course. |
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You could take the original idea to an extreme and use a cryptographic hash of the recipe as the numbering system. |
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[Guy Fox], the mind was meant to boggle. |
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whats wrong with adapting the dewey system? |
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Because "Political Science in Early Greek Democracies", is a mixed dish at best. |
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