Curio Cabinet

Food just tastes better when it’s part of a celebration. Latkes, a type of potato pancake, are a staple of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. They’ve been enjoyed during this annual wintertime celebration, which will be observed from December 7th to December 15th this year, for centuries. However, before the 19th century, latkes looked quite different than they do today. In fact, they weren’t even made with potatoes.
 
Modern latkes (Yiddish for “pancakes”) are made with shredded potatoes, eggs, and flour. Diced onions are often added for flavor, too. The small, round fritters are then fried in oil. Frying latkes is a crucially important step not just for cooking, but because of its significance to Hanukkah. The holiday celebrates the retaking of The Temple of Jerusalem from the Greeks in the 2nd century B.C.E. According to the story, after the temple was retaken, sacred candles were lit to rededicate it. Even though there was only enough oil for the candles to burn for one day, they miraculously burned for eight days. Oil-fried latkes serve to remind celebrants of this story.
 
Surprisingly, though, latkes weren’t always made with potatoes or oil, and they were once more closely associated with a different Jewish story: The story of Judith. In this tale, a widow named Judith saved her town of Bethulia, which was being held under siege by Holofernes, a general in the Assyrian army. Judith charmed Holofernes and fed him latkes made from cheese and fried in schmaltz, or chicken fat. The latkes were so salty that Holofernes grew thirsty and drank too much wine. He passed out and Judith killed him in his sleep, thus saving her town. The latkes in this story are pretty representative of what latkes were like throughout most of their history. After all, potatoes weren’t brought to Europe until the 16th Century, and cooking oils weren’t widely available during latkes’ early days, either. So, instead of potatoes fried in oil, latkes were made with ricotta cheese in places like Italy, and with buckwheat flour in regions in and around Russia. Both kinds were popularly served at Jewish celebrations, including Hanukkah.
 
Once potatoes did make their way to Europe in the middle ages, they were planted en masse due to their hardiness. They soon became a cheap source of sustenance for commoners. Jewish people began making latkes from shredded potatoes, though it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that cooking oils became widely available too. Since cheese latkes were already a common Jewish celebration food, potato latkes quickly began popping up during the same holidays, and their connection to oil gave them additional significance during Hanukkah. Today, latkes remain a delicious, simple, yet storied food.

 
[Image description: Two latkes on a plate, with white sauce on the side.] Credit & copyright: Taken, Pixabay

This whisky’s old enough to retire! A distillery in Scotland has set a new record as one of their 60-year-old bottles of whiskey recently sold for $2.7 million at auction. Located in Craigellachie, Moray, Scotland, Macallan is no stranger to rarefied spirits. The distillery has been producing whisky for nearly two centuries, but this latest sale is unlike any before. Back in 1926, the distiller began aging a batch of whisky in sherry casks, where it stayed for 60 years. When whisky is first distilled, it comes out as a clear spirit with little flavor. To give it its characteristic woody taste, the spirit is placed in oak barrels (in this case, ones that previously aged sherry for an even more complex flavor profile). Most spirits aged this way are only barreled for a few years at most, but to be considered Scotch whisky, it must be aged for at least three years and have an alcohol content of 40 percent ABV. Over the years, the whiskey takes on a darker color from the wood and absorbs tannins and flavor compounds. Once the whisky is bottled, it’s no longer aging, so no matter how long a 20-year-old whisky sits on a shelf, it will always be considered 20-years-old.
 
Some whisky is lost to evaporation while it ages in barrels, but the longer it ages, the more it’s typically worth. When the Macallan Adami 1926 was bottled in 1986, each of the 40 bottles produced already commanded a premium, but the price only went up over the years. One sold back in 2019 for $1.9 million at auction, and this latest bottle was given a pre-auction estimate of $1.5 million. As for what the record-breaking liquor tastes like? Macallan’s master whisky maker, Kirsteen Campbell, told the Associated Press that it tastes of, “rich dark fruits, black cherry compote alongside sticky dates, followed by intense sweet antique oak.” Old, bold, and plenty pricey.

 
[Image description: A glass of scotch against a dark background.] Credit & copyright: PublicDomainPictures, Pixabay

Did you lose your senses during the pandemic? Many people who came down with COVID-19 in recent years are still struggling with the loss of their sense of smell, but a new treatment from Jefferson Health in Philadelphia might be able to bring their smellers into tip-top shape again. Although most people walk away from a bout of COVID without long-term effects, some unlucky folks suffer from post-COVID parosmia. Parosmia is a distorted sense of smell caused by malfunctioning smell receptors in the nose. These receptors fail to send the proper chemical signals to the brain. In some cases, parosmia can cause the sufferer to perceive pleasant smells as unpleasant, in others, it can reduce their ability to smell in general. The condition can be caused by a variety of issues, including chronic sinusitis and, of course, upper respiratory infections.
 
But there's hope for those suffering post-COVID parosmia: a treatment called a stellate ganglion block. The procedure is non-invasive and takes only 10 minutes or so. It’s performed by injecting an anesthetic into the stellate ganglia, located on the sides of the neck. Previously, the treatment had been used to thwart cluster headaches, phantom limb pain, and irregular heartbeats. When testing its effectiveness against post-COVID parosmia, researchers added a corticosteroid to deal with any remaining COVID virus that they suspected might be responsible for the long-term condition. When they injected the cocktail of drugs into patients’ necks, the results were surprisingly effective. Of the 58 patients who underwent the procedure, 37 followed up with the researchers. Of those, 22 said they experienced an improvement within a week, and most of the 22 saw significant improvements over the first month. A second injection led to further improvement in those who responded to the first shot, but did nothing for those who didn’t respond the first time around. Still, if you still have a busted nose, it’s worth a shot (or two).

 
[Image description: An illustration of a colorless person smelling a pink flower while blindfolded against a black background.] Credit & copyright: CDD20, Pixabay