Well, at least in the world of baking and pastry they do. I know what some of you are thinking: is this going to be another trip to the year 1683 and the Battle of Vienna — the most baking-intensive conflict in the history of man? This is one time when the answer is no. Sacher Torte only dates to 1832, the year a young pastry chef (very young in fact, he was a mere 16) by the name of Franz Sacher created the cake for Prince von Metternich (full name: Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar Fürst von Metternich-Winneberg- Beilstein), the second most famous diplomat of his time after Talleyrand (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Benevente).

There are several versions of Sacher torte's creation. One posits that Sacher was Metternich's personal pastry chef when he hit upon his famous recipe, which seems unlikely since he was so very young. Another has it that Sacher was merely a hired hand in the kitchen of the Metternich estate at the time, which seems even less likely. A third maintains that Sacher was an apprentice baker at a pastry shop in Vienna frequented by Metternich, which seems the least likely of all, since it's hard to imagine a top diplomat of the Austrian Empire browsing pastry shops for fun (especially in those days when there were servants to do those sorts of things). But whatever the circumstance, all the stories share a basic plot line: that the master chef had fallen ill, Metternich was hungry, and Sacher was forced to deliver. And deliver he did, with a dessert that has since become the very emblem of Viennese pastry.

The popular notion that the Sacher torte was named for the Sacher Hotel is actually mistaken. The hotel wasn't built until 1876, by which time the torte was already world famous. Yet the family name is the same, the establishment having been built by Franz Sacher's son Eduard in 1876. Yet Eduard, it seems, wasn't exactly gifted in the art of hotel management. It took Eduard's death, and the ascension of his tough-as-nails, cigar-smoking wife Anna to turn the hotel into the world class institution that became around the turn the last century, and remains to this day.

There are two schools of thought on the history of tarts. One posits that tarts have evolved out of the “putting things on top of other things” tradition of gastronomy. According to this line of thought, human beings have been putting foodstuffs on top of other foodstuffs — notably round, flat pieces of bread — for millennia now. Since bread is made of flour and tart crusts are made of flour (albeit highly enriched flour), any of these foods counts as a tart. Technically. (People argue the same thing about cake...and pizza).

The second school of though maintains that tarts spring from the Medieval pie-making tradition, and are in fact a kind of flat, open-faced pie. These folks have the shape and technique argument on their side, and I’m inclined to side with them. Enriched doughs (i.e. “short” crusts) came into common use about two hundred years after pies (about 1550 versus about 1350 or before for basic pie crusts), and in the same geographic area — Europe.

Pies and tarts differ in that while pie was a commoner’s sort of fare, a way of recycling offal and table scraps for later consumption (call it Medieval Tupperware), tarts were the stuff of high cuisine. Which is to say, they were extremely popular among the nobility. Court cooks employed tarts not so much for their taste but because of their looks. Often custard-based, a large, open tart presented a broad canvass upon which an artistic chef might compose a work of edible art. Thus brightly-colored fruits, vegetables and spices all found their way into (onto) them. They could be sweet, savory, or more often than not, a mixture of both.

Over time culinary trends took tarts primarily in the sweet direction (citrus tarts like orange and lemon are two all-time classics) though it’s important not to forget their famous savory cousins, quiches. I can’t say which of the two I prefer, though having already done quiche, I’ll concentrate on the sweet stuff this week.

There's a lot of good lard on a pig, though admittedly not nearly as much as there used to be. Demand for leaner and leaner pork over the years has yielded pigs with less fat on them than your typical Parisian runway model. But more on that later. Though fat can be found all over a pig, the main deposits are on the back, between the flesh and the skin (high-grade hard fat used for "fat back" and salt pork), amid the organs (low-grade soft fat historically used for cooking) and in the so-called flare region, the area around the loin near the kidneys. This is where leaf lard comes from, and for bakers, it's where the money is.

Leaf lard is the highest grade fat that can be found on the animal. It is desirable for several reasons. First, its consistency, which is neither too hard nor too soft and quite butter-like. Next, it's the mildest tasting lard on the pig, practically neutral in flavor. Lastly, it's quite pure even in its raw form, which makes it easier to render. Some people, in fact, just use it as-is. I recommend against that for reasons which will be obvious later in the week.

I'll admit, leaf lard can be a little hard to find, though it's becoming more common now that animal fats are hip again. The pork purveyors at the farmers' markets here in Louisville usually have it, or at least allow customers to order it ahead of time. Some butcher shops have it, or can order it. If all that fails, it can be had over the internet, though at considerable expense. In fact, between ordering leaf lard off the internet and buying back lard from the local butcher, I'll take the butcher every time. The lard will be a little "porkier", but still fine for rendering and decent for baking.

One-time Upper Peninsula resident Brigitta writes in with this:

I first encountered pasties when I went to college in the late 70’s in the western end of the peninsula. Although the largest ethnic group in the area are Finlanders, the pasty arrived when miners from Cornwall emigrated there to work in the copper mines. Just as in Cornwall, the pasty was a perfect meal for miners, and the Italians, Hungarians, and Finlanders that came to the area also adopted it as their daily meal. The upper peninsula of Michigan also had large iron ore deposits, so there were a lot of iron mines, but in the western area it was primarily copper mining that took place. The mines eventually played out and became non-economic to operate, but one can still see many abandoned mine shafts dotting the landscape. However, the pasty is practically a national dish, and every “yooper” housewife regularly makes them.

Nobody in the UP ever argues about whether or not there is a glaze (there isn’t) or if the crimp should be on the top or the side (the side). The big controversy is whether to eat it plain, with gravy ladled on the top, or ketchup. A true UP pasty is made with chopped beef, diced potatoes, chopped onions, and if you wish, you can add a very little amount of diced carrots or some diced rutabagas. Some fancy-schmancy tourist stands offer other fillings, and although I’m not necessarily a purist, and I believe in innovation, I cannot wrap my taste buds around a pasty filled with chicken and broccoli or some such.

Last week I mentioned that most miners who ate pasties usually left behind a portion of their crust as an offering to the “knockers”. But what exactly is a “knocker”? In a nutshell, a knocker is a member of a race of spirits that are supposed to inhabit mines. A knocker can be either benevolent (like a pixie) or mischievous, even malevolent (like a gremlin), depending on whom you ask. The name “knocker” comes from the noises such a creature supposedly makes as it a) mines its own ore deposits when humans aren’t around, b) hammers shaft support posts out in hopes of causing a cave-in; or, c) warns human miners when a cave-in is imminent. But regardless of their intent, all of them supposedly take the form of diminutive humans with skinny legs and long, hooked noses. Some say they’re their own race of mysterious beings, others that they’re they ghosts of miners who died in accidents.

It seems natural enough that miners of old would have invented these beings, since let’s face it, mines are dark and creepy places. I can see where it would be easy to interpret the noise of, say, an odd falling rock or tool, or the slow creak of a tunnel support under stress as evidence of supernatural activity (especially in long, empty, echoing spaces). Given the many dangers of mining, I can also see where a miner might want to have a supernatural being as an ally (or at least not as an enemy). Interestingly, belief in knockers wasn’t limited to miners in Cornwall. American miners, influenced by immigrant Cornish, also believed in them (some still do, I’m told), only here in the State they’re called “Tommyknockers”. There's a Stephen King novel by that name, in fact.

The muffin method has many virtues, chief among them that it's very fast and can be done — and is indeed better done — without the use of a machine. It's my belief that machine mixing is the chief cause of the inferior muffins mass producers churn out, and why so many bigger bakeries (when they don't use mixes) employ the creaming method, which results in cupcake-like muffins instead of the real thing. Here we have large bowl A, which contains our dry ingredients, thoroughly sifted and blended so as to evenly distribute the leavening (you can use a whisk or even a food processor if you want to get really obsessive).

Next we have medium bowl B, containing all my miscellaneous wet ingredients, including sugar, whisked together. Why is sugar considered a "wet" ingredient in the baking world? Because it dissolves so quickly in anything watery. Here I should emphasize that all your wet ingredients MUST be at room temperature. All of them. Got that? All. Of. Them. Room temperature. The lot.

Now then, spatula in hand, we apply bowl B to bowl A.

And begin to fold, gently, scraping from the bottom and flipping over the top...lightly. The trick here is to fold only as much as it takes to moisten all the dry ingredients and no more. For this double batch of muffins I folded for about 45 seconds, until there were no more large pockets of flour to be found.

Here you can see there are a few small areas of unmixed flour, right around the edges. This is the time to stop folding:

With the mix more or less blended, now's the time to add any other items to your muffin (or pancake or quick bread) batter, in this case blueberries. Fold them in only to the point they are evenly distributed, no more.

Fill your molds with batter and bake.

That was pretty darn easy, wasn't it? For an indication of how well you've mixed, pay attention to the behavior of your leftover batter as you wash out your bowl. If the muffin or quick bread batter simply dissolves in the faucet stream, you've got a superior product to look forward to. If it puts up a fight or leaves slick, stringy and/or rubbery deposits on your wash cloth or sponge, you'll want to ease up on elbow grease next time, killer.

How did I do on these? A near perfect muffin crumb, irregular holes with a few large ones (indicating a slightly uneven mix of leavening), but no "tunnels" caused by gluten formation. I think I'll put the kettle on.

I confess I got a little ahead of myself yesterday bringing up the subject of baking powder. For when last we left the History of Chemical leavening narrative, I was blabbering about saleratus (potassium bicarbonate), which was not in fact the direct precursor to baking powder. That distinction belongs to another compound we all know and love: sodium bicarbonate, also known as baking soda.

Interestingly, sodium bicarbonate was also known "saleratus" for a time. The world's first commercial producer of baking soda, a fellow by the name of John Dwight, originally marketed his product as "Dwight's Saleratus" in 1847. His original trademark was a cow, since sour milk (clabber) was required to activate it. In time (by about oh say 1867) that logo would change to an illustration of a muscular arm hoisting an iron hammer, and well, not much more needs to be said about that (though did you know that a fellow by the name of Armand Hammer attempted to buy Church & Dwight, the makers of Arm & Hammer baking soda in the 1980's? Strange but true.).

But where was I? Oh yes, saleratus (potassium bicarbonate) and saleratus (sodium bicarbonate). It's easy to see how those terms came to be conflated. Both are naturally occurring compounds, though truth be told sodium bicarbonate is much much more common geologically. I mentioned previously that settlers heading west occasionally stumbled across small saleratus deposits (making potassium carbonate arguably the world's first drive-though grocery). The same thing happened with sodium bicarbonate deposits, only where natural potassium bicarbonate might occur over an area of a few square acres, natural sodium bicarbonate would cover the landscape for several square miles.

These huge deposits, discovered in Wyoming, were termed "soda lakes" or "soda beds", and were blanketed by powdered soda to such an extent that it appeared to the pioneers that snow drifts had accumulated in summer. Where did/does the soda come from? The answer: from water. More specifically, water that has flowed over (or through) naturally occurring sodium deposits and collected in still pools. When the sodium molecules in the water come into contact with atmospheric carbon dioxide, they react to form sodium carbonate and/or bicarbonate, which then precipitates out as a powder. Neato.

Eventual settlers in the area (especially Mormons) would come from hundreds of miles away to collect soda from these dry lakes, using it not only as a leavening agent, but for lye and soap making. Of course what the early settlers harvested was but a drop in the bucket in terms of the total deposits in Wyoming, which the St. Louis Globe-Democrat described this way in 1898:

[Wyoming has] enough natural soda in their soda lakes to make all the soda biscuits of the world for the next two centuries, and then throw in, for good measure, sufficient [soap] soda and soda lye to cleanse all the "tribes of earth"...and still have plenty left to make window glass for generations to come.

Hey, I said it was descriptive, not politically correct. To this day Wyoming is one of the leading global sources of so-called soda ash, a raw material derived from a mineral called trona. Some fifteen million tons of soda are produced in the US each year, for indeed it is one of the most important commodities on Earth, used not only to make baking soda, but soaps and detergents and especially glass (see previous posts on potash). So pervasive is its use that soda ash production statistics are one of the measures that researchers use it evaluate the performance of the US economy.

And you thought all there was to soda was a little orange box!

An interim step between pearlash and the baking soda and powder we know today was "saleratus", or potassium bicarbonate. I know what you're thinking: a pretty fancy name for an early chemical leavener, what industrial era marketing firm came up with that one? But in fact saleratus is a very old word, Latin in fact, meaning "aerated salt". So the Romans leavened their bread with it? Actually no, however they were aware of it. Potassium bicarbonate is a naturally occurring compound, one that's typically found in dry lake beds. The ancients put it to a variety of uses, though apparently none of them culinary.

Mid-nineteenth century Americans, on the other hand, were all too happy to try it out as a bread leavener. Industrially saleratus was made by combining pearlash with carbonic acid. However pioneers heading west did manage to stumble across naturally-occurring deposits of it from time to time (Saleratus Lake, Wyoming was one such place). Like pearlash, saleratus was entirely functional as a bread leavener. However being another rather strong alkaline, it did tend to create soapy flavors in the presence of fat. It too had to be combined with an acid in order for it to work, and like pearlash worked best with breads that were baked up quickly over high heat.

Whatever you do, don't try making JELL-O with fresh pineapple. Fresh pineapple contains an enzyme by the name of bromelain which is a protease (pronounced PRO-tee-ace), or protein-digesting enzyme. Gelatin, as I explained a day or so ago, is a protein. Which means when you combine the two the bromelain will go to work dissecting all those lovely long gelatin molecules so they can't go on to form a mesh, and by extension a gel. Canned pineapple will work in a JELL-O mold because the heat of the canning process denatures (chemistry talk for "messes up") the bromelain enzymes.

I know what you're thinking. Or at any rate I know what you might be thinking. Oh hell who am I kidding, you're almost certainly not thinking it but I needed a transition. So sue me. What on earth is a protein-digesting enzyme doing in a pineapple? It's a good question, because really, what use does a fruit have for such a thing? Do pineapples eat meat? Not the last time I checked, so what's the deal?

Nobody really knows. There is a theory that late at night when nobody's looking, pineapples nip out to burger joints to take advantage of off-hour discounts. Let's just say that one has met with considerable skepticism within the scientific community. Another holds that the enzyme is a defense mechanism designed to kill or irritate insects inclined to eat pineapples. Yet another theorizes that the protease irritates the stomachs of animals that eat pineapples. Not enough to deter the animal completely, since fruiting plants rely on animals to spread their seeds, but enough to discourage any single one from make a pig out of itself at the buffet.

The final theory I'm aware of posits that fruit proteases are an example of cooperative relationships between plants an animals. How so? Because proteases, when they pass into the digestive system of an animal, kill and dissolve parasites like tapeworms, which is of course a great benefit to any omnivore who's insurance doesn't cover gastrointestinal disorders. But who knows? The mystery of the meat-digesting fruit has yet to be difinitively solved.

Trace impurities may not have much impact on the way salt tastes, but the size and shape of the salt crystals most certainly do. Again, not because the salt is any different chemically, but because crystals of varying sizes and shapes have very different surface areas, and as such dissolve at different rates.

Salt grains come in two basic shapes: granules and flakes. Granules are the default salt crystal shape we're all used to, the little perfect cubes we all know as "table salt". If you remember from other discussions of crystals (fat crystals, starch crystals, ice crystals), crystallization is what happens when molecules of the same type start stacking up upon one another. Given that a molecule of sodium chloride is cubical, it's easy to see where a crystal made of those molecules would be cube-shaped. In fact, given the right conditions, salt can grow into huge crystals known as halite, which can be anything up to 4 or 5 inches across.

But notice I said given the right conditions, since in order for salt to crystallize this way the salt water brine from which the crystals form must be very pure and heavily saturated (far more so than sea water) and the crystallization must happen fairly quickly. Modern table salt manufacturers achieve these conditions by using purified brine (pumped out of flooded underground salt deposits) which they evaporate in special vacuum chambers. Without all that groovy gear they'd essentially be at the mercy of the elements, as it were.

Which brings us to "flake" salt. Flake salt, as the name implies, is fairly flat in shape. Salt makers achieve the shape either by crushing salt granules with heavy rollers (Kosher salt), or by allowing fairly impure brine to crystallize randomly. Flakes form because the various impurities get between the gathering molecules of salt, preventing them from forming uniform shapes. The formations thus shoot off this way and that, never quite achieving the girth they'd get under more pristine conditions. Such shapes are of course typical of salts that are allowed to crystallize in ocean-side evaporation ponds.

Depending on where the ponds are, how the brine is allowed to evaporate, how the salt is harvested, and whether or not it's washed and/or processed, the flakes can vary significantly. This is where the different "flavors" of salt come from, for our sense of taste experiences all of them a little differently. Large, flat flakes dissolve almost instantly on the tongue, while smaller, thicker granules dissolve much more slowly (notice I say "dissolve" instead of "melt", since the true melting point of salt is somewhere around 1500 degrees Fahrenheit). Thus packagers of flake salt can achieve a variety of effects by selecting for flakes of different sizes.

But again, this "variety" of flavor only holds so long as the flakes don't dissolve, which is why an expensive salt like fleur de sel should only be used as a condiment. Add gourmet salt to anything that's more than a little wet and/or warm, and your $20-a-pound luxury item becomes plain old NaCl again. And that puts us right back to where we started.

Did anybody guess what Napoleons and Neapolitan pizza have in common? That's right you with the accent, they're both from Naples. But you just try telling the Danes that. They're convinced that the Napoleon was invented by a Danish royal pastry maker when the daring Corsican had occasion to visit the King of Denmark in Copenhagen. There is zero historical proof of this of course.

Another very popular myth posits that the Napoleon was in fact the favorite pastry of the tiny emperor. So much so that a pre-battle sweet binge left him with such terrible indigestion he was unable to command. The battle of course: Waterloo (the story wouldn't be any fun otherwise). No, it seems the only thing Napoleon was known for foodwise was that he was utterly indifferent to food. Interestingly, it was a trait both he and his English opponent Wellington shared, which is why the Iron Duke was said to have expressed nothing but consternation upon hearing that he'd had a beef dish named for him.

The Napoleon was in fact a type of layered Italian cake that was well established in Europe by 1800, and variously known as a Napolitana (in Spain) and a Napolitain in France. From there it's of course a very short leap to Napoleon, one that may have been made by the grandaddy of all pastry chefs, Antonin Carême. Carême lived during Napoleon's time. He in fact made Napoleon's wedding cake on the occasion of his marriage to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria.

Carême was one of the greatest French chefs of all time. He first made a name for himself as a pastry maker, and had particular enthusiasms both for puff pastry and layered desserts in the Neapolitan style. Whether he was the first to actually combine the two or just refined a good idea is still a subject of debate. It is a subject of further debate as to whether he in fact christened his creation the Napoleon. But if he did, and he is French, why do the French to this day know the Napoleon not as a Napoleon, but as a mille-feuilles, or "thousand leaves" pastry?

I strongly suspect that the name "Napoleon" (and its associations with a certain small-fry conqueror of the continent) is something we English speakers came up with all on our own.

Does the name tuile have a familiar ring to it? Have you been to Paris before? Then maybe the connection your brain is trying to make is to the Tuileries Palace and Gardens. That area is so-named because tile (tuile) manufacturers, attracted by rich underground clay deposits, originally occupied the site.