8/13/2019 After Dinner Chat
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"He did it! That little scrub of a mathematician did it!" Assim
threw himself down on a couch in the common room. His fellow
students gathered around him. "Oh,what a sight. Twelve master
culinary aestheticians, all tasting and analyzing with all their
might."
"Wait," interjected a jet skinned girl where she sat entwined
with a girl as fair as she was dark, "are you talking about Taleb?
He's back?"
"He's back," confirmed Assim, eyes dancing.
"And he cooked the masters a meal?"
"Yes. I was pressed into service at the last moment to pour
beverages. Never before have I carried greenberry juice in one
pitcher and stonefruit lassi in the other."
His fellow culinary students regarded him in astonished
silence.
"Still no wine in Taleb's meals, then?" hazarded one.
"But how did he get the masters to sit for a meal, much less let
him come back?"asked another.
"An old rule," said Assim, leaning back, obviously pleased to be
the center of a
ttention. "A candidate may demonstrate a basic panel of skills,
then produce a meal for twelve judges who, if they unaninomously
agree, may confer a culinary license on him. They eat themselves
and observe the reaction of public diners of good taste eating the
same meal on the far side of one way glass. It's for certifying
foreigners and professionals from family traditions, you
understand, when there were still enough around to make a
difference."
"Taleb's basic skills are certainly sound," the jet skinned girl
allowed. "His cooking skills, anyway. I still haven't forgiven him
for telling me I'd suffer less in the kitchen if I lost three
kilos."
"Fortunately he never emerged from the kitchen," Assim told
her.
"Well, how did it all go?"
"A disaster!" Astonished cries and a few laughs met Assim's
declaration. "The foundations of our aesthetic tradition are well
and truly shaken. I believe old Master Ruyval may have to be taken
to the infirmary."
"Taleb's managed to subvert the scent complex?"
"No, no," nothing so concrete, Assim assured his audience. "No,
our dear Taleb worked within our scents, our five tastes, our
familiar ingredients and techniques. He began with a pairing you
all will know--"
"He didn't begin with scallops under black lentils with
mayonnaise followed by a
mint pesto salad!" cried the jet skinned girl's companion. "Not
Torihei's mealthe viceroy again!"
"He did. That famous meal, one we all know so well. And," Assim
continued, grinning lazily, "he followed it with a shrimp soup."
Again, blank astonishment.
Then, "Oh, subtle, subtle Taleb," a plump boy, more historian
than cook, said, beginning to giggle. "Shrimp soup! An exercise set
by Torihei to his student Golush. The palest of white shrimp
soups!"
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"Wait, Golush who--?"
"Yes, Golush," Assim said, "who formulated the theory of
holistic meals and laiddown the formulas by which we organize our
succession of dishes. The masters were commenting on it, you may be
sure. Not the public diners on the far side of the one way glass,
of course. They were too enamored of the white pepper."
"Yes, Taleb did have a deft hand with pepper," the jet skinned
girl agreed sullenly.
"But shrimp soup after Torihei's opening," the plump boy said.
"There's only oneway to follow--"
"Yes, so our masters were saying," Assim assured him. "A splash
of orange next or the color balance to the whole meal cannot be
saved. And what do you think came out?" They all hung on his words
as Assim smiled and took a deep breath. "Spinach with a filet of a
snapper atop it, all doused in clarified butter."
"But orange!" was the general cry. "There are only so many
permutations of the main colors which are balanced!"
"Unless he was choosing an intentionally one colored meal,"
offered the plump boy. "It has happened--"
"No such luck," Assim told him. "The spinach and snapper were
served with pomegranate juice. I poured it myself. And then came
carrots lightly pickled with ginger and the weakest of iced mint
tea."
"The masters must have been furious," someone remarked. "There
isn't a permutation of a small number of dishes that will restore
color balance to that, or flavor balance, or any other criterion
Gulash formulated."
"No, and they were saying as much," Assim agreed, "all the while
gorging themselves on the carrots."
"What were the public diners doing?" the plump boy demanded.
"Chatting companionably while being gluttons."
"They weren't bothered?"
"Apparently not at all. And when the semisweet white pudding
came out and I waspouring greenberry juice and stonefruit lassi,
the masters almost had a coniption while the public diners cried
for the chef to come out and be toasted."
This brought on another shocked silence while Assim regarded his
audience with asmile.
"Discering diners dislike unbalanced meals," said the jet
skinned girl at least,untangling herself from her companion. "We've
seen it. It's why we have the the
ory."
"And yet," answered Assim, waving his hand airily. "While the
masters were arguing, I dropped by the kitchen on my way out and
asked Taleb about it." He fell toregarding his fingernails.
"And what did he say?" prompted the plump boy as last.
"I didn't fully understand the answer, but it appears that there
have been someadvances in the study of symmetry since Golush's day.
Something about approximat
