Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Primordial Soup


Our always-brilliant friend El Pollo Raylan wrote in his most recent post:
Lastly, Lem posted an intriguing story about life on other planets. I think the unspoken question is, "but did they have the spark of life?"  I'm not being creationist here. The famous Miller-Urey Experiment was anything but that.
This reminded me of one of my most favorite little digressions from one of my favorite people, the great writer, cook and personality Julia Child. This video, produced for a 1970's exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum called "Life in the Universe", features Child cooking up Miller & Urey's (and Cyril Ponnamperuma's) recipe for Primordial Soup.

12 comments:

chickelit said...

Did her soup contain lots of glutamate (umami)?

Palladian said...

She gives the ingredients in the video:

1 liter distilled water
24 grams sodium chloride
4 grams sodium sulfate
1 gram potassium bromide
1 gram potassium chloride
9 grams calcium chloride
20 grams magnesium chloride

Julia converts the recipe to tablespoons, teaspoons & pinches. No glutamates at all.

Palladian said...

No glutamates at all.

Not yet, anyway...

William said...

These are dangerous experiments. What if Julia Child inadvertently creates a life form that has a rapidly evolving intelligence and a taste for human flesh au vin.

Shouting Thomas said...

I'm grateful to you for getting up so early in the morning (or are you staying up so late at night?) to keep the feed going.

I'm going to go out and milk the cows.

Chip Ahoy said...

I kept expecting one of the elements to be base and another acid and the thing to fizz.

ndspinelli said...

I was hoping the soup required a deboned chicken. She gives a great demonstration of that, as does Jacque Pepin. My brother was a chef in Boston. He was working @ a hotel in Cambridge when he got married, having the reception there. He deboned 100 chickens for his reception meal. Chefs make it look so easy.

bagoh20 said...

If that recipe is the stuff of life, then how the hell can salt be bad for my health?

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

If you add too much "tincture of tenderness" you get Milton the Monster.

bagoh20 said...

I wish the life on other planets thread got into it more. It's an intriguing subject since it's so important in a hundred ways, and is a mathematical near certainty with no actual evidence. Really a cool thing to think and talk about.

This is a problem with blogging. The conversation always moves on, whether you want it to or not. I rarely ever achieve orgasm.

rcocean said...

Has any scientist ever created life from non-life?

Just asking.

ken in tx said...

Bagoh, salt is not bad for your health unless you are sensitive to it. The powers that be have rescinded the previous condemnation of salt for most people. Certain ethnic groups are sensitive to salt, mostly black people.