Category: Pastry

They’re Chinese pastries traditionally given as gifts during the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is coming up. This year it starts on the 19th of September. Mooncakes are roughly analogous to Christmas fruitcakes in the West inasmuch as they’re loved by many, detested by others, but are inarguably the signature sweetmeat of the season.

The Mid-Autmn Festival is one of the four big festivals of the Chinese year and is what one might call a “moveable feast” in that the dates changes from year to year according to a.) the Chinese lunar calendar and b.) which weekend is closest to the actual date of the autumn full moon. It’s sort of like our Thanksgiving but with a little astronomy thrown in. Like Thanksgiving, it’s the party that follows the harvest.

That’s what reader Joy wants to know this morning. Joy, I’m still into a lot of that acoustic music I wrote about last week, but since the weekend I’ve been on a Badfinger kick. Don’t ask me why, this stuff just happens.

As several readers have reminded me, ergot has caused plenty of trouble right here in the good ol’ US of A. European immigrants never traveled anywhere without the comforts of home, and rye was one of them. American colonists were fortunate that for whatever reason ergotism didn’t wipe people out on the scale it did in the Old Country. Perhaps the climate didn’t favor ergot quite so much, who knows? Still, a theory has been advanced that ergotism was responsible for the famous witch trials in Salem, Massachusettes in 1692.

Reader Alison asks if there’s much risk from ergot-infected rye today. The answer is not really. Though no ergot-resistant strain of rye has ever been developed, a variety of measures are taken these days to minimize the risk of ergot infection. Rye seeds are carefully screened for evidence of ergot, rye fields are plowed extra deep to keep ergot from germinating after harvest, and different crops are rotated in and out on alternating years. All combined, these various strategies do an excellent job of keeping ergot, and by extension the risk of ergotism, down.

…is what gangrenous ergotism was called when it first appeared in Europe in the ninth century. “Fire” of course because of the burning sensation the disease caused and “holy” because it came to seen as a divine punishment. Yet within two hundred years or so the named changed. By about 1050 an order of monks became known for treating the disease, the Order of St. Anthony. The brothers were highly skilled at formulating and applying plant balms that healed wounds and relaxed blood vessels

Reader Choi asks:

Joe, I understand that the browning of pumpernickel in the oven is caused by the Maillard reaction. It is my understanding that Maillard reactions only happen over 300 degrees Fahrenheit. If you’re baking pumpernickel at 225, how is Maillard browning possible?

That’s a puzzler isn’t it, Choi? Maillard reactions are so little understood. What is known is that they can happen at surprisingly low temperatures. They happen fastest over 300 degrees, there’s no question about that, but they can happen at far lower

Now I know there are certain types of readers out there — mostly musicians — who rather enjoy the thought of a dose of LSD with their morning toast. But let’s be clear here: ergot-derived lysergic acid is a far cry from the synthesized, purified LSD that Jimi Hendrix sprinkled on his corn flakes. What we’re talking about is an unrefined chemical, one that is mixed with a variety of other toxins, the cumulative effect of which is a disease known as ergotism.

Ergotism comes in two types. There’s convulsive ergotism, a nervous disorder in which sufferers can be subjected to anything from muscle spasms and hallucinations to violent contortions, trembling, shaking, vomiting, mania and psychosis. However ergot can also cause constriction of the blood vessels which leads to a second condition known as gangrenous ergotism. In this, blood flow is cut off to the extremities, causing infections, hideous burning sensations and gangrene (with all its associated losses of fingers, toes and limbs). Not the way even the most committed stoner would want to spend his weekend.

Why? Because of its high susceptibility to infection by a fungus by the name of Claviceps purpurea, otherwise known as ergot. It might not sound terribly dangerous, but trust me, ergot is no ordinary fungus. It does a whole lot more than cause unsightly yellow toenails. Ergot is thought to be have caused the deaths of thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — of people over the course of Western history, laid waste to entire societies and caused the fall of kingdoms. No small feat for a spore.