225 Quotes by Mark Kurlansky

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a French monk, Marcel Audiffren, invented the world’s first electric-powered household refrigerator.

The town of Lunenburg was built on a hill running down to a sheltered harbour. On one of the upper streets stands a Presbyterian church with a huge gilded cod on its weather vane. Along the waterfront, the wooden-shingled houses are brick red, a color that originally came from mixing clay with cod-liver oil to protect the wood against the salt of the waterfront. It is the look of Nova Scotia – brick red wood, dark green pine, charcoal sea.

The main body of Vikings were given lands in the Seine basin in exchange for protecting Paris. They settled into northern France and within a century were speaking a dialect of French and became known as the Normans.

A true gourmet – a judge – has the wisdom to know when to stop eating.

Theoretically, pickling can be accomplished without salt, but the carbohydrates and proteins in the vegetables tend to putrefy too quickly to be saved by the emerging lactic acid. Without salt, yeast forms, and the fermentation process leads to alcohol rather than pickles.

Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is the natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is a part of evolution.

Baby formula contains three salts: magnesium chloride, potassium chloride, and sodium chloride.

The medieval church imposed fast days on which sexual intercourse and the eating of flesh were forbidden, but eating “cold” foods was permitted. because fish came from water, it was deemed cold, as were waterfowl and whale, but meat was considered hot food.

It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than an American Rockefeller.