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Comment by TillE | Hacker News Reader

It's easy to underestimate just how much we're all affected by our own backgrounds and childhoods. Including some very fundamental things about how we think about food.

Just a silly example that I've encountered recently: if I say "popcorn", Americans will think butter and salt, while Europeans will think sugar.

Even recipes tend to assume certain skills. Of course it's possible for someone to write in painstaking detail instructions about how to duplicate an authentic Indian curry, but in practice does that actually happen?

It's more or less impossible to get a good bagel outside of New York. It's just a piece of bread! And yet.

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Funny you should mention bagels. New York bagels taste nothing like real bagels (which you can still buy in Cracow if you fancy a weekend visit[1]). They are what sliced toast bread is to a farmhouse loaf.

[1] be aware that the popular bagel shaped things sold on every street corner are a different thing, albeit with common ancestry

that's more a case of altering a recipe to better suit local tastes.

try selling what we eat as pizza in italy to americans. they just don't understand how few flavors multiply together. sure there are some that appreciate it, but mostly wants overloaded pizzas with everything on it, and restaurants follows the market.

same with coffee. I can't express how bad is the burnt stuff people outside italy calls authentic barista espresso. gone is all the flavor in favor of the stronger burnt tone of excessive roasting and badly maintained machines.

but people like those flavors, they are trained culturally to like more a flavor punch instead of complex delicate notes, and thus local shops follows.

as a counter example, chinese food in italy has most of its stronger notes tuned down compared to what you would be able to buy in china. same with indian. they tastes nothing like the original (full disclosure, my source for this is not personal experience but a good indian friend and a cousin of mine studying in china)

Are you confusing NY bagels with something else? A NY bagel has a shelf life of under a day. Buy one, eat it the next day, it's hard and awful. They are very rarely toasted.

He's saying they're like "sliced bread (for toasting)" i.e. cheap and plain, not that they are like toasted bread.

NY Bagels and Montreal ones have become identities in their own right.

Since when is sugared popcorn a European thing? The only place I've seen non-salted popcorn is in the US.

I'm French and I did not know salted popcorn even existed until I went to the UK (other than salted butter caramel popcorn). I just asked for popcorn and always got sugared popcorn...

In the UK at least, at a cinema you'll choose between sweet or salt popcorn, you can get salt/sweet/mixed popcorn in supermarkets, and Butterkist toffee popcorn is a common thing

Sure, but sweet and butter/salt are equally available (literally, pretty much every brand does both) so to generalise that Europeans think sweet when thinking of popcorn is ridiculous.

Corollary: 50% of beers in the US are watery piss, so when Americans think of beer they think of watery piss.

If you ask they will do you a mix in the cinema too!

In Belgium people will look at you funny if you ask for salt on your popcorn

> Just a silly example that I've encountered recently: if I say "popcorn", Americans will think butter and salt, while Europeans will think sugar.

Sugar in the UK, but salt (and butter) in Ireland. Maybe it's to do with what the chains sell?

> while Europeans will think sugar.

Eh? Which Europeans? (British ones?)

Germans.

I wouldn't want to even contemplate salted popcorn.

Brit here, salted best popcorn.

Germans eat steak with jam on the side. I wouldn't look to them for being the measure of European cuisine. They make a mean wurst though.

That sounds like an excellent idea actually.

Never heard of that.

Jam on top of cheese bread sounded disgusting, but is actually pretty delicious.

Germans.

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