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Comment by jacobolus | Hacker News Reader

> friend remarked that he didn't think there was any difference, that indeed all scallion pancakes were exactly alike to him.

This is entirely plausible. If you are used to eating some food regularly over the course of decades, you will be able to discriminate between good vs. mediocre versions. If you have only eaten a food a few times, the most relevant comparisons will be with other types of food, and you won’t necessarily notice the difference between two separate experiences of it. When compared to pizza, tacos, or bagels, all scallion pancakes are pretty similar.

For instance, a person who drinks red wine every day will be able to tell you the difference between varietals, regions, distinguish $100 vs. $7 bottles, maybe notice good vs. bad years from some vineyard; someone who has only rarely had red wine might think that they all taste about the same.

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Obligatory XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/915/

I always felt like that XKCD comic has the opposite message than how a lot of folks I know take it as.

Interpretation/Message A: You can find nuance and subtlety in anything, including Joe Biden photographs. This means that most wine-tasters/foodie snobs/art critics are just grasping at straws, and there is no value in subject pursuits of evaluation of quality whether it be Food or Art.

This is a disappointingly common perspective amongst tech nerds.

Interpretation/Message B: You can find nuance and subtlety in anything, including Joe Biden photographs. This is a testament to the power of the human mind and personality - that we can identify small minute differences in objects, flavours, and creations, and describe them with specificity. There is genuine beauty in the variety in the world and offhand shallow interactions with them do not adequately permit a full appreciation of the wonders of the universe. It's worth taking the time to find an area to gain an in-depth understanding in in, regardless of what anyone thinks. Yes, even Joe Biden photographs, if that's all it would be.

Message C: there's one true way to grasp at straws.

Lots of TV shows showing "experts" where they blind taste test them between expensive and cheap wine or expensive vs cheap chocolate and blind folded they can not tell the difference.

That is not to say there is no good vs bad wine/chocolate/name your food. But it has nothing to do with price.

Meanwhile, I remember a Mythbusters episode where they tested the myth that if you take cheap vodka and run it through a Brita water filter, it makes it better.

They took a bottle of cheap vodka, took a sample out, filtered the rest, took another sample and set it aside, and re-filtered the remaining vodka, and repeated this 10 times, so that they had a spectrum of vodka samples from filtered zero times to 10 times. They then brought on a vodka expert to taste test them and randomized the order of the samples to see if he could re-order them based on the number of times they went through the filter.

And he did it PERFECTLY.

IIRC, Adam and Jamie could tell the difference after 1 run through the filter, but not further runs.

Do they? Can you give an example? Because there's a recurring Epicurious series where an expert tries to determine of two samples which one is cheap and which is expensive. They're not always right but they're right quite often.

This is just your casual periodic reminder that if choosing between two possibilities, you could expect someone to be right about half the time by just guessing.

Yes yes. But the experts are consistently 90 percent plus accurate. Check out the videos! They elucidate their reasoning quite well. It's not hocus pocus

I've seen a lot of videos that actually show the opposite. Even I as a non-expert over video can clearly see the difference from thousands of miles away.

The problem might just be that the TV shows you watch are so mediocre they can't even get a real expert.

I don't know for the other, but for chocolate, price _has_ an influence on the resulting taste

True, although this friend is asian american and likely grew up eating scallion pancakes on at least a few occasions. He seemed almost proud of his lack of taste which really surprised me.

Perhaps your friend was signaling a taste you couldn't perceive. For example, I generally look down upon scallion pancakes as a category.

Consider an American food analogue. Do I distinguish good and bad grilled cheese? How can I when its identity is that of a basic, unhealthy, cheap, low-class food? If you add more exotic ingredients, it becomes distant from its quintessential identity, so it becomes "good" grilled cheese in inverse proportion to it being, actually, grilled cheese. Contrariwise, if you enhance it by further indulging in the fats, oils, salts, etc., can we say this is "better" when it has also become even more base, even more low class? It becomes better as it becomes worse.

I find myself wanting to say something similar to your friend. All the grilled cheese are the same to me. I can plainly see one is different than another, but they are all objects of derision, and they only rise above that derision insofar as they stop being grilled cheese.

Uhh I can't really understand this argument frankly. You're making a value judgement of grilled cheese as a commodity food but still, if someone put a grilled cheese in front of you that used plain white bread and one that used sourdough, you'd notice the difference, right? Sure you could argue that the sourdough grilled cheese is not a real grilled cheese but in doing so, you are inherently distinguishing the two items, therefore demonstrating taste to a degree.

They would see a difference, but wouldn't find one better than other: they're still grilled cheese, and thus worthless in their value system.

The argument is that I can distinguish them, but not rank them, because I distinguish them with respect to their essential character. Grilled cheese's essential character is something I view with derision, and its rank increases only by shedding that essential character. Grilled cheese with sourdough bread, or with veggies and barbecued meat, would rank as "better food" precisely because they rank as "worse grilled cheese."

So, you've embraced the 'no true scottsman' fallacy as the primary arbiter of your taste.

But in "no true Scotsman" there's an assumption that there's an external definition of the Scotsman category that is invariant from the fallacious clause, whereas here the definition of the grilled cheese category is the system under question. Otherwise, I could say "yes, I like grilled cheese, especially when it isn't grilled and contains neither cheese nor bread."

> How can I when its identity is that of a basic, unhealthy, cheap, low-class food

That's an assertion, not a self-evident fact. And one that I (and I am certain, many other people) would dispute.

Skimming through some recipes I searched, it seems it is mostly all purpose flour and a ton of oil to make it flaky. It seems to be in the "unhealthy" camp assuming carbs and sat fats are unhealthy.

Also in the cheap camp considering the ingredients are cheap and making it does not seem too time or equipment intensive.

I find working with dough to always be complicated, but the recipe itself seems simple enough, so it might qualify as basic too, relative to other recipes.

Low class is ill defined, but assuming it means it is popular with poorer people due to the lower cost of its ingredients and preparation, then it might also be true.

> basic, unhealthy, cheap, low-class

"Basic" is clearly not a useful adjective, when a grilled cheese sandwich can be made with a variety of different ingredients some of which are easily available in most parts of the world, and some are not. Certainly you can make a basic grilled cheese sandwich, but it's a logical fallacy to leap from there to "all grilled cheese sandwiches are basic".

"Low class" is again highly ingredient dependent. A grilled cheese sandwich made with some "rare" sourdough bread, irish grass fed butter and 3 kinds of artisanal cheese from different parts of the world is just as much as grilled cheese sandwich as one made with wonderbread and slices of american "cheese product". It's a similar logical fallacy: just because you can make a "low class grilled cheese" doesn't imply that "all grilled cheese sandwiches are low class".

"Cheap" is also covered in a similar way.

Unhealthy I will generally concede, other than to note that our ideas about what is and is not healthy or unhealthy food shift a lot over time (and often loop back on themselves).

So, then: which one of you has good taste?

I'd imagine there are still different situations at play here.

For instance, I'm Jewish and my mother made potato latkes one way throughout my childhood. I loved those and various details about them (texture, flavor profile, doneness, etc.) but would go to other friends' house for a meal or whatever and they'd have their own latkes that just didn't taste as good, were much simpler flavor-wise, texture was more homogeneous, etc.

And then of course I've bought frozen pre-made latkes from places like Trader Joe's.

I'd imagine it's like buying frozen gyoza at H-mart vs making your own from scratch with either pre-made wrappers or even homemade ones, plus the filling.

Not everyone/every culture has the same relationship to food as the west. (I personally feel being more utilitarian about food is healthier in the long run). Your friend may be predisposed towards idenitfying quality/craftsmanship/expressing taste in other areas of his life -clothing, grooming, music etc.

Really? I can't claim to have gone everywhere but in all the places I've been, people seem to care about food. What's this supposed place that's opposed to "the west"?

>When compared to pizza, tacos, or bagels, all scallion pancakes are pretty similar.

Bad example, as most pizzas _are_ pretty similar. And in my opinion the best pizzas are not too different from average pizzas. And yes, I had a lot of pizzas in my life, in Naples and elsewhere.

And again I ask, really? Because there's a massive difference between a soft, light Naples pizza that's eaten with a fork and a doughy, thick Dominoes pizza and a crispy, salty New York slice and a chewy, deeply roasted Sicilian pizza. Even in New York which I'd hazard is in the top 5 pizza cities in the world, there's a massive difference between Joes Pizza and Lucali.

I see what you mean now. What I meant is that I like Neapolitan pizza, Domino's Pizza, Pizza Hut, New York pizza... pizza is just really great and it's best when I'm hungry.

you sir have bad taste in pizza

Or maybe I'm just not picky?

Same thing, really.

I think you misunderstand me.

What I mean is: when an inexperienced person compares a scallion pancake to a pizza, or compares a scallion pancake to a taco, the two foods are obviously very different. But when an inexperienced person compares a mediocre scallion pancake to a great one, eaten on different days, it may be hard to remember the differences.

Likewise, someone has rarely eaten pizza might consider a good Neapolitan pizza to be broadly similar to a Domino's pizza, whereas someone who has pizza all the time will notice many differences between the two.

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