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Comment by michaelteter | Hacker News Reader

With regard to the health risks many comments note, I wonder how many natural (collaborative, so to speak) ingredient mixes might contribute to positive food safety despite the known threats.

For example, I had a roommate who would cook salmon in a tomato sauce and leave it to sit overnight. From my background, this sounded like obvious death, but he assured me it was a common recipe in South Africa. I did try it, and it was delicious. I had no adverse reactions after eating it (a full day after it was cooked and left sitting in the pan).

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Why would this concern you more than anything else? If you cook the fish, it's not going to "go bad" as quickly as if it were raw. If you cook anything to a particular temperature and time, it should kill most bacteria in it. Then the acidity of the tomato should help resist bacterial growth a wee bit longer than something pH-neutral. On top of all this, "obvious death" from bacteria in food is some serious hyperbole; it's quite rare to die of food poisoning.

> it's quite rare to die of food poisoning.

I’d go so far as to say it’s virtually unheard of for healthy adults to die of food poisoning from cooked food going bad*. It’s mostly children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised that are at risk. The fast majority of microbes that cause food born illness are really common in our environments and we’ve built up plenty of immunity.

* fecal contamination and other toxins like paralytic shellfish poisoning are another matter

Death would be unlikely, but food poisoning from cooked food is pretty common. You'll just vomit for half the day. Which while being a long way from death, is still very unpleasant.

There’s always this case from 2008: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3232990/

Bacillus cereus (the culprit in that case) the microbe associated with 'fried rice syndrome'? It seems to be pretty

Damn, I didn't realize I screwed up that message. It was supposed to be "Isn't bacillus cereus (the culprit in that case) the microbe associated with 'fried rice syndrome'? It seems to be pretty nasty, but also easily avoidable."

You'd have to add controls before making that statement. Unsafe food practices by definition will raise your likelihood of getting sick from cooked food. Most people don't leave cooked fish sitting on the counter overnight, therefore getting sick from cooked fish is going to be relatively uncommon.

Some fish curries from kerala can be left outside for days and the flavor is supposed to improve. The curries have high heat and acidity, so it makes sense it doesn't go bad.

Cookbooks with these kinds of recipes surely exist, but I wonder if there are any recipe books that focus first on special ingredient and preparation combinations that result in safety/preservation benefits beyond just good taste.

Yeah it's something I've wondered about. Like for fish curries, adding coriander is supposed to make it so it doesn't last as long. I guess one thing is books on fermented foods that should give lots of hints on how to modify your recipes for preservation.

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