donkeys, emperors, burgers

a wednesday wander

The gelee in pâté-croûte reminded Christopher of an ingredient from a different milieu:

Suddenly I remember a Chinese chef showing me crystallised concentrated donkey gelatin (阿胶, ejiao) - as hard and brittle as glass - that he used to make a thick lou to pour over congee.

Christopher and I are both Chinese, and have between us spent 50-some years in Asia, so I feel reasonably comfortable saying that ejiao is kind of obscure. Yet demand for this “obscure” ingredient has now reshaped economies and ecosystems on 4 continents.

Much of the writing I found on ejiao was uncomfortably xenophobic, but Natalie Kohle did a lovely, nuanced piece in which she makes the point that ejiao today is essentially a marketing phenomenon – some folks saw the opportunity to create demand where there had been none before. It’s hard to argue with her conclusion: “no matter how wealthy a society becomes, not everyone can be the emperor.”

A large portion of the global population today eats better than the emperors we’ve buried, which is one definition of human progress.

If you’re reading this newsletter, you’ve probably also read accounts of how our collective desire to eat like dead emperors is trashing the planet. But moralizing at people just doesn’t work as well as marketing at them. What should people want, if not the same things – like glue made from black donkeys – that high status humans wanted in the past? This is my take on the question.