The Caramelized Onion Theory of Progress
Growing Comfortable with Slowness
I like to cook. After about 15 years of doing so, not just out of necessity but for pleasure, I feel like I'm starting to get good at it. That's not to say that I don't rely on recipes; I do, but now I often need recipes to understand the author's intention and can manage without reading the steps. I have, one might say, the kind of experiences that unlocked my ability to create new knowledge instead of just consuming someone else's. Cooking is very much thinking in systems.
Now, if you like food, you will likely like caramelized onions. Caramelized onions are a thing of beauty. They are both sweet and savory. They can be the leading actor in a dish or glue that brings a dish together. They carry so much flavor it's hard to overstate their impact. You would know what I mean if you have eaten a dish with adequately caramelized onions.
(Thank you, Ariel Helfgott for this stunner.)
And almost all recipes that you will find lie about how easy or, more specifically, how fast you can make them. No one phrased this better than Tom Socca in his 2012 articles for Slate:
Soft, dark brown onions in five minutes. That is a lie. Fully caramelized onions in five minutes more. Also a lie.
There is no other word for it. Onions do not caramelize in five or 10 minutes. They never have, they never will—yet recipe writers have never stopped pretending that they will.
It takes 45 minutes to caramelize onions (it’s not me saying it, it’s just Chemistry). Not only does it take significantly longer than described in almost all recipes, it also requires frequent stirring and will prevent you from engaging in other activities while doing so. But I’m also a sucker for a good Mise en Place.
In Mumford's great book Technics and Civilization, he shows how, beginning in the fourteenth century, the clock made us into time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers. In the process, we have learned irreverence toward the sun and the seasons, for in a world made up of seconds and minutes, the authority of nature is superseded.
– Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
This rush for efficiency pervades our lives, but as I've discovered through cooking, particularly when caramelizing onions, the richest flavors are a product of time or skill acquired through time. They require us to slow down, to grow comfortable with the slowness, and to savor each moment as it comes. I’m writing this as much for you as for myself.
So what happens when we take time out of the equation? It’s hard to say because how would we simulate that experience? The only thing that came to mind was a scene from Goodfellas. Now, it’s not about frying onions, but it comes as close as I can possibly find a relatable pop cultural reference:
The characters indulge in the luxury of cooking with care, underscoring that when time becomes less of a commodity, quality takes precedence. When it comes down to it, what we want is to eat well, not fast.
To quote another famous American-Italian fictional character: What are you gonna do?
I don’t know what you will do, but I will continue exploring this theme either here or through caramelizing onions. And in case you want to take a swing at caramelizing yourself, here’s a wonderful recipe and it’s one of the few that do not lie about the time needed to accomplish greatness. All things considered, investing 45 minutes to achieve greatness isn’t a bad deal?
(Special thanks to Honor Hager for bringing back that 2012 piece from Slate into my life because it tied everything into a knot.)
Things that caught my attention:
Too often clients in the media business tend to think that sustainability and climate change are only topics that affect how their editorial teams to think about stories, not actual company strategy. Thankfully, the BBC think differently. (via Scott Smith)
Dan Hill giving a lecture on Strategic Design? Count me in.
Johannes introduced me to Feynman’s 12 Favorite Problems framework and I’m very much on board. So far, I have five of my own. It’s surprisingly hard to find favorite problems.
In Praise of Better Praise. It’s a New Yorker piece from 2014. I have a toddler and I keep coming back to this one to remind myself how to think about praise. Fairly sure it applies to grown ups as well.
Matthew Ryle films himself preparing French classics and it’s the kind of thing that gets me to buy a lot more butter.
exquisite musings, Igor!