Sparkling cyanide
Mar. 4th, 2024 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: The Drunken Botanist - The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks, by Amy Stewart
This had been on my to-read list for a while when I stumbled across it in the local online library. Initially, the table of contents was uninspiring, the book being composed of three sections of A-Z listings, but in fact this means bite-sized articles on many plants, interspersed with cocktail recipes, growing tips and other information. Although it's not technical, there's some basic chemistry, which explains why so many plants, described in the first section, will ferment, transforming sugars or (indirectly) starches into alcohol very easily. The second and third sections go on to describe plants used in various ways for flavouring and finishing. The book clearly has an American slant to it, and it comes over in the sometimes arbitrary FDA controls imposed on plants and plant products, with some being banned and others, at least as harmful, permitted; yet further historical adulterations and watering down of regulation by industry lobby groups are also documented. There are also various warnings about hazardous and difficult to identify plants, with many useful species having similar but poisonous cousins.
This had been on my to-read list for a while when I stumbled across it in the local online library. Initially, the table of contents was uninspiring, the book being composed of three sections of A-Z listings, but in fact this means bite-sized articles on many plants, interspersed with cocktail recipes, growing tips and other information. Although it's not technical, there's some basic chemistry, which explains why so many plants, described in the first section, will ferment, transforming sugars or (indirectly) starches into alcohol very easily. The second and third sections go on to describe plants used in various ways for flavouring and finishing. The book clearly has an American slant to it, and it comes over in the sometimes arbitrary FDA controls imposed on plants and plant products, with some being banned and others, at least as harmful, permitted; yet further historical adulterations and watering down of regulation by industry lobby groups are also documented. There are also various warnings about hazardous and difficult to identify plants, with many useful species having similar but poisonous cousins.