Chilled

I’m going to take ‘chilled’ as temperatures between 0 and 5 degrees centigrade as that is what the UK’s Food Safety Agency recommends. Mind you, it also says you should check your fridge thermometer once a week. Really?

Before fridges and thermometers, however, humanity needed to preserve food for obvious reasons. There were methods using salt, leaving it in the sun and smoking it (as in smoked herring). But the best way was by cooling it.

It would be impossible to talk about the origins of cooling and refrigeration without mentioning the yakhchal which are domed icehouses that not only preserve food but can also generate ice. They were particularly useful in their native Iran, where the climate could very often reach extreme temperatures.

a yakhchal

 Records suggest that yakhchals were first constructed as early as 400 BCE. They have a conical shape. This allows hot air to escape upwards out of the structure. Cool air is allowed in thanks to small entryways at the bottom. The cold air stays firmly trapped within, while hot air escapes. Apparently many people in Iran still use “yakhchal” to refer to modern refrigerators.

To cut a longish story short modern fridges really started in 1851 when James Harrison created a patent for the first practical application of artificial cooling. He started in 1851 by creating an ice-making machine, which he showed off in Geelong, Australia. After tweaking the design slightly, he released the first commercial ice-makers in 1854 and then refrigerators.

Geelong museum with Harrison's portrait

So how does it and subsequent machines work?

Step 1 – The Compressor
The compressor pumps in cold and low pressured refrigerant in a gaseous state. Then, the refrigerant is compressed. This compression heats and pressurises it.

Step 2 – The Condenser
The hot and high pressured refrigerant is then channelled into the condenser. The condenser removes the heat and condenses the gas into a liquid.

Ventilation Fins: The heat that is removed from the refrigerant is then released through cooling fins at the back of the fridge. This is why the back of your fridge can get quite warm, or even hot.

Step 3 – The Expansion Valve
Then, liquid refrigerant is pushed through the expansion valve. Within this chamber, the pressure is suddenly dropped. This sudden drop in pressure causes the liquid to expand, with some of it rapidly turning into vapour. This change of state from liquid to gas has a cooling effect on the surrounding area.

Step 4 – The Evaporator
Afterwards, cold refrigerant in a liquid state leaves the expansion valve and enters the evaporation coils. As it travels through, it absorbs any warm air inside of the fridge. Because refrigerants have low evaporation points, this absorption turns it back into a gas, therefore evaporating. This process has a cooling effect that keeps your fridge cool.

Finally, the cold and low pressure gas from the evaporator travels back into the compressor to begin the cycle again.

Thanks to the Reliant and the Appliance City websites for some of the above information.

I’m going to veer away from fridges for the poem. Straight to Matsuo Bashō (translated by Lucian Stryk).

Lips too chilled
for prattle –
autumn wind

Matsuo Bashō

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Gooseberry - Humble Goosegog

As far as I remember, I’ve only seen green gooseberries. Now I find they come in assorted shades from yellow to purple. Yellow and green can taste sour, the rosy ones are naturally sweeter. They can be eaten raw, but they are nicer cooked and sweetened. From what I’ve read, they have what is described as ‘gentle’ laxative properties, so, enjoy in moderation.

Gooseberry puree was and still is a welcome accompaniment to a roast pork dinner. I loved this on a Sunday at the home of my wonderful (fairy) Godmother. Trifle for afters, then later on, for anyone hungry, pork sandwiches with more goosegog. I wouldn’t be hungry, but I’d always manage a delicious sandwich. Appreciated, with much love, thank you.

Gooseberry fool is crushed fruit mixed with whipped cream and served chilled. There are various ways of achieving the end result. Some involve cooking the gooseberries first and adding other fruits and nuts.

The meaning of ‘gooseberry bush’ made me smile. Babies born under a gooseberry bush is an old wives tale, except ‘gooseberry bush’ was 19th century slang for female pubic hair, apparently. Well, we learn something new every day. Let’s keep that information in the 19th century where it belongs.

The term ‘playing gooseberry’ refers to a third person accompanying a couple – a romantic couple – who wish to be alone. Gooseberry in this context is a shortened form of gooseberry- picker, meaning a chaperone who would go off picking fruit to allow the couple time alone. I can’t help but wonder where these meetings might have taken place. I’d rather have a full story than a snippet.

Here’s one of my favourite poets,

Gooseberry Season

Which reminds me. He appeared
at noon, asking for water. He’d walked from town
after losing his job, leaving me a note for his wife and his brother
and locking his dog in the coal bunker.
We made him a bed

and he slept till Monday.
A week went by and he hung up his coat.
Then a month, and not a stroke of work, a word of thanks,
a farthing of rent or a sign of him leaving.
One evening he mentioned a recipe

for smooth, seedless gooseberry sorbet
but by then I was tired of him: taking pocket money
from my boy at cards, sucking up to my wife and on his last night
sizing up my daughter. He was smoking my pipe
as we stirred his supper.

Where does the hand become the wrist?
Where does the neck become the shoulder? The watershed
and then the weight, whatever turns up and tips us over that
razor’s edge
between something and nothing, between
one and the other.

I could have told him this
but didn't bother. We ran him a bath
and held him under, dried him off and dressed him
and loaded him into the back of the pick-up.
Then we drove without headlights

to the county boundary,
dropped the tailgate, and after my boy
had been through his pockets we dragged him like a mattress
across the meadow and on the count of four
threw him over the border.

This is not general knowledge, except
in gooseberry season, which reminds me, and at the table
I have been known to raise an eyebrow, or scoop the sorbet
into five equal portions, for the hell of it.
I mention this for a good reason.

                                                                              Simon Armitage

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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