Sorry, I have done a search here and found nothing, nor at Snoopes. I would be happy with a link to an old thread.
Is this for real? Taste of Home: Find Recipes, Appetizers, Desserts, Holiday Recipes & Healthy Cooking Tips
I think I saw something about this on Man vs. Food. I might go for the burger part of it, but when they showed it on tv, they basically dunk the bun in too. Nothing worse than a greasy soggy bun. At least as far as buns go.
How many links will I have to click through to find out about it?
They “strain and process” the grease daily. If there’s anything in there that’s 90 years old, it’s probably only a few molecules.
Sort of like, “This is George Washington’s famous hatchet from the 18th century! Over the years, we’ve had to replace the head twice, and the handle three times, but this is the very hatchet!”
It’s homeopathic grease!
It’s supremely greasy!
Which is exactly what the proprietor said on the MvF episode. Something like “There are a few 90-year-old grease molecules floating around in there”.
Here is what they say on their web site (not proof the story is necessarily true but proof the burger stand makes the claim themselves) They also have this videoon the site. I don’t know if that is the MvF episode people are referring to or not.
The part that doesn’t make sense to me is that each burger carries with it a little bit of the grease (actually a big bit of it, looking at the burgers) so the original molecules from 1912 must certainly have all made their way to the stomachs of hungry customers over the years.
Come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure it was Man vs Food. It might have been one of those interminable “Best Burger Places in the US” type shows.
Thanks for the replies. I liked that thing about George’s hatchet. Every time you pull a burger out, you remove some of the grease. Every splatter removes some. It oxidizes.
I wonder about restaurant sourdough sometimes; about how old the starter might be. Places in San Francisco, for instance. Couldn’t be anything earlier than 1907 or late 1906, because of the earthquake, but I wonder how far back some of it goes.
http://www.boudinbakery.com/usercontent/XImages/pdfs/BoudinHistory.pdf
http://www.hotel-online.com/News/PR2005_1st/Mar05_Boudin.html
“Today, Boudin Original San Francisco Sourdough French Bread is still baked fresh daily using the same recipe that enticed Gold Rush-era San Franciscans who flocked to the Boudin bakery each morning (by the end of 1849, the city’s population had swelled to 20,000). Every loaf is made with a portion of the original Boudin “mother dough” that has been carefully preserved over the decades – and heroically saved by Louise Boudin during the Great Earthquake of 1906.”
I saw that show. It was some kind of best burger show. IIRC they’ve been using the same pan for all that time, and they strain the grease each night. Each hamburger cooked is adding to the grease, and they throw some away everyday.
Incidentally, sourdough starter ain’t baker’s yeast:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
A sourdough starter is a stable symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast present in a mixture of flour and water. The yeasts Candida milleri or Saccharomyces exiguus usually populate sourdough cultures symbiotically with Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis. Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis was named for its discovery in San Francisco sourdough starters.
[/QUOTE]
WOW.
You’d expect that there’d be some equilibrium level of oxidation (and other age-related changes to the grease), and it could be that the cooking technique is just such to keep that equilibrium at the optimum level. In which case the fact that the grease is “90 years old” wouldn’t be significant, but it would be significant that it was prepared from grease that was already at that optimum.
Or, of course, it could be irrelevant, and the old grease is just a marketing ploy. That’s possible, too.
I bet that grease is loaded with cancer. A good high temp low oxygen environment is just what you want for some good polyaromatic hydrocarbon and heterocyclic amine formation. Mmmmmmmm benzene.
Yeah, every time you expose your starter to air, it’s probably picking up local feral yeasts and I’d guess over the years it becomes fairly new and unique. There’s a French bakery next door to me, so I figure any starter I make is going to get whatever they use.
It’s a famous paradox: Ship of Theseus - Wikipedia
I just made a starter (just flour and water) a couple of months ago. The bread tastes just like the stuff from Boudin. Of course, I live in SF. If I moved away, the local lactobacillus (not yeast) might take over if the starter was left uncovered and unrefrigerated for several days. I understand that a well-established starter can “defend” itself from incidental exposure to the local lactobacillus in the air.