We cry whenever we dice onions in a Cuisinart food processor. What evolutionary pressure caused that? How many people or microbes, roamed prehistoric Earth armed with Cuisinart food processors?
The ball’s in your court, Sir Charles. Of course, I really don’t expect a reply with you being dead and all.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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The onion family protects itself from being eaten in the wild by producing chemical irritants that repel animals.
Humans with opposable thumbs who have learned how to carmelize onions in butter are willing to put up with some unpleasantness in order to reach burger heaven.
On the way to heaven, these humans deal with an organic sulfurous compound called syn-Propanethial S-oxide which is essentially nature’s tear gas.
While not fatal, it is definitely toxic and harmful to the cornea and basically just pisses off the eye to the point that it tears up to get rid of the stuff.
Recommended solutions: swimming/ski goggles, small fan blowing the fumes away, contact lenses (my eyes never tear up when I have them in), recruiting minions to do your chopping, etc.
Not recommended: eating burgers without carmelized onions and melted cheddar. You’re not an animal.
There are all sorts of “dangerous” foods humans enjoy because we have embraced the upside of not-quite-dying: hot peppers, coffee, alcohol, vinegar, rattlesnake, cashews, shark fin, Cheez Whiz. What’s dinner without a little adventure?
Authors’s note: I had to add “opposable,” “sautee,” and “carmelized” to WordPress’s dictionary. Which is sad.
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