KEY POINTS:
If someone who has never eaten chicken eats chicken for the first time in their life, what do they say it tastes like? I mean if, say, an Eskimo from the coldest, Northern-most regions of the Arctic, where chickens probably don't live because of the cold and the
polar bears, was handed a plate of fried chicken for the first time, what point of comparison would they choose if asked to describe what it tastes like?
I ask this because it has occurred to me that there are many strange but edible things on this planet that when people eat them for the first time they say it "tastes like chicken". I was watching one of those adventurous eating shows on the Food Snob Network (or whatever it's called) the other day; one of those shows where the locals boil up some yak testicles (or similar) then wait to see the foreigner hurl at the very thought, then the tough Western gourmet digs in, turns to the camera and calmly says "tastes like chicken" as the locals gasp in admiration.
So why does everything taste like chicken? If Hannibal Lecter cooked you dinner and he swore he'd cooked chicken and you tasted it and it did taste like chicken, would you actually believe that it was chicken? Or would you think it was something infinitely more heinous that just "tasted like chicken"?
And what does chicken actually taste like? A good question and one that is never really asked these days. I mean it's not like people pop a bit of plain old chicken in their mouth, the way they would when savouring a fine wine, and say things like "a hint of corn, with a slightly verdant grassy finish, plus an intimation of steroid in the aftertaste", do they? No.
Chicken, as a taste experience, is defined by the sauce or the coating or however many secret herbs and spices it takes to make it edible and lift it above being tofu with a beak. But what, really, does chicken taste like? Well, if you apply a bit of lateral thinking - okay, a lot of lateral thinking - it might be said that the people who know best what chicken tastes like are the people who make "chicken-flavoured" things, like chips and crackers.
Surely, if one is to imitate the flavour of a chicken, then one must truly understand its flavour. But then you read ingredients on the side of a packet of chips and nothing is any clearer. Under the ingredient called "flavour" all it said on the packet I looked at was: Sugar, salt, flavour enhancers (621, 627, 631), dextrose, lactose, herbs, spices and/or their extracts, flavours, chicken fat, vegetable powder, anti-caking agent (551) and food acid (330).
Okay, now apart from wondering what potato chips would end up looking like if someone on the production line forgot to add the "anti-caking agent (551)"; and being intrigued that something called "flavours" was listed as an ingredient in the "flavour" section of the overall ingredients, there was very little here that I could go on in terms of defining what chicken tastes like - or why people think that lots of things taste like chicken.
I guess, in the end, this is why when people eat something odd for the first time they say "mmm, tastes like chicken" rather than saying "mmm, tastes like chicken-flavoured chips". I'd like to think that somewhere out there are people who have never eaten chicken who might give us a new and exciting window on a foodstuff that we chicken-eaters, quite frankly, take for granted. I'd like to think someone could eat chicken for the first time and say, "My God, this tastes exactly like iguana!" I think I would find that endlessly fascinating and I would immediately want to find an iguana and eat it, just to see.
Mind you, it wouldn't be half as interesting as if the virgin chicken-eater nodded sagely while chewing that first morsel, then said "My word, it tastes exactly like pterodactyl." If someone said that within earshot of me I would immediately want to know a lot more about that person. I guess I'm asking this "tastes like chicken" question now because I'm worried that at some time in the near future we won't be able to ask it any more, because chicken will come in any flavour you want: lamb and mint sauce, salt and vinegar, tzatziki.
Undoubtedly there are boffins in labs all over the world working on jazzing up the blandest of all birds, so that it will come with a list of ingredients including "flavour", just to keep the chicken market buoyant. It's good to ask these questions sometimes - before it's too late.