Old McDonald had a farm, but now we grow our burgers in a lab
It’s not just about creating more food. It’s about better food, that will reach the people who need it
IT’S a fair guess that you, at some time in your life, have eaten a hamburger. Now I want to introduce you to the most expensive hamburger on earth. It cost £250 000 to make, and it was grown in a laboratory.
It was created by scientists at an institute in the Netherlands, who took cells from a cow and grew strips of muscle, which they minced and made into a hamburger patty. The cow was not harmed in any way.
A group of “experts” was invited to taste the test-tube hamburger patty, which was cooked by chef Richard McGeown.
One of the tasters, Austrian food critic Hanni Rützler, said afterwards: “I was expecting the texture to be more soft … there is quite some intense taste; it’s close to meat, but it’s not juicy. The consistency is perfect, but I miss salt and pepper.”
McGeown had deliberately omitted salt, pepper and fat so as not to detract from the product’s true taste.
US-based food writer Josh Schonwald said: “The mouth-feel is like meat. I miss the fat, there’s leanness to it, but the general bite feels like a hamburger.”
It must be said that they had to add some beetroot juice to make it look more like actual mincemeat. Does that make your taste buds buzz?
This is an interesting, possibly even revolutionary achievement, but right now the science is in its infancy. There is, however, a great deal of interest in the project. For example, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, has been revealed as the project’s mystery backer. He gave £215 000 to the research project.
Inevitably, shrewd sponsors will allow the scientists to refine their theories and conduct further experiments. But they too will have their critics.
Professor Tara Garnett, head of the Food Policy Research Network at Oxford University, said decision-makers needed to look beyond technological food solutions.
“We have a situation where 1.4 billion people in the world are overweight and obese. At the same time, one billion people worldwide go to bed hungry,” she said.
“The solution is not to produce more food. It’s about changing the systems of supply, the access and affordability. It’s not just about creating more food. It’s about better food, easily supplied, that will reach the people who need it.”
All this talk of the humble hamburger made me wonder when it was created, so I looked around on Google and found that it is a lot older than I thought. It really began in the 1670s when significant groups of German immigrants settled in New York and Pennsylvania, then started spreading across to California.
They had been pushed out of Europe by shortages of land and by religious and political oppression, but in America there was room for everyone.
The German community especially made an impact on the “old” America. They established the first kindergartens in the US, and introduced the Christmas-tree tradition.
In the late 19th century, the port of New York housed many German families. It’s likely that they created the Hamburg steak sandwich, made with minced beef, salted with chopped raw onions and eaten between two slices of bread.
That’s how the dish evolved into the hamburger we know so well.
The oldest document that refers to “a hamburger” is a menu-card from Delmonico’s restaurant, created by American chef Charles Ranhofer.
The dish underwent a big change when the burger patty was grilled and popped onto a bun. Very soon, hamburgers were on a par with pizzas and toasted cheese sandwiches.
The big switch, however, began on the other side of the American continent. In 1937, Patrick McDonald opened a food stand called The Airdrome, just outside the old Monrovia airport in California.
It was a hit with the locals. Its fame grew and in 1953 McDonald began to franchise his business. The restaurant in Downey, California, remains the world’s oldest surviving McDonald’s.
It’s a fascinating, indeed, astonishing culinary evolution, but I wonder what Patrick McDonald would make of test-tube hamburgers.