John Bonnett wrote:
> I wrote:
> > AB recovered (he guessed) 90 percent of the oil he put in the cooking
> water,
>
> Sorry. A DVR is your friend. AB didn't 'guess'...he *measured* with the
> aid of
> an (approximately) ten foot tall tube. That's one of the things which
made
> that
> episode so cool.

If the tube was "approximately" ten feet tall, and as I recall not marked in
graduations...

And if the volume of oil to be used in the demonstration was not measured in
the same tube before adding it to the water...

Then the eyeballed amount of oil recovered in an unmarked tube but not
measurable as it was not measured in the first place (don't need a DVR, TiVo
or On Demand for this) is a rough, VERY rough, guesstimate of a return.

> Tossing would have been redundant. He had just demonstrated that adding
oil
> to pasta cooking water does *not* coat every individual strand preventing
> sauce

No, he didn't demonstrate that. How on earth do you (and he) imagine that he
did? What was his evidence that it did or did not occur? If, as you
maintain, he did get 90% of the oil back, that meant that 10% was still in
there. That means it was on the pan, the strainer, and the pasta. Probably
on all of the pasta.

After the oil recovery demonstration, Brown moved immediately into the
cooking-pasta-in-abundant-amounts-of-water demonstration, insisting that it
was the cram-up of starch in lesser volumes that led to sticking and that
the whole thing could be solved by using enough water.

It proved nothing about whether adding oil could prevent pasta from sticking
and as such, it certainly didn't "smash" the myth.


> As an emperical note...it hasn't affected the hundreds of pounds of pasta
> I've
> cooked with a tablespoon of olive oil over the past half-century either.

My own emperical note: I have added oil for decades, have had no trouble
with sauces and have non-stick pasta every time (I don't use two gallons of
water per pound, either).