MOTnews 44 (29/05/2003)

ALL GOD'S CREATURES

We all eat turkey, the chicken's "big brother" now and again, but it wasn't that long ago that the turkey was imported here from Central America. The Indians had already been raising turkeys for some time, both for meat and for feathers. The origins of this animal were however not equally clear to all, and that has been the source of confusion as to how it got its name.

The English word "turkey" is spelled the same as for the European country, because the British thought the animal came from there.

In French, we use the word "dinde", because the animal is supposed to come from India.

In dutch, the word "kalkoen" also points out the link with India. This word comes from "Kalikoetsche haan", which litteraly means "rooster from Calicut" (Calicut = a place on the coast of Malabar).

Anyone for another slice of Indian chicken?

NEW: Grandmother's recipes

In the following editions of MOT-news, we will be pulling some tricks out the hat, to remind you of old times, to amaze you or just to get you to try it out yourself.

Here's the first recipe: we haven't tried it ourselves yet.

Are you bothered by spots? Simple plants can help, in this case, the plantain, which can be easily found in gardens and alongside grass verges.

It is best to harvest the plantain in June, selecting green leaves without blemishes.

Boil about 50 grams of leaves in 1 litre of water and dab the spots with this liquid.

ANSWER to TRUE OR FALSE in MOT-news no. 43 (25/04/2003).

Potatoes are a very important ingredient in our meals. Even with the competition from rice and pasta, we eat "spuds" nearly every day.

You can eat these root vegetables in all sorts of ways: boiled potatoes, jacket potatoes, mashed potatoes, fries and crisps, croquettes...

However, potatoes are even more versatile than that, we also distil alcohol from them.

TRUE

Since the 19th century, large amounts of alcohol have indeed been distilled from potatoes. To do this, the potatoes are steamed, then the process of "diastase" is started (in this process, the starch in the potatoes is turned into sugar), and then the fermented malt is distilled. This alcohol is used both as a consumer product and as an industrial product. Alcohol evaporates more quickly than water. So to distil it, the mixture is heated up and the alcohol evaporates, at which point it is piped to another receptacle where it condenses.

SAY WHAT?

In this MOT-news item we try to explain proverbs and sayings that have their roots in our technical history. Similar proverbs are found in different languages, but each language has it's own typical sayings. Therefore we do not translate this item in English.

KIDS news: something to tell your children this evening

Sugar, from cone to lump

These days you mainly know sugar as a sugar lump, handy little sugar squares and oblongs for dropping into your tea or coffee. But it's not so long ago that sugar was usually sold in large conical blocks, frequently 25 centimetres and more in height. These sugar cones were also known as sugar breads. Of course, you couldn't use a whole cone in one go, so a range of delicate little tools were developed for breaking pieces off the cone. You could attack a sugar cone with sugar pincers or, for larger pieces, a sugar axe. The sugar axe was often combined with a hammer. This was used to grind the broken off piece even more finely. You can see how these tools looked in the ID-DOC database on our site at www.mot.be.