Old Dutch chips come courtesy of our Mud Duck neighbors to the west in Minnesota. Suburban Twin Cities, to be more specific. Roseville to be exact. And the friendly folks offer salt and vinegar chips, of the kettle variety. As I get older, it seems that more and more things trigger memories and I have good ones of eating Old Dutch chips as a kid. And this despite growing up in Chicago where Jay's were my local favorite. (And still are, truth be told.) I also have more melancholy ones as my father bought me a bag of their dill pickle chips for our drive when moving him down south not too long before his death. Who'd have thunk that humble pieces of fried potatoes could be so fraught with memories?
Speaking of memories, you might recall that in my previous S&V chip review I learned that the kettle preparation involves frying oil temperature, namely, starting on the cooler side and gradually turning it up just like in the Tale of the Boiling Frog. This method causes starch to get into the potato cell walls making them rigid and your chips extra crispy.
In 2003, Spence decided to investigate the sonic appeal of chips in a formal setting. To keep a semblance of control, he selected Pringles, which are baked uniformly—a single Pringle doesn't offer any significant difference in size, thickness, or crunch from another. He asked 20 research subjects to bite into 180 Pringles (about two cans) while seated in a soundproof booth in front of a microphone. The sound of their crunching was looped back into a pair of headphones.
After consuming the cans, they were asked if they perceived any difference in freshness or crispness from one Pringle to another. What they didn’t know was that Spence had been playing with the feedback in their headphones, raising or lowering the volume of their noisy crunching [PDF]. At loud volumes, the chips were reported to be fresher; chips ingested while listening at low volume were thought to have been sitting out longer and seemed softer. The duplicitous sounds resulted in a radical difference in chip perception. It may have been a small study, but in the virtually non-existent field of sonic chip research, it was groundbreaking.
Now there's a career!
Mr. McGuire: I want to say three words to you. Just three words.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Sonic chip research.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in potato chips. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Now, I haven't exact tried to replicate Spence's research but think about it. How do you perceive soggy potato chips? As defective? Will you think about it?
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