THAT’S THE WAY THE COOKIE CRUMBLES (8 page)

I have to own up to a crime. I’m a thief. A paprika thief. And it’s time I confessed and shed the burden of living with this misdeed. I committed this crime at the famed Gundel Restaurant in Budapest after finishing what was probably the best meal of my life. I’d had veal paprikash many times before, and I make a pretty good version of the dish myself, but the paprikash I was served at this temple of Hungarian cuisine was clearly superior. It had just the right degree of zest and hint of zing. And a stunning red color. There was doubt about it — I had to speak to the chef.

I had to do a little buttering up, but the immaculately dressed waiter agreed to introduce me to a sous-chef. (The head chef, it seems, does not speak to mere mortals.) I started by complimenting him on the exquisite dill pickles we were served, peeled no less, before getting down to the all-important paprika question. What variety did they use? He was tight-lipped about this, but implied that Gundel’s took absolutely no risk with their paprika. No risk? That struck me as a curious statement. But I soon got the whole story.

Paprika, made from ground red peppers, is to Hungarian cuisine what tomatoes are to Italian, what curry is to Indian, or what soy is to Asian. Cooking without it is unimaginable. It is also unimaginable that any Hungarian would tamper with this national institution, but that is exactly what happened in 1994. A third of the paprika samples tested by the government that year were found to contain lead oxide. Officials launched the investigation when over forty people had to be hospitalized with lead poisoning after eating food flavored with paprika. The country went into a state of shock. Sales of paprika were halted. The government of the nation that already had the highest suicide rate in Europe braced itself for the worst. Cooks staggered about aimlessly in their home or restaurant kitchens, and rumor had it that a few had actually resorted to buying Spanish paprika.

The police unleashed a huge manhunt, which netted fifty-nine suspects, thirty-seven of whom were eventually charged with paprika adulteration. Their motive? Greed. Hungarians consume about a pound of paprika per person per year — or roughly ten million pounds. Lead oxide, a red pigment, looks a lot like paprika, and it’s cheap. The ideal extender, if you don’t care about the health of the consumer. Restaurateurs, of course, do care about their clients’ health as well as their palates. The image of patrons stricken with lead poisoning is not good for business.

Since using imported paprika was unthinkable, many Hungarian cooks believed they had only one option: they must purchase whole dried peppers and grind the things themselves. Now I understood the sous-chef’s comment about Gundel’s paprika being “risk free.” Ever since the crisis of 1994, all paprika has been “risk free” due to a national testing program instituted to ensure that such a scandal could not occur again.

The paprika-adulteration episode cut deeply into the Hungarian psyche. The spice is not only essential to the taste buds but also a source of great scientific pride. After all, it played a major role in the discovery of a factor present in certain foods that can prevent scurvy. Most people have heard of the exploits of the eighteenth-century British physician James Lind, who virtually eradicated scurvy in the Royal Navy by supplementing the sailors’ diet with limes. Historians have attributed many a naval victory claimed by the “Limeys” to the fact that these sailors, unlike their enemies, were protected from scurvy. But the story of the actual isolation of the scurvy-preventative factor is less well known than Lind’s feat. Not until the 1930s did scientists finally manage to identify that magical factor. And they didn’t find it in limes — they found it in Hungarian paprika.

Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi was a Hungarian physician who, around 1925, became interested in plant chemistry. He had noted a similarity between the darkening of damaged fruit and skin discoloration in patients suffering from Addison’s disease, an adrenal gland disorder. Was there any common feature here, he wondered? Certain fruits, like oranges, did not turn brown, and their juice prevented others from discoloring. Szent-Gyorgyi isolated the substance that prevented the browning, but he had trouble determining its molecular structure and suggested the name “Godnose” for it. This did not go down well, so he changed it to “hexuronic acid.” The plot thickened when Szent-Gyorgyi discovered tiny amounts in the adrenal glands of cattle, a discovery that would eventually turn out to have no importance. But it did stimulate the doctor to do more research — for which he needed large amounts of hexuronic acid.

As luck would have it, Szent-Gyorgyi was offered a university position in Szeged, which just happens to be the paprika capital of the world. To live in Szeged is to be surrounded by the sights and smells of paprika production. Szent-Gyorgyi couldn’t help but wonder if paprika, like oranges and limes, might also contain his hexuronic acid. Did it ever. Within a short time, Szent-Gyorgyi had isolated a kilogram of the stuff and determined that it was identical to the antiscurvy factor found in citrus fruits. He rechristened it “ascorbic acid.” Today we know it as vitamin C.

Recently, we have even learned that the major red pigment in paprika, capsanthin, is a potent antioxidant. What more could one ask for? We have a colorful spice that is good for us and tastes great. Of course, some paprikas taste better than others, which is why I just had to snitch that sample from the shaker that adorned every table at Gundel’s. I may use it someday if I have a dinner guest who is important enough.

A British food critic once suggested that, compared to boiled cabbage, “steamed coarse newsprint bought from bankrupt Finnish salvage dealers and heated over smoky oil stoves is an exquisite delicacy!” I have never tasted coarse newsprint, steamed or otherwise, but given the choice, I would go for the cabbage. And I think you should as well. Why? Because I think we could all do with some more indole-3-carbinol.

You may not realize it, but food is the most chemically complex substance we encounter in our daily lives. Cabbage, for example, contains hundreds of different compounds. Some are responsible for its color, some for its aroma, and others for its taste. There are also vitamins and minerals, as well as a host of compounds with unknown functions. Some of these compounds, however, are beginning to yield their secrets to science. And we may reap the benefits. Here’s how.

The human body is a fantastic machine equipped with a range of defense mechanisms to protect itself against undesirable chemical intruders. A variety of enzymes can either convert these intruders into less harmful substances or link up with them and cause them to be eliminated through the urine. A cell’s genetic machinery cranks out these protective enzymes when potentially dangerous foreign substances activate receptors on the cell’s surface. Way back in the 1950s, researchers noted that cancer-causing substances triggered the release of protective enzymes; unfortunately, in many cases the enzymes were unable to eliminate the carcinogen completely. Clearly, though, some test animals fared better than others, apparently because they had more efficient enzyme-producing systems. There are human parallels here. Not every smoker develops lung cancer. Why not? Do the lucky ones produce more protective enzymes? And, if so, can we foster this trait?

Researchers uncovered a clue: they noted that rats exposed to one carcinogen were more resistant to the effects of a second carcinogen. These rats appeared to be protected by the enzymes their cells synthesized in response to the first attacker. Obviously, we cannot expose ourselves to a carcinogen to protect ourselves against other carcinogens. But what if we could identify substances that have a chemical similarity to cancer-causing agents but are themselves not dangerous? Might they not trick cells into generating protective enzymes? By the 1960s, we knew that this was a real possibility. We discovered that chemicals in cabbage, as well as in other cruciferous vegetables (so-called because of their cross-shaped leaves), like broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, could stimulate the production of protective enzymes.

Soon, researchers were focusing on one specific compound that had aroused interest because of its potential in the fight against breast cancer — namely, indole-3-carbinol.

The connection here is through estrogen, the female hormone that has been linked with tumor promotion. The relationship between estrogen and breast cancer, admittedly, is not a simple one. Laboratory studies have shown that estrogen, like many chemicals in the body, undergoes a variety of reactions after it is produced. Its metabolism, as these reactions are collectively called, can take two alternative routes. One produces 16-hydroxyestrone, which seems to be the culprit in terms of stimulating the irregular multiplication of breast tissue. Alternatively, estrogen can be converted into 2-hydroxyestrone, a compound that is relatively inert. Both of these conversions are governed by specific enzymes, levels of which can be affected by various factors. This is where indole-3-carbinol comes in. It stimulates the protective enzymes that take estrogen down the safe path, meaning that there will be less exposure of breast tissue to the nasty 16-hydroxyestrone molecules.

That’s pretty interesting stuff. It’s also pretty abstract for most people. And it’s not quite compelling enough to send them rushing to the kitchen to boil cabbage. But wait. Mice develop fewer mammary tumors when exposed to indole-3-carbinol. Rats exhibit less endometrial cancer. But things get even more interesting when we learn that researchers actually fed four-hundred-milligram capsules of indole-3-carbinol to women on a daily basis (roughly equivalent to the amount in half a head of cabbage) and determined that it really did affect the way that their bodies metabolized estrogen. Within two weeks, their levels of 2-hydroxyestrone — the good stuff — shot up. In fact, the levels rivaled those found in marathon runners, who have a lower incidence of breast cancer. So that’s what happened to the pill poppers. But what about eating cabbage itself?

Thanks to some Israeli researchers, we have an answer to that question as well. Eighty women on a kibbutz agreed to follow a diet rich in cruciferous vegetables and submit their urine for analysis. The ratio of 2-hydroxyestrone to 16-hydroxyestrone in their urine increased, suggesting protection against breast cancer. It would be interesting to follow these women for a number of years (probably not a difficult task — cabbage is a notorious gas producer) to see whether their rates of breast cancer turn out to be lower. There is a good chance that they will be — at least if we judge by some interesting epidemiological evidence from Germany and Poland.

Breast cancer rates in the former East Germany were significantly lower than those in West Germany, but after unification, the disease pattern started to equalize. While East German and West German lifestyles diverged in many ways, researchers did note that cabbage consumption was much higher in East Germany. This becomes even more meaningful in light of recent research carried out at the University of Illinois. There researchers attempted to determine why Polish women who moved to the U.S. had a higher breast cancer rate than women in Poland. Cabbage is a staple of the Polish diet, but Polish Americans tend to eat less of it. Was this a factor, the researchers wondered? Their next step was to stimulate test tube colonies of human breast cancer cells with estrogen and then add cabbage extract. The cabbage-treated cells grew more slowly. And it was not a question of using unrealistic amounts of cabbage extract; doses were those achievable by eating the vegetable. Furthermore, the experiments suggested that the effect was due not only to indole-3-carbinol — other antiestrogenic compounds also seemed to be present in the cabbage juice.

Now, I guess, we’re ready to head for the kitchen. Especially when we consider that cabbage is also high in vitamin K, which is receiving more and more attention for its role in strengthening bone. Researchers conducting the Nurses Health Study, which has been following over seventy thousand women for more than ten years, found that those who consumed moderate to high amounts of vitamin K from vegetable sources had a thirty-percent-lower risk of hip fractures. Still need more convincing? Then think about the fact that epidemiological studies show that people who claim to eat cabbage regularly have a lower risk of colon cancer.

Ah, now I can smell the cabbage cooking. But do it right: don’t boil it in water. That’s how you release the smelly sulfur compounds. As a general rule, the more you cook cabbage, the worse it smells. So, just stir-fry shredded cabbage in a little olive oil until it turns brown and then cook it in its own steam for a few minutes. Add a little salt, a grind of pepper, and a touch of sugar. Then toss it with some freshly boiled thin noodles. Couldn’t ask for anything better. Except perhaps the cabbage strudel my mother used to make. It was delicious and well worth the intestinal turmoil it sometimes caused. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to make it, so I’m settling for something I can make. Cabbage pizza. Don’t laugh. Try it. I’ll guarantee that it’s a delicacy — and not only when it’s compared with steamed Finnish cardboard.