Putting salt on food before you taste it

[jack]

There's a story about a woman who went to a job interview, and was taken out to dinner, and put salt on her food before tasting it, and the boss immediately rejected her without further consideration.

It didn't literally happen, but the attitude that you should or shouldn't add salt to food is something people really do argue about.

The intended message is something like, "the candidate was stupid for adding salt without knowing if the food was salty enough, since she can't take it out again".

But in fact, that's an etiquette issue. Do you trust the person preparing the meal to have prepared it correctly, or not?

But as with all parables, there are many possible messages. What I see is a class issue. If you have been raised from birth eating primarily meals cooked by a personal chef, then yes, any meal in front of you should be tailored to your personal taste, and you shouldn't assume otherwise.

But if you've been cooked for primarily by an overworked unaided parent trying to cook for seven, or by McDonalds, the food probably hasn't been tailored to your personal taste. Or it has in some respects, but the chef probably aimed for "slightly below average preference for salt"[1] and assumed that everyone would know that and could add salt to whatever level they preferred.

There are reasons for workplaces to require people to jump through hoops even if they're completely arbitrary (eg. wearing shoes, wearing ties, not swearing, lying and pretending personality tests are super-effective, using a formal register of speech, etc). At a minimum it selects people who are willing to put in effort to fit in and not be disruptive.

But it's also true that, as a side effect, it selects for the people who are already in that system, and against those who aren't, even if they're equally competent.

So I'm not sure if I blame the fictional boss for blaming the applicant. I'm not even sure if I blame her for lying and claiming the applicant stupid, rather than just for coming from a different culture -- claiming that the ways people signal high social status are due to inherent virtue rather than learned conformity is itself a way people effectively signal high social status!

But even if it's inevitable that people do so, and even if I'm equally "guilty" of being "stupid" and of "eating in the wrong restaurants", I resent being dismissed for the wrong thing, for being called stupid if I come from the wrong culture, or having my culture blamed if I ever show mental aptitude for something.

[1] In taste, not health.

Comments

[pseudomonas]

Places where the waiters offer to pepper your food before you taste it — are they being Wrong too?

[mathcathy]

Are you sure that didn't literally happen? I heard that it was Henry Ford - as in, right down to the exact person that did it - at that point I think the balance of truth sways in favour.

[jack]

I don't know either way. The story as it was told to me was too pat to have happened as described, but I can certainly imagine that sort of thing happening.

As I say in the post, people definitely do think "putting salt on food is a big insult", so I would expect that, at some point, someone fired/rejected/demoted someone for that, but I'm sceptical that it was plausible as a sensible thing to do.

I checked on Snopes before I posted, and they didn't trace it to a specific incident, which they normally do if they can. And there were no stories with very much detail. But they didn't list much information, so there's no way to say it DIDN'T come from a specific incident.

I heard that it was Henry Ford - as in, right down to the exact person that did it

If you were persuaded at the time you heard it, there might be good reason to suspect there were authentic details.

But I'm not sure having a name in is any evidence. Cute stories invariably get attached to people famous for quips and/or innovation (eg. Churchill invented lots of sayings, but almost every other clever saying of the last 100 years is ALSO attributed to Churchill).

Snopes lists the same story being attached to a dozen other famous inventors or businessmen. So I'm unconvinced that one particular one was more convincing, unless there were other corroborating details as well.

[mathcathy]

I know it from a book of lateral thinking puzzles I bought to inspire me for Friday puzzles I set at work. This book references lots of specific events and for the ones where it references specific individuals / countries / events and where I know enough to verify, it's always accurate.

[simont]

My ex used to put salt on absolutely everything, including both my cooking and her own. She was initially quite apologetic about salting food I'd prepared, on the basis that I might consider it an insult to my cooking. In fact I hadn't, because I'd already noticed that she plentifully salted her own cooking too and decided that she must simply like salt.

It's quite startling how many possible kinds of insult it's possible to read into behaviour around condiments! I can see the possible insult in salting before you taste here, but on the other hand, surely it's just as possible to argue in the other direction: if I put salt on first, it's probably just because I like salt, but if I try the food and then salt it heavily then it must be a comment on how it tastes. I think avoiding overthinking this sort of thing in the first place is likely to be the only way to remain relaxed...

(I'm reminded of the bit in Babylon 5 where Delenn takes one bite of the meal Sheridan has ineptly cooked her, and then displays her polished diplomacy skills by remarking on a painting on the wall behind Sheridan, causing him to turn round to look at it and hence not notice her applying a massive dose of condiments :-)

[ptc24]

I sometimes think about a scenario which goes: "I'm not prejudiced, but the people who are lining my wallet are, so I'm terribly sorry but I'm going to give this lucrative opportunity to someone else". There is of course the insincere version where the person is prejudiced and isn't sorry, and of course even if you take the sincere version, it sounds like the sort of thing that hardly anyone says out loud.

With the boss; it's one of these things where personal blame is possibly the wrong thing. What is needed here, I think, is antidiscrimination legislation, or at least a strong culture of nondiscrimination - if it binds her, it binds her competitors too, and she's not putting herself at a disadvantage by hiring the "wrong" people.

[jack]

Good point. Yeah, I think that's the real lesson, yay.

[sunflowerinrain]

The discussions about insults and class are bewildering me. I can't see how adding salt to a dish you haven't tasted, made by someone you don't know, makes any sense. Tasting and then deciding if/how much to add makes sense. Not adding salt because it's bad for you makes sense, too.

However, using any old excuse to bolster up a subconscious judgement is not sensible :)

[gerald_duck]

I know this is almost incidental to the point of your posting, but I actually know the food in many of Cambridge's restaurants and therefore can salt the food to my taste without first trying it.

Admittedly, once in a while I come unstuck when they change chef. (-8

[hairyears]

In a career spanning decades and over a hundred and forty separate interviews, most of them in a technical discipline and for employers explicitly requesting named technical and business competencies, I can assure you that the dominant theme of every interview is this:

"Reassure us that you are our sort of chap"

All else is peripheral and often so much so that I can say that the initial handshake and 'Good Morning' were the most significant exchange of information in half or more of my successful interviews.

[jack]

*sigh* Yes I think so. That's what I mean about it being possibly effective, but not especially truthful.

And I feel bad because (a) I'm not very good at it but (b) I'm sure I instinctively do exactly the same thing when evaluating people.

[hairyears]

The answer to that is: write a structured interview report with separate sections on the candidate's appearance, manner, style and approach, operational competencies and technical knowledge.

This assumes that you have a script of questions to ask, and that you take notes in the interview... And that you prepare, conduct, and write-up every interview with the intention of producing consistent and comparable assessments.

[jack]

Yep.

[naath]

I think it would be odd to add any condiment to any food without tasting the food unless you knew from experience what this food was like (for instance I know what pizza express pizza is like because I eat it so often).

So to me reaching immediately for the salt would indicate either "this person knows this restaurant well" or "this person likes their food much saltier than the average person and has assumed this restaurant caters to the average".

I don't think it says anything at all about the quality of the food - if I like my chips salty I like them salty regardless of how good they are as chips.

[ciphergoth]

I have a friend who likes their food unusually salty. They don't really need to taste it to know that it won't be salty enough for them - if it was, few people would eat there.