If you want an example of how brilliant the worldwide web is at spreading false information, try Googling the saying ‘Pinch, punch, first day of the month’. Ignoring the long established tradition among British schoolchildren for making up rhymes and inflicting pain on one another, the top result is a ludicrous story on ITV.com about George Washington meeting Indian tribes on the first of every month and taking along a bowl of fruit punch with an extra pinch of salt in it as a gesture of goodwill.
I mean, come on! What do they take us for?
Scroll through the other search results and you’ll find that such esteemed organs as The Metro, Daily Mail, Evening Standard and Country Living have all run with the Washington story. British journalism eh – best in the world. Who was it who said, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth?” The web will tell you it was Joseph Goebbels, but the fact that there is no evidence of him ever having said it is proof that whoever did say it was right.
Anyway, I was having a lunchtime pint with my friend Nick, esteemed designer responsible for the beautiful layout of the first (and only) volume of Word of the Week – A Year’s Worth of Nourishment for the Literally Peckish (get it in time for Christmas!), and my eye was drawn to the sausage bap, which, according to the menu, came with “a pinch of chips”.
A pinch of chips? That’s a chip, isn’t it?
I was intrigued, so I asked the lady behind the bar how many chips in a pinch and she made a pinching gesture and said, “About that many.” None the wiser, I thought there’s only one way to find out and ordered the sausage bap. Nick, meanwhile, went for the chicken burger, but that’s by the by.
We proceeded to discuss the term ‘pinch’ and how it must vary from person to person; therefore, any recipe that calls for “a pinch of salt” can never be consistent because one cook’s pinch is another cook’s fistful. Just watch the chefs on telly – they chuck the stuff in like it’s the elixir of life.
Interestingly, scientists have carried out research into the human pinch and found that the power of the pinch can exceed 15kg. I tried to find an analogy to illustrate what that means in practical terms (eg how many kg of pinch power does it take to crush a grape?) but all I could find was videos of people crushing water melons between their thighs and I’d save that for another time.
So why do scientists bother measuring pinch power at all? Well, it turns out it’s crucial information for surgeons performing reconstructive surgery on hand injuries. When they rebuild your hand, they need to make sure they give you enough strength to operate the remote control but not so much that you write off your car every time you adjust the wing mirrors. (Although I guess that could only happen once).
None of which tells you how much salt to put in your fruit punch, nor indeed how many chips you’re going to get with your sausage bap. Suffice it to say, there were enough.
