Thursday, January 20, 2011

"Too many cooks spoil the broth"

With the seemingly endless increase in the number of celebrity chefs and cooking shows, this proverb presents a chilling warning. "Beware your present cook levels," it says, "lest your broth be spoiled." In the interests of broth disaster avoidance, Science and Googles have been used to construct the following chart, below.



The earliest recorded broth event (shown here by the red line) occurred at the dawn of time, in 1510. This early form of broth was known as Primordial Soup, and did not require cooks.

When cooks (shown by the blue line) did eventually evolve in 1540, they seemingly did not produce any broth initially. However, most likely their early broth experiments needed time to simmer, which would explain the massive broth spike which occurred in 1620.

Cooks quickly reappeared on the scene in 1630 to see how the broth was doing, and apart from a short vacation at the end of the 1600s they have been brothside ever since in steadily increasing numbers.

Spoilage, (shown by the green line) first makes an appearance around 1900 and rises sharply until 1950. Although cook levels did steadily increase during that time, there was also the biggest broth spike ever seen.

After examining all of this evidence and applying Scientific Logic it quickly becomes clear that far from there being too many cooks, there was in fact too much broth, causing it to overflow onto the floor, thus causing spoilage.

In conclusion then: it's actually too much broth that spoils the broth, and it's not fair to blame the cooks. Remember, there wouldn't be any broth at all without cooks, unless you count Primordial Soup, and that's probably all cold and congealed by now anyway.