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DE GUSTIBUS
By Mimi Sheraton
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Among the many words commonly used to describe food, ''rich'' is one of the most difficult to define, meaning, as it apparently does, different things to different people. ''Avoid rich foods,'' we have all been admonished by a doctor at one time or another. And puritans give much the same warning in a manner suggesting that though the eating of rich foods is not among the seven deadly sins, it is at least a bona fide subheading under the general category of gluttony.
I used to think I knew exactly what rich foods were, and the key word to me was creamy. Butter-cream and whipped-cream layer cakes and custard-filled eclairs and cream puffs (but not fruit pies or crisp cookies), chocolate mousse, ice-cream sundaes and any kind of food covered with a cream or egg-based sauce. It came as big news that there were those who considered pizza or any other Italian specialty with tomato sauce as being rich, and when a friend eating a cold boiled lobster suddenly stopped midway because, she said, the meat was so rich, I felt that perhaps the word had overtones that I had missed.
Asking around, I found that there are those who consider richness a quality of salade Ni,coise, with its tuna fish, raw vegetables, olives and vinaigrette dressing, an idea that would never have occurred to me. Similarly, the friend who complained of the lobster also said that broiled filet mignon steak and Japanese sushi were too rich to eat very much of. Raspberries, mangoes, bananas and papaya melons also were described as rich, and one man added espresso coffee to that list. How a Dictionary Defines It
According to one dictionary, rich as applied to food means fatty, oily or sweet, or being high in plant nutrients, or highly seasoned.
Texture apparently has a great deal to do with the perception of richness, which explains the fruits mentioned, and so does sweetness. No one I asked in this informal survey named bacon or any other crisp food, even if fried in deep fat, as being rich. If sweetness were the sole determinating factor, raisins would not have been ruled out by those who cited many desserts.
Butter and other animal fats would seem to be ingredients that make food rich in the minds of many, but several people I asked thought that spaghetti with clams, garlic and olive oil was just as rich as fettuccine Alfredo with its sauce based on cream and cheese.
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