Do you like your food hot, cold or lukewarm?

"in terms of the actual eating, I don't find piping-hot food that tasty. Sure, it will smell exquisite as the aromatic molecules evaporate, but once a morsel hits your mouth, everything tenses up." Amy Fleming - Guardian

I did as I was told by Heston for my steak dinner yesterday and rested the meat for five, maybe more minutes whilst the sauce was being prepared. As a result by the time the food got to the table the steak, was, to my taste, a little cold. Well it was lukewarm. My husband loved it being lukewarm, so it's obviously a personal thing.

I know that the gurus, when talking about any kind of roast meat say you have to let the meat rest - to let it relax and become juicier. Too tense, to refer to the quote at the top of the page. And they may be right. When you leave it to rest - covered or uncovered the juices certainly start to flow and maybe there is more taste. Maybe it's even tenderer.

But I confess I do like my food hot. I'm not talking about food that is meant to be served cold or lukewarm - salad or ice-cream, even cold soups for example - I'm talking about food that, to my mind, should be served hot. Whilst researching this article I found one that listed nine foods that the author thought should be served cold rather than hot - they included pizza, curry and pasta - I don't think so. I'm tempted to say, 'only in America'. Me I agree with a Frenchman:

“Soup must be eaten boiling hot and coffee drunk piping hot.” Grimod de la Reynière (1758-1838)

Actually I think almost everyone seems to agree on hot coffee. So hot it almost burns your tongue. Lots of people complain about lukewarm coffee. The theory for hot food is that it's the smell - there is more smell from hot food and so you are more tempted.

"Hot food emanates much more airborne particles than cold foods, and since a large part of our taste sensation also involves smell, hot food would therefore provide positive reinforcement in its selection." Dr. Stephen Socor

And this is particularly true of coffee for hot coffee has a particularly tempting smell. In fact the smell is often better than the taste. So if it's hot you can still savour the smell. The same with food. The downside is that you can potentially burn your tongue.

"Eating food when too hot is injurious, as weakening the nerves of the teeth and stomach by the stimulus of heat.” Catharine E. Beecher 'Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book' (1846)

I think I saw somewhere that smell is some kind of warning - but surely not if the smell is more tempting when the food is hot. I certainly feel that food should be hot, though I don't know where this comes from. Maybe if you ate it when it was hot - when I was young that is - you stood a better chance of finishing first and getting seconds. Though I don't think this was borne out in practice. My mother was much fairer than that. When I'm serving food at a dinner party I would like people to start eating as soon as possible and start eating whilst it's hot. I feel somehow that my cooking efforts are wasted if everyone waits until everyone is served before beginning. And the plates should be hot too, to keep the food warm as long as possible, though I confess I no longer do this. And I know this to be very wrong. Hot food on a cold plate makes the food cool immediately. Not good. It's a sign of a good restaurant isn't it that the plates are hot? Though mind you, when they tell you to be careful because the plates are hot they are sometimes pulling the wool over your eyes. Sometimes when I've touched the plate after being warmed I have found them to be only very lukewarm - though never cold to be fair.

But there certainly is another school of thought - that hot food should be eaten lukewarm. The theory being it will be tastier and also safer.

“Hot soup at table is very vulgar; it either leads to an unseemly mode of taking it, or keeps people waiting too long whilst it cools. Soup should be brought to table only moderately warm.” Charles Day, ‘Hints on Etiquette’ (1844)

It is a cultural thing too. I believe that Greek food is almost always served lukewarm, though I have no way of saying whether this is true or not. Incidentally, when looking for quotes for this article using the term 'lukewarm' I would say that 90% of those I found were religious - and American. Even those coffee mugs at the top of the page headed a religious diatribe. Again - only in America.

Warm salads are quite the thing aren't they? And they're Ok - a sort of halfway house. But cold soups - I'm still not sure about them - it's still a shock if you are not forewarned. And on the other hand warm ice-cream is really not good. So what do you like? Hot or cold or lukewarm?