For 16 month , from December 2013 to April 2015 , Christopher St. Cavish toteda digital exfoliation , a caliper , and hair scissorsto more than 50 eateries in Shanghai — all in the name of savory science . St. Cavish was on a mission to catalog and rank every Shanghai soup dumpling ( or xiao long bao ) with a method acting that was based on heavy information rather than immanent opinion .
The outcome is theShanghai Soup Dumpling Index , a “ quantitative framework to the survive qualitative descriptor of the Shanghai soup dumpling . ” To create the index , St. Cavish meticulously gather up the weight of a dumplings , the weight of the soup within , the exercising weight of the pick , and the heaviness of the skin . To that data , he applied a formula : [ ( Filling + Soup / Thickness of Skin ) x 100 ] . The higher the number , the better the dumpling , and winner would stand for the greatest effort of applied science in the reality of xiao long bao . If that sound awfully dry , then let ’s talk food : St. Cavish was looking for thin hide , a peck of soup , plenty of weft , and reinvigorated centre .
Like the real Olympics , this culinary competition forced dumplings to qualify before they could vie . Some were immediately ineligible due to breaking , too much MSG , or just plain poor lineament . All of the dumplings in the Index had to have porc weft and could not be season with anything other than spring onions , ginger , Shaoxing wine , sugar , and/or MSG . The dumplings had to be of the Nanxiang style — a preeminence based mostly on their size and seasoning . They ’re also dumplings attend to immediately after steaming for the high-pitched timber .
The target and shade of St. Cavish ’s venture arenumerousand remarkablyin - deptheven for dumpling devotee . Thirteen eateries made it into the top stave of Class A. Zun Ke Lai is top cad with a sexual conquest of 24.32 , and it ’s the gold medal winner by a long dead reckoning . identification number two is Taibei Mingchu , with an Index score of 18.52 . St. Cavish ’s method acting offer a new way of approaching what it means when we say one lieu or denture is better than another . More significantly , it ’s a great way to justify eating 15 pounds of delicious xiao long bao .
