Pete writes: My wife thinks there’s a correct way to eat a Pringle. She says you get more of the salt and flavor if you hold it a certain way. I don’t know which way she thinks is right, but I know she corrects me if I eat them “wrong.”
The Pringle was conceived of by the chemist Fred Baur to deliver a uniform unbroken product, with its signature saddle-shaped, snug-stacking design. It’s technically a hyperbolic paraboloid, but it also looks like a potato tongue. So your wife is correct: There is a way to consistently maximize Pringle-surface-to-taste-bud contact. You sent me a photo of your wife eating a Pringle, to help me understand what’s happening here. Unfortunately, she’s doing it wrong — eating the chip with the saddle edges up, rather than wrapping it fully around the tongue. Sorry to destroy your marriage in this way; but perhaps you will join me in delighting at the fact that, at his request, a portion of Baur’s cremains were buried in a Pringles tube.
