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No Such Thing As A Fish
No Such Thing As A Fish

611: No Such Thing As A Forbidden Panettone

November 27, 2025 • 58m

Summary

⏱️ 6 min read

Overview

This episode of No Such Thing As A Fish features Anne Miller's return to the podcast, where the team discusses fascinating facts about panettone baking traditions, giant musical keyboards in ancient Indian temples, extreme climbing achievements by Alex Honnold and his mother, and the naming competition for London's Post Office Tower. The hosts explore quirky historical details, naming competitions, and unusual architectural features while maintaining their characteristic humor.

The Art and Tradition of Panettone Making

Anne Miller delivers a classic fact about the traditional panettone-making process, revealing that these Italian Christmas breads must be hung upside down like bats immediately after baking to prevent collapse. The discussion explores the intensive craft behind authentic panettone, including centuries-old yeast cultures that require feeding every four hours, the connection to Saint Blaise (patron saint of choking), and the wildly uncommercial nature of traditional production that uses half butter by volume.

  • Traditional panettone must be flipped upside down within 20 seconds of baking to prevent the dome from caving in
  • Authentic panettone is half butter by volume, making it wildly expensive and uncommercial to produce
  • Some Italian bakeries have been using the same locally sourced yeast since 1922, feeding it every four hours
  • The Taiwanese team won the 2025 Panettone World Championships, with strict rules including mandatory hat-wearing
  • Traditional Milanese panettone must contain 20% sultanas and dried fruit by law according to the Chamber of Commerce
" The picture I found online, which I love, is this big wire rack with panettones hanging upside down, which suggests if you were to examine, as I will do this Christmas, the bottom of your panettone and you see little holes where the wires have gone through, they're hanging upside down to cool. "
" One man was 86 and has been working since he was a child and I can't compete with that. I decided it was going to take too long. "
" We can't just use manna because manna has laxative properties, which implies the existence of an experiment that went disastrously wrong. "

Ancient Indian Musical Temples and the Big Piano

James reveals that the iconic giant floor piano from the 1988 film Big, played by Tom Hanks in the famous FAO Schwarz scene, has actually existed in Indian temples for 500 years. The Eravataeswara Temple features musical staircases where each step produces a different note of the Carnatic scale. The discussion expands to cover various musical architectural features across India, the problematic aspects of the Big movie, and the inventor Remo Saraceni who created the modern version.

  • The Eravataeswara Temple in Tamil Nadu has a staircase where each step plays a different note of the Carnatic musical scale when stepped on
  • These musical temples include pillars that ring with different notes when struck and blowing pillars that work like organ pipes
  • The film Big was the fourth body-swap movie released within eight months in 1987-88
  • Tom Hanks studied the child actor's movements and replicated them to authentically portray a 13-year-old in an adult body
  • The piano inventor Remo Saraceni was a NASA rocket scientist who worked on re-entry systems between 1965-69
" Those giant walking keyboards that Tom Hanks plays in Big have existed in India for 500 years. "
" The director said, well, then you've got a teenage girl having sex with an adult man, albeit in your body. And they realised that that was problematic. They didn't make that extra step that it was all problematic. But that was the 80s for you. "

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