The Experimental Cuisine Collective in partnership with Culinary Historians of New York Presents

“Making It Delicious: Flavor Science and the Industrialization of Food in the U.S.” with Nadia Berenstein

Grab any item off the shelf of a grocery store, and you’re almost certain to find some variation of the words, “contains natural and artificial flavors” on the package. What are these flavors, where do they come from, and what makes some of them “natural” and others not? Flavor additives are inescapable in our food system, but just as their components are often mysterious or mischaracterized, the history of these specialty chemicals remains largely untold.

Nadia Berenstein will examine how chemical additives designed to imitate, enhance, and improve flavor made their way into the U.S. food supply from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1950s, telling the stories of the people and companies who made flavors, the food manufacturers who used them, and the people who consumed them. Along the way, she will consider how scientific and technological knowledge about flavor and its chemical and sensory properties reshaped scientific, legal, and cultural meanings of “pure,” “natural,” and “artificial” in the first half of the twentieth century, transforming the food we eat and the ways we experience it.

A reception will precede the talk, and a tasting of foods flavored artificially and naturally will be passed during the talk.

Nadia Berenstein is a doctoral candidate in the department of History & Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. A 2014-2015 Haas Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, she is currently completing a dissertation about the history of flavor science in the United States. She holds a BA from Harvard College and an MA from New York University. A guest on the most recent episode of the Gastropod podcast, her blog, “Flavor Added,” is: http://www.nadiaberenstein.com/blog

Lee DeHaan will talk about his work to develop Kernza, a new grain crop, at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. Unlike all widely grown grain crops, Kernza is a perennial, meaning that after a single planting it will live for many years and bear numerous crops without reseeding. Perennials have tremendous potential to enhance sustainability by reducing pesticide and fertilizer contamination from agricultural lands and mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration. Dr. DeHaan’s work includes genetic improvement of Kernza through plant breeding and efforts to develop markets for this exciting new grain. Sample foods made from Kernza will be provided.

Lee DeHaan has been a plant breeder at The Land Institute since 2001. Raised on a farm in Minnesota, he has a strong background in the everyday challenges of agriculture. His focus is development of Kernza (wheatgrass) as a perennial grain. Lee earned a B.A. in Plant Science and Biology at Dordt College, and M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Agronomy, specializing in Agro-ecology, at the University of Minnesota.

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bread made with 50 percent kernza flour

In her presentation, Teaching The Evolution of Food and Medicine with Bitters, Shoots and Roots Bitters cofounder Rachel Meyer will take us on a journey into the history of the foods we eat and the mechanisms of evolution at work during the domestication of plant species from around the world. Through a series of interactive tastings, you will be treated to a molecular, chemical, and archaeobotanical tour of the geography of food origins and the ways plants have traditionally been exploited before they became the foods we prize today. Some unusual suspects, experienced through bitters, cocktails, and tisanes, include arborvitae, bhut jolokia peppers, cannibal’s tomato, Chinese indigo, devil’s hand flower, hemp seeds, monkfruit, moringa, sambong, and tartary buckwheat.

Rachel is a plant evolutionary biologist and founder of Shoots and Roots Bitters, which manufactures bitters and educates people about a wide array of the most evolutionarily and ethnobotanically fascinating species found around the world. Many of these species are her or her business partners research subjects. She earned her doctorate through the City University of New York and New York Botanical Garden Plant Science PhD program, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in New York University in the Purugganan lab, focusing on crop genomics. As part of Shoots and Roots, she teaches workshops on the Evolution of Food, Nature’s Pharmacy, The Science of Taste, and Botany for Bartenders. Her team also delivers their bitters and botanical science knowledge through flavor-sensory rich lectures and cocktail hours. She is from Los Angeles, but has lived in Harlem for 8 years, which is where the Shoots and Roots headquarters and kitchen space are.