process.

What if we could capture and recreate smells and flavors? What would that look like?

Does place affect the taste of a food through its microbiome? Do the ferments that were originally identical change over time if they were maintained in different places?

We designed an experiment to test this. We will be reproducing yogurts in 2 apartments and a controlled environment, then sequencing samples from each batch across generations. We will be looking to see how samples vary from the controlled, lab yogurt to identify their location-specific microorganisms, and we’ll analyze how generations change over time to better understand the evolution of yogurt microbiomes over time generally, and specifically how a specific time of production might leave its mark in the microbiome.

Metabolism is the process of creating and breaking down molecules.

We can taste and smell because of the molecules that make up what we eat. Often those molecules are produced by the microorganisms in our food, which are the products of their metabolic pathways.

As we better understand the interactions between microorganisms in specific microbiomes that lead to metabolic byproducts that produce smells, flavors, and textures, we hope to be able to find ways to reproduce those characteristic smells and flavors across different substrates.

In other words, if we find that the microbiome of the grape must of a 2014 Frank Cornelissen Munjebel wine is a major contributor to the unique taste of that wine that lets tasters ID where and when it came from, we want to be able to use that microbiome’s blueprint on something like, say, cotton candy to recreate some of the same characteristics of the wine’s terroir. What about the taste will transfer between radically different substrates?

the design.

 the product.