Meetforeal organised a Taste and Smell – The Chemical Senses on Saturday 26th September.

For those of you who missed my previous post - here is some background on the presenter

David Jackson is a Chemist (BSc, MSc, HDipBrew, WSET Cert Wines & Spirits) and has worked for the Diageo (Guinness) Research Department for over ten years specialising in Flavour Chemistry and Flavour Analysis. Specific areas of expertise include the Flavour of Roasted & Fermented Products, Flavour Freshness & Ageing and Deconstructing Flavour using Sensory and Instrumental Analysis Techniques. He has successfully developed major new products for Diageo and currently leads a team of scientists where his responsibilities also include Food Safety and Nutrition.

 If you have a chance to attend on of Davids presentation in Dublin, you really should as it was a very interesting. You could tell instantly that David was well schooled in holding such events as we immediately kicked off with an ice breaking ” Find someone who….” there were 8 questions from – someone who likes brusselsprouts to someone who can make sushi. With ice well and truly broken we settled in for the rest of the event.

In smaller groups we were then given four clear test tubes, with no other details but lettering from A – D. They contained water with the addition of a chemcial smell. But the trick was to see if we could guess what the smell was. Oh yeah and one of the four was a control sample – ie it was just water.

Test Tube                             My Guess                                                  Actual Smell

A                             Boiled Veg – Cabbage Predominatly         Boiled Cabbage

B                              Blue Cheese                                             Parmasan Cheese/Blue Cheese

C                              Water                                                           Water

D                              Fruit Strawberry Chewing Gum             Pear Drops

Test tube D was the first one that we smelled so I am not sure if that is why I didn’t get it but – I was a little disappointed in the snozf or missing that one. No excuses I just didn’t get it right !

 David then worked his way through some slides which explained the science of smell, aromas and taste. Very interesting stuff indeed – Adrian and Ellen mentioned that they might make the slides available so perhaps at a later date I might be able to post them on the blog here.

 We then moved on to a blind tasting section of the session, David was looking for a volunteer so always looking to improve my palate I put myself forward to made a laughing stock. Things didn’tgo so well as not only was their a blindfold but a nose clip – items that I am not familiar with. It was only after I had put the clip on my nose did I think to ask if it had been cleaned since the last session – I was reassured that it had.

Louis from the group then had the lovely task of spoon feeding me – first the three with the nose clip and blind fold on. Then after that the same three samples with just the blind fold on. As David had explained it is very difficult to taste anything with out your sense of smell – so when tasting the three samples they all just tasted like orange jelly styled marmalade.

Once the nose clip was removed things got a little easier – if still very unglamorousfor yours truly. I got offered a smell of the three samples with mixed results. I should point out that that I didn’t know what the samples were. But the following were my guesses were

Sample                               My Guess                                                       Answer

1                                            Orange Jelly Marmalade                         Apricot Jam

2                                             Raspberry Jam                                           Strawberry Jam

3                                              Gooseberry Jam                                           Blackcurrant Jam

In my defense, no I am not making excuses, I didn’t really get a good smell of the last one and one the thing that came through was the increase in acidity levels.  This was very disappointing for me as I have done the jam test before and scored 100% but not so on this occasion

David then showed a small video from El Bulli and how they use Sodium Alginate to create amazing pasta less raviolis amongst other things. The video below I think is the video David showed, but it certainly shows all of the same information. One day I will eat in El Bulli *crosses fingers* 

David prepares to make melon juice balls – in what was a pretty straight forward process if you know what you are doing.

The drops were placed into the sodium alginate, then cleaned in water and we could then taste them. They were like small, slightly tough skinned melon juice balls. They just had to be crushed slightly with your tongue and there was a slightly weird pop of flavour on your palate.

This you tube video shows it being done in a much more sophisticated scale, once again at El Bulli. God what it must be like to eat there.

 You can see the result of davids work below – just waiting to be fished out. 

 Overall the event was very interesting – anyway that I can learn more about my palate and continue to educate is always cool with me.  So hopefully there will be more of these events in Galway so that more people can learn more about how they taste and smell.

Well done to Ellen and Adrian for organising the event – hopefully there we will be more like it to come in the not to distant future.