July 11, 2024 • 36 mins
For most of human history, people were locked in a continual struggle to find food and avoid starvation. Eating for pleasure wasn't really a thing the common person could do. However, as time went on and technology improved, eating became as much a recreation as a hobby -- and this led civilization to the fascinating, ridiculous world of artificial flavors. In the first part of this week's special two-part episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore the science of flavor, and use the story of vanilla as a way to understand the problems that led to synthetic flavoring in the first place.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. That's our super producer, the Willie Wonka
of Ridiculous History, mister Max Williams, the.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Snarsberrys taste like snosberries, and the Max Williams.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Ferry's. That's Noel Brown. I am Ben Bullen and Noel.
Today we are pursuing one of our favorite things. Uh,
behind the curtain, folks. This is something that we talk
about with our friends who were in Vogel bamb and
Anti Reese of Savor constantly. It's food history. What's your
(01:07):
favorite flavor? Do you have? Like a favorite flavor? I
really like pistachio a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I like the nuts, I like the ice cream, I
like the macaron I like it artificial. I like it
freaking all natural. It's just a damn fine flavor, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, yeah, agreed, I'm partial to pineapple. But also I
eat pretty much everything except for so far human flesh.
So well, you know, hopefully they're working on this. Actually
it turned out to not be true grown human flesh,
but why the hell not if it's not hurting anybody.
I guess it does become an ethical quandary at that point,
(01:48):
like is it okay to eat human flesh just on
a basic level if you're not having to murder the
human or is there something abhorrent and against God about
just inherently? Yeah, exactly bidden flavor because maybe it's awesome.
It's probably chicken. But uh, you know, I was thinking
about this episode today, Noel, because you and I have
(02:12):
both recently traveled separately, uh, to Europe, and one thing
that always stands out is just the different palette of
fast food flavors or convenience store flavors. Like if you
go to the United Kingdom, you can get potato chips
in all sorts of strange flavorings, right, they're they're just
(02:34):
like you know what would taste like potato cheese and
onion cheese.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And but here's the thing, though, it's very culturally driven,
because cheese an onion is just like a mega popular
just flavor bass kind of I mean, yeah, not to
rag too hard. In the UK, we know that our
boy Heston bloom and Thal hails from there, and there
certainly are the same. Yeah, there are some very thoughtful
culinary minds out of the UK, but they get a
(03:00):
bad rap is just like boiled sausage and you know beans,
it's kind of whatever.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I mean, an English national dishes curry. You might have
been an empire, you might have.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And I find that fascinating too. Like
the Bondme sandwich I find to be among the perfect
sandwiches of the world is totally a project, a product
of imperialism, you know, because it's like it's this French
bread roll, this baguette that's got like this you know,
pork kind of roast slow roasted pork and a jalapeno,
(03:34):
and like it's just it's.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
A weird hodgepodge that you wouldn't get if you didn't
have people taking each other's countries over. You know, it's
so weird. You say that because, as per usual, I
was up very late last night and I had Apocalypse
Now in the background as I was working out, and
it's just a cozy, cozy thing, right, Yeah, it just
been things and so so they had you know, there's
(03:57):
that great scene. I think it's only it may only
be in the Reducs version, but there's that great scene
where they see the French Indo China plantation and they anyway,
this is sort of about imperialism, but it's also.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I mean, you mentioned the thing about the flavors and
the you know, the artificial flav We're talking about artificial
flavors the episode. Yes, I'll tell you who does it
real well? Is is Japan or Asian countries? You to
what's We're very lucky here in Atlanta to have access
(04:35):
to places like the Buford Highway Farmers Market where they
have I you not, most every flavor of weird Japanese
lays available. Yeah, and it'll be things like shrimp, It'll
be things like squid. It'll be things like barbecue, beef steak,
and even the packaging is dope and weird and it
(04:56):
comes in these weird little tubes sometimes and I just
love everything about it. And there is, of course science
behind this. A friend of mine came over for a
barbecue the other night and brought.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Cuban sandwich chips over that tasted like pickles and ham
and been mustard, and they truly did. And it does
you get into Willy Wonka territory where when Violet Beauregard
eats the pill she's like I could feel the soup's
running down my throat, you know, like it really starts
to approach that level of magic. It's all good till
(05:29):
you hit the blueberries right exactly, never quite never quite
not nicked that one. Let's watch Willy Wonka later. That's
that's great, the good one, though not the cursed one
with Chap and the teeth. We know the one we're
talking about, and we know what's technically called Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory. Do you think the Timothy Schallomey one
was fun? Though it's by the folks that brought us Paddington.
(05:50):
I know it got a bad rap because out of
context he does seem goofy and a little try hard.
But I thought it was a lovely film, and I
loved that the same guy from the Newest Dune adaptation,
you know, Timothy shallome is don't be coy with yes
it is. He's very He's very hot, very hot young man.
Right now. I love when your voice goes arch, don't
(06:11):
be coy. I also love that you mentioned Japan, because
Japan is streets ahead in so many parts of modern society,
including of course, toilet technology and for our purposes today,
the KitKat formula, they went absolutely bonkers. They have flavors
(06:33):
of KitKat that are not edible flavors, stuff like ocean
dream or whatever. I'm making that one up, but it's
probably real. It does feel as though it might resemble
a air freshener more than a nice, delicious chocolate a tree.
But stuff like whole grain biscuit, Like what if we
(06:53):
had a chocolate bar that tasted like a cracker that
kind of already is a cracker wrapped in a It's
very meta and I love it. If you go to
Japanhall dot com you can get a lot of the
stuffmail or at and it ain't cheap.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And if you go to Beuford Highway Farmer's Market here
in Atlanta, these bags of these bonkers kitkats are very
small and quite expensive.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, yeah you can. You can also learn more about
kit katsuh with our again our pals over at our
peer podcast or sister podcast saver h. Look, it's a
brave new world of KitKat flavors and it's all due
to the science of artificial flavors. No, how would we
(07:35):
describe artificial flavors?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Well, it's it's just it's food science, you know, in
the same way we have seasonings where you combine different
types of naturally occurring substances, you know, or perhaps unnaturally occurring,
like MSG, which is a chemical compound that creates that
third flavor hit the umami, which I think we all love.
And we also know that MSG has gotten a bad
(07:58):
rap do no small part to racism. Shout out to
our episode on Chinese restaurants. Yeah, and the.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Simpsons, but thank you for referencing us.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Know that there was a demonization of Chinese restaurants in
the United States and that led to the demonization of
MSG monosodium glutamate. But yeah, I mean, artificial flavoring is
just a more weaponized, science y version of cooking.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I think both of us in our kind of we
don't do this as much anymore as we used to.
But we used to go on the road and do
these like sales pitch things. And I think both of us,
either together separately, ended up at some kind of flavor
lab where we got a tour of the back rooms
and it's it's what you think. It's folks in white
lab coats with like microscopes and big old synthesis machines,
(08:47):
and I'm no scientists here, but it is science. And
then you may recall the scene from Breaking Bad at Madrigal,
the Crazy Big Empire, where you got the CEO taste
testing these French sauces for their one of their chicken
franchise or their chicken chains, and the scientists are presenting it.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
They're not chefs, they're scientists. And without spoiling things for
the Shakespearean level show Breaking Bad, which is, by the way,
Anthony hopkins favorite show. He says a lot. He wrote
a letter about it without spoiling things. I believe that
(09:28):
Gustav Fring genuinely cared about the chicken, and I think
that's a very important character distinction. He gotta start, he
gotta start with the chicken. You know, yes, Sar, chicken
came before the meth. I think you know the math
was just like obviously made more money. But he always
cared about quality control and cleanliness. You know that episode
(09:49):
we made that poor kid scrub the friars until his
hands bland. I mean, not a good guy, but you
gotta to respect his attention to detail. Not a great guy,
but he had a code. You know what I mean
like Ronald Reraken by the way, if you're missing and
what is it Gian Carlo Esposito in an arch type
role like that, highly recommend you check out The Boys,
(10:10):
which is a Bonker's superhero thing, not for the Fate
of Heart or the Pearl clutchy amongst us. It's very
raunchy and borderline pornographic at times, but he plays a
fring esque kind of evil overlord character and he kicks butt.
He plays kind of our boss a little bit, a
(10:31):
little bit. Artificial flavors are are a win win for
a lot of people because they are a cost effective
way for these flavor scientists that we just described to
make something taste like strawberry or snawsberry. I let that
part out, yep, yeah, without having to use actual strawberries,
(10:55):
without being dependent upon seasonal harvest nor the weather. When
everything goes according to plan. This is great. But our
question day is how did this whole artificial flavor thing
happen in the first place? Like why does grape candy
taste so unlike grapes? And what hell is a blue raspberry?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
And why do I love me a grape knee high?
But I don't really care for a grape off the show.
You know what I mean, I really and I like
a banana flavored popsicle. I'm not the biggest fan of
a banana.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Ah. Great, that's gonna play the whole banana quandary.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
But boil boy, should we just dive right in this
is let's do it, let's do let's do some science.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yes please? Okay, So we talked about umammy. The tongue.
The human tongue has taste receptors. These taste receptors are
the reason you prefer some foods to others, and they're
they're like five basic ones. Umami is the controversial one.
But we know there's sour, salty, bitter, sweet, and this
(12:05):
sight smell taste of food. It stimulates the production of
saliva of different chemicals in the stomach. You, if you
are human, are designed to prioritize some taste over others.
And that's entirely because of evolution. For most of human history,
(12:27):
humans were always about to starve.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
So that's a very good point bend, and it wasn't
as much of a luxury as it was about like
just getting those calories and making sure you didn't die.
So as evolution and you know, the evolution of science
and technology became more a thing you were able to
sort of be able to prioritize preference and aside, I
(12:52):
like the way this tastes versus that, and you could
like pick and choose. I was just going to ask,
real quid, do you think people who are really picky
eaters who I have a few of in my life
and sometimes it drives me bonkers, are they is? Is
there something about their actual equipment that leads to that.
I know sometimes people have issues with texture and it
can be a combination, but some people maybe just taste
(13:13):
things too strongly or it makes them It makes them
they don't like the way it tastes because something hits
them too is too.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Sour, too sweet, too savory. Quite possibly, Yeah, there there
are psychological, neurological, and physiological factors in all of those.
Like we know there is a real life genre of superpower,
super taster, super taste or so uh, those folks will
(13:42):
those folks have a very Princess in the Pea approach
to things like capsaius in or salt. Princess in the
Pea being the Western fairy tale about the princess who
was so sensitive that she could lay on one hundred
mattresses or something and still feel a piece.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
A tiny p And you can also kind of bring
it back around to another Western fairy tale of Goldilocks
and the Three bears, referring to the perfect amount, the
perfect level of spice or seasoning, which would be that
Goldilocks zone.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah, and the thing is, so every animal on the planet,
so far as we know, prioritizes some sources of nutrition
over others, whether that's a carnivore, whether that's an herbivore,
an omnivore, or things like the koala or the panda bear,
which mostly eat one sort of thing bamboo or eucalyptus leaves.
(14:42):
We know that the big difference between humans all the
other animals on this planet is that the human proved
capable of not just finding their favorite flavors in the wild,
but also creating those flavors or the semblance of them
for similarite. For most of human history, people tended to
(15:08):
eat what we would call fresh food, the kind of
stuff you find in the produce section of the infamous
Beauford Highway farmers market. That's right, Yeah, you know, just
your regular old fruit and veg but then as the
need to keep thinking, there's a couple. It's interesting because
a lot of these techniques were established or were started
(15:31):
because of a need to preserve things, but they also
affect the flavor. And once you get a taste of
something that's been fermented that's got a little bit of
that funk to it, you can't really go back if
it hits you and you like it. So this is
when you really start to see technol food technology that
was designed for one purpose starting to gradually change the
(15:54):
way people perceive flavor. Yeah, it's so nuts. You know
what we got to do. You know, We've got to
give everybody the Food and Drug Administration's definition of artificial flavoring.
You'll see how complicated this issue becomes in the history
when Noel, could you give us the quote because it's surreal. Absolutely,
(16:17):
the FDA has this to say.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
The term artificial flavor or artificial flavoring means any substance
the function of which is to impart flavor which is
not derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable
or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf,
or similar plant material, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy products
or fermentation products thereof ding.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Ding ding ding ding ding ding. But that's its own category, right,
because it transforms the flavor of these things into something
else entirely mm hmm. And this is not an inherently
bad idea, right, artificial flavor, So either to our point earlier,
(17:01):
it can yield some fantasmical, very interesting combinations of texture
and flavor that can be very appealing and dare I
say exciting, right, do you have a candy bar that
tastes like a beetroot that can be you know, again,
I mentioned Heston Blumenthal. He had a TV series for
(17:23):
a while where he would kind of approximate the food
of different eras, like he would do like medieval stuff
or whatever. And a big thing that he likes to
do is like disguise something as something else where it'll
be it looks like a piece of fruit, but it's
actually made of meat. And there's something your brain does,
sort of like when you think you're gonna take a
sip of soda water but it's actually sprite or vice versa.
(17:46):
Your brain kind of recoils and that's not good.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
But you can weaponize that in a way that is
interesting and exciting, and artificial flavoring is a cool way
to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, one hundred percent. Also shout out to our buddy
Richard Blaze. That guy's living in the future boy at
the gastronomic level. The Blaze me. We were on his
podcast Food Court once we talked about bacon and sausage,
and I didn't know him super super well before that
as a personality, but since then he's blown up, and
I'm a huge fan of his Next Level Chef series
(18:19):
with Gordon Ramsey, who I've been a fan of for
many years. It's sort of this dystopian like they've got
to like grab food off this lowering platform or whatever,
and like some of the teams are in the dungeon,
which is the crappiest kitchen. There's the middle kitchen, which
is just fine, in the upper one, which is like
the elite kitchen. But I think it's a really clever show.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
It's based on joy film that has to be there's
like a European film that is very much a dystopian,
quite violent thing. They don't reference the film in the show,
but I'm pretty sure somebody saw that film.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
I can't remember, I'll try to remember what it's called. Yeah,
our buddy fluency. Our buddy Richard also made my day
when he so he is one of those guys at
the forefront of gastronomic science, right, he's combining chemistry with
fine dining. And he recently we both saw this. Uh,
(19:14):
I think we have sent it to you. You saw it,
you posted it. The popcorn thing. He recently taught me
that you can just use a straw at a movie
theater popcorn butter dispensary to even to better distribute the
butter through the popcorn. The guys in the future man
and also you lest you be thinking, ew, that's gross.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
No, a straw is what's the word like, it's sanitary
because it's it's wrapped so you can like unwrap it,
don't touch the end you put into the common little
nozzle and then you just touch the middle and then
you're you're totally clear.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You haven't contaminated anything. By the way, that.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Film is called The Platform Spanish is from twenty nineteen,
and it is a very bleak dystopian film that they
made into quite an intense and delightful cooking show. But
to your point about the butter too. That's artificial flavor
at work too.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
I mean, it is that movie theater popcorn butter that
tastes like no butter I ever put in my monk.
Yet it has the feel of butter, doesn't it. Yes,
the taste of butter exactly. So I love this idea
of the word you used earlier was perfect disfluency. Back
(20:28):
in the Middle Ages, it was an historical flex to
make something taste different than it looked like it would taste.
These were proprietary secret recipes for you know, dukes and
kings and emperors and of course queens and empresses and duchesses.
The recipes were sometimes put together jumbled into these collections
(20:53):
called books of Secrets, so they were like food spells.
We know. Before the first modern artificial flavors became a thing,
ancient Egyptians would astract scents and oils from plants. They
would make essential oils. So what we can learn from
(21:14):
this is that people were always searching for the next
great goostation thrill. And it's a pickle, right, because for
most of human history, if you wanted to make a
dish taste like strawberries, you have one option you had
to find and add some strawberries. Humanity took that personally,
(21:35):
and that's why the story of modern synthetic flavoring all
goes back to vanilla. Vanilla is it is it made
from beaver anal Glands ben or is that just an
urban legend. Well, it's there's a lot to it some time,
but this one maybe we should. Yeah, you know how
(21:55):
in American English, the term vanilla just came to mean
like playing or boring, which I think is a little unfair,
because honestly, a good vanilla is really complex.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
One made with vanilla beans's actually got little specks of
the stuff in there, yes, or even like a fancier
one that it urged alatto, where it's got like crazy
cool texture too, and it's not just overly sweet. I
think vanilla gets an unfair rap as like being basic,
but it really is quite complex.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
It's just something like that's gotten attached to that. Dude.
This reminds me of our episode on pineapples as a
flex when people would just rent pineapples. That's right. Yeah,
vanilla is more than anything cartoonishly inconvenient. We know it
comes from meso America. The Aztecs used it to flavor chocolate.
(22:48):
When the Europeans arrived in the Americas, they loved flexing
with vanilla. It was the culinary version of a rolex
at this time, and it became something that you would
never see poor people or even common people consuming, because
(23:10):
it was a pain in the butt to grow. It
was crazy expensive. Part of the reason it's so expensive
even now is because the vanilla beans are collected from
the vanilla orchid, and this little guy only opens up
like one day of the year. It's got a very
short window of time. If it doesn't pollinate during that time,
(23:32):
then it doesn't make a vanilla being. And the only
thing that pollinated it for a long time was a
particular type of bee, like one guy. One little bee
Guy's job is to make vanilla And while.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I'm sure under appropriate lab conditions or greenhouse type conditions,
you know, with great care and expertise, this could be accomplished.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
You know, I mean, you know you can by vanilla beans.
Would they come in a tiny jar sort of like
saffron threats? You know, very very expensive And.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
One could argue that, yes, of an ice cream made
with real vanilla bean is an absolute treat, But you
could also do a Pepsi challenge type situation with the
artificial version.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
And possibly not quite be able to tell the difference
if it's done well. Yeah, yeah. Now, for most of
its history, the vanilla orchide could only be cultivated in
southeastern Mexico, which is home to the melipona bee, which
was the only thing that could pollinate this delicious, troublesome thing.
(24:43):
To mane, I'm wrong.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Maybe it would be very difficult to do it under
you know, controlled circumstances.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I don't know, I think you're onto something.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Maybe it seems I don't know this for a fact,
but it just seems like these days, with you know,
specialty greenhouses and all of that kind of stuff, you
could import the bees and you know, basically, what's the word,
kind of duplicate or you know, simulate the exact climate
conditions and make it work.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
And part of the reason why vanilla's a synonym for
boring today goes back to the story of a guy
named Edmund Albius, twelve years old, enslaved in a French
colony about five hundred miles east of Madagascar, this kid
discovered how to replace the bee hand pollinating the orchid
(25:34):
by pressing, Yeah, by pressing the stigma and the anther
together using a stick. So this is still very intensive,
laborious work, but it created a vanilla market in Madagascar
which now produces the majority of the world's natural vanilla.
(25:56):
But if you go in a grocery store, folks, honestly,
less than one percent of anything vanilla flavored comes from
actual vanilla, and you could tell the difference to your point, Noel,
because the stuff that uses actual vanilla from the actual
vanilla bean, it's insanely expensive. Vanilla is the world's second
(26:16):
most expensive spice after saffron. You nailed it. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
It was cool going to Spain and going to some
of those markets there, Like I can't remember, there's a
really really big one in the Laramblac district and I'm
totally spacing on the name. It's very very popular, huge,
incredible a selection of spices, and you could get at
least little jars of saffron, but they'd be like twenty
five euro you know, for just like a little tiny jar.
But it's also a really intensely strong flavor. You only
(26:44):
need a couple of.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Threats over using saffron it's like trust, it's like it's overkill. Yeah,
and it's a waste. Yeah. Just follow the Persians. The
Persians understand how to cook with saffron, you know what
I mean, make that rice's rice. Now we have the problem,
(27:08):
and this is gonna show us the larger history of
artificial flavoring. There's something everybody wants, so there's a lot
of demand and there are clear supply chain issues. You
just can't make enough vanilla, even with human intervention. It
takes too long. So in the late eighteen hundreds, a
guy named Nicholas Theodore Gobli isolates the organic compound that
(27:34):
is the main mover of that flavor we call vanilla.
He names it vanillaan vanilla, yeah, vanilla.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
The discovery there paves the way to a little bit later.
German sciencest Ferdinand Tiemann and Willhelm Harman are able to
synthesize vanilla from the bark of a of the humble
pine tree, which is very I guess maybe I don't know,
you think about pine sap having sort of a savory,
(28:06):
almost mentee kind of flavor. I wonder, I'm just wondering
if it has anything to do with it. So they
opened the very first vanilla factory in eighteen seventy five.
So at this point, what was once a very rare,
sought after, highly expensive ingredient is now accessible to everybody.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And this is probably when you start seeing it a
little bit overused, and it probably leads to the association
of vanilla with like basics, basic flavor. Yeah, and it
becomes more democratized, more accessible. It's no longer just the
food of the aristocrats. You know, picture some chimney sweep
out in London, say you know, bloy me vanilithan me exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I think we should take this as an opportunity really
quickly to bust a bit of a myth. I mentioned
beaver anal secretions earlier. There have been in the past
sort of alarmist suggestions that artificial the modern artificial vanilla
flavor that we know today. You might buy the store
(29:11):
called Vanilla Extract, which is, you know, a successor to
this vanilla, and I think you know, it's not exactly
the same, but.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
That's where we've ended up today. Is made using a.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Secretion from the anal glands of beavers known as castorium,
and it apparently it is used or has been used
in the past as a food additive, also known as
I believe it's not the same as castor oil or
the oil of the castor bean is castorium.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
It's something separate.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
It's a yellowish brown, kind of pungent liquid with a strong.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Odor that beavers hold in this sack that's located in
this cavity between their pelvis and the base of their tail,
and they spray it, that's right, And they spray it when,
you know how. And the cats it's like it's not
pe that that old chestnut, it's something else, and they
mark their territory. And it has been used as an
(30:14):
additive in things like perfume, uh, you know, because it's
it's got these notes. They give you kind of like
a like a leathery sort of musky odor, and they
have been in the past you use as food added is.
But today almost never will a regular you know, consumer
or grocery shopper come across anything that contains castorium. Yeah,
(30:37):
because there are thankfully some more regulations involved. But I
love that you're bringing this up, because who hasn't been
just nose deep into beaver's button. Thought, this reminds me
of vanilla, these fun bags.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And the funny thing is is also it's it wouldn't
be artificial, would it's.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
It's it's it's organic. It comes sprays out of a
beaver's But we have to go back to the FDA definition.
I don't see. Oh well, they say, they say it's
generally safe. They do recognize it, and they refer to
it simply as a natural flavoring. I can't. At some
times you've seen, if you've ever seen lists of ingredients,
(31:23):
you will sometimes just see natural flavorings. You might call
that into question because Snope says it's mostly false that
caastorium is used as commonly used as a food additive.
Also check out our stuff they don't want you to know.
Episode on the cartoonish problem with the phrase natural flavoring,
(31:46):
the synthetic vanilla sources going back to vanilla, Yeah, come
from all kinds of places. Eugenol, which is a chemical
compound you find in clove oil, so for anybody smoking clothes,
sort of spoken word, open mic. You got a vanilla
thing going on, and then something called lignin, which you
(32:07):
could find in plants, wood pulp, and cowfeces. Fun, fun,
fun stuff, In short, vanilla is the plant. Vanilla Linton
is one of up to two hundred and fifty different
chemical compounds that make up the flavor we call vanilla.
And with this story, with this discovery, we see the
(32:28):
larger story of artificial flavoring in general.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
And today you do have vanilla available, that is what
it is, still that pure vanilla, or there's an even
stronger form of it called ethyl vanilla, which are both available.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Those are two options. Or there is vanilla extract, which
is derived from real vanilla. So it's almost like a concentrate.
I guess it's like the essential oil of vanilla. I
think that's right. So maybe it isn't the same. I
think a constant is largely artificial.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
But I'm always been a little confused, like when orange
juice says not from concentrate. Something in concentrate is real,
or it's derived from the real thing. It's not just
whipped up in a lab.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
It's called orange juice. Is so weird? Yeah, that might
be anothertographer for another day. Do you like yours with
some pulp ben or you a pulp free? Guard? To you? Like?
Oh the pulp? You know what? I'm just happy to
be around the juice. Okactually, that's one of my first
published short stories is entirely about orange juice. So I'm
(33:33):
kind of biased, weird. Sometimes the juice is worth the
squeeze ben. Yeah, but you can't get lost in the juice. Wait,
lost in the sauce, yeah, or the juice juice sauce interchangeable.
And this is a two part episode. This often happens
when all of us Noel, Max, myself and you begin
(33:54):
exploring the history of food. We got soa to vanilla
and beavers and cowfeecs right that we didn't even get
to the Crystal Palace exhibition in London. That might have
to be part two. Oh man, Yeah, I mean you know, look,
we love talking about food in general, we love eating food,
(34:15):
we love the history of food science. So I think
it's only right and natural, not artificial at all, to
make this a two parter, because we are gonna we're
gonna have some fun callbacks about vanilla, because, as you
can tell ridiculous historians, that is sort of the like
the first step in this flavor synthesis revolution that then
(34:38):
opens wide up. We teased banana.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
There's a whole story in that that really should and
could be an episode in and of itself. We're going
to talk about that as well as the idea of like,
you know, the what essentially is like flavor deep fakes.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah, ooh, I'm glad to pick it up. That phrase,
was that going too far? No? Not at no.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
That is a ben ism right there, and I think
it's absolutely accurate because it does get to the point
where we're like, not no longer are we talking about
just the using artificial flavoring as a way of saving
some money, but almost as a way of counterfeiting.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Oh, intrigue, cliffhangers, high stakes. You love to see if folks,
we love that you're here. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Big thanks to Max the Free Train.
Williams are super producer, and a big big thanks to
our composer. I still can't believe we have a composer,
Alex Williams who made this slap and Bob, Hey, Nolan,
(35:40):
have you talked to Alex recently? How's he doing? It's
been a minute. He was in town for a bit
and we hung out a few times. But no, he's
he's back roaming the wild West's class.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
He's the United States Classic Alex But we love that
guy huge thanks to Chris Frosciotis n Heaves, Jeff Coats
here in spirit, Jonathan Strickland, the quizzor.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Who is in fact books. We got to book that.
We got to book that guy. Now he's hot, he's
in demand. Also aj Bahamas Jacob's the Puzzler, who I
know we will have back again very soon as well,
hopefully for that oft promised quiz slash Puzzle Off Yes Yes,
(36:18):
which we have sort of voluntold both the Puzzler and
the quizt just participated. So we also want to thank
all the hard working flavor scientists that we can't wait
for you to join us for Part two of the
preposterous History of artificial flavors. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. That's our super producer, the Willie Wonka
of Ridiculous History, mister Max Williams, the.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Snarsberrys taste like snosberries, and the Max Williams.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Ferry's. That's Noel Brown. I am Ben Bullen and Noel.
Today we are pursuing one of our favorite things. Uh,
behind the curtain, folks. This is something that we talk
about with our friends who were in Vogel bamb and
Anti Reese of Savor constantly. It's food history. What's your
(01:07):
favorite flavor? Do you have? Like a favorite flavor? I
really like pistachio a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I like the nuts, I like the ice cream, I
like the macaron I like it artificial. I like it
freaking all natural. It's just a damn fine flavor, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, yeah, agreed, I'm partial to pineapple. But also I
eat pretty much everything except for so far human flesh.
So well, you know, hopefully they're working on this. Actually
it turned out to not be true grown human flesh,
but why the hell not if it's not hurting anybody.
I guess it does become an ethical quandary at that point,
(01:48):
like is it okay to eat human flesh just on
a basic level if you're not having to murder the
human or is there something abhorrent and against God about
just inherently? Yeah, exactly bidden flavor because maybe it's awesome.
It's probably chicken. But uh, you know, I was thinking
about this episode today, Noel, because you and I have
(02:12):
both recently traveled separately, uh, to Europe, and one thing
that always stands out is just the different palette of
fast food flavors or convenience store flavors. Like if you
go to the United Kingdom, you can get potato chips
in all sorts of strange flavorings, right, they're they're just
(02:34):
like you know what would taste like potato cheese and
onion cheese.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And but here's the thing, though, it's very culturally driven,
because cheese an onion is just like a mega popular
just flavor bass kind of I mean, yeah, not to
rag too hard. In the UK, we know that our
boy Heston bloom and Thal hails from there, and there
certainly are the same. Yeah, there are some very thoughtful
culinary minds out of the UK, but they get a
(03:00):
bad rap is just like boiled sausage and you know beans,
it's kind of whatever.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I mean, an English national dishes curry. You might have
been an empire, you might have.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And I find that fascinating too. Like
the Bondme sandwich I find to be among the perfect
sandwiches of the world is totally a project, a product
of imperialism, you know, because it's like it's this French
bread roll, this baguette that's got like this you know,
pork kind of roast slow roasted pork and a jalapeno,
(03:34):
and like it's just it's.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
A weird hodgepodge that you wouldn't get if you didn't
have people taking each other's countries over. You know, it's
so weird. You say that because, as per usual, I
was up very late last night and I had Apocalypse
Now in the background as I was working out, and
it's just a cozy, cozy thing, right, Yeah, it just
been things and so so they had you know, there's
(03:57):
that great scene. I think it's only it may only
be in the Reducs version, but there's that great scene
where they see the French Indo China plantation and they anyway,
this is sort of about imperialism, but it's also.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I mean, you mentioned the thing about the flavors and
the you know, the artificial flav We're talking about artificial
flavors the episode. Yes, I'll tell you who does it
real well? Is is Japan or Asian countries? You to
what's We're very lucky here in Atlanta to have access
(04:35):
to places like the Buford Highway Farmers Market where they
have I you not, most every flavor of weird Japanese
lays available. Yeah, and it'll be things like shrimp, It'll
be things like squid. It'll be things like barbecue, beef steak,
and even the packaging is dope and weird and it
(04:56):
comes in these weird little tubes sometimes and I just
love everything about it. And there is, of course science
behind this. A friend of mine came over for a
barbecue the other night and brought.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Cuban sandwich chips over that tasted like pickles and ham
and been mustard, and they truly did. And it does
you get into Willy Wonka territory where when Violet Beauregard
eats the pill she's like I could feel the soup's
running down my throat, you know, like it really starts
to approach that level of magic. It's all good till
(05:29):
you hit the blueberries right exactly, never quite never quite
not nicked that one. Let's watch Willy Wonka later. That's
that's great, the good one, though not the cursed one
with Chap and the teeth. We know the one we're
talking about, and we know what's technically called Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory. Do you think the Timothy Schallomey one
was fun? Though it's by the folks that brought us Paddington.
(05:50):
I know it got a bad rap because out of
context he does seem goofy and a little try hard.
But I thought it was a lovely film, and I
loved that the same guy from the Newest Dune adaptation,
you know, Timothy shallome is don't be coy with yes
it is. He's very He's very hot, very hot young man.
Right now. I love when your voice goes arch, don't
(06:11):
be coy. I also love that you mentioned Japan, because
Japan is streets ahead in so many parts of modern society,
including of course, toilet technology and for our purposes today,
the KitKat formula, they went absolutely bonkers. They have flavors
(06:33):
of KitKat that are not edible flavors, stuff like ocean
dream or whatever. I'm making that one up, but it's
probably real. It does feel as though it might resemble
a air freshener more than a nice, delicious chocolate a tree.
But stuff like whole grain biscuit, Like what if we
(06:53):
had a chocolate bar that tasted like a cracker that
kind of already is a cracker wrapped in a It's
very meta and I love it. If you go to
Japanhall dot com you can get a lot of the
stuffmail or at and it ain't cheap.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And if you go to Beuford Highway Farmer's Market here
in Atlanta, these bags of these bonkers kitkats are very
small and quite expensive.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, yeah you can. You can also learn more about
kit katsuh with our again our pals over at our
peer podcast or sister podcast saver h. Look, it's a
brave new world of KitKat flavors and it's all due
to the science of artificial flavors. No, how would we
(07:35):
describe artificial flavors?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Well, it's it's just it's food science, you know, in
the same way we have seasonings where you combine different
types of naturally occurring substances, you know, or perhaps unnaturally occurring,
like MSG, which is a chemical compound that creates that
third flavor hit the umami, which I think we all love.
And we also know that MSG has gotten a bad
(07:58):
rap do no small part to racism. Shout out to
our episode on Chinese restaurants. Yeah, and the.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Simpsons, but thank you for referencing us.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Know that there was a demonization of Chinese restaurants in
the United States and that led to the demonization of
MSG monosodium glutamate. But yeah, I mean, artificial flavoring is
just a more weaponized, science y version of cooking.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I think both of us in our kind of we
don't do this as much anymore as we used to.
But we used to go on the road and do
these like sales pitch things. And I think both of us,
either together separately, ended up at some kind of flavor
lab where we got a tour of the back rooms
and it's it's what you think. It's folks in white
lab coats with like microscopes and big old synthesis machines,
(08:47):
and I'm no scientists here, but it is science. And
then you may recall the scene from Breaking Bad at Madrigal,
the Crazy Big Empire, where you got the CEO taste
testing these French sauces for their one of their chicken
franchise or their chicken chains, and the scientists are presenting it.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
They're not chefs, they're scientists. And without spoiling things for
the Shakespearean level show Breaking Bad, which is, by the way,
Anthony hopkins favorite show. He says a lot. He wrote
a letter about it without spoiling things. I believe that
(09:28):
Gustav Fring genuinely cared about the chicken, and I think
that's a very important character distinction. He gotta start, he
gotta start with the chicken. You know, yes, Sar, chicken
came before the meth. I think you know the math
was just like obviously made more money. But he always
cared about quality control and cleanliness. You know that episode
(09:49):
we made that poor kid scrub the friars until his
hands bland. I mean, not a good guy, but you
gotta to respect his attention to detail. Not a great guy,
but he had a code. You know what I mean
like Ronald Reraken by the way, if you're missing and
what is it Gian Carlo Esposito in an arch type
role like that, highly recommend you check out The Boys,
(10:10):
which is a Bonker's superhero thing, not for the Fate
of Heart or the Pearl clutchy amongst us. It's very
raunchy and borderline pornographic at times, but he plays a
fring esque kind of evil overlord character and he kicks butt.
He plays kind of our boss a little bit, a
(10:31):
little bit. Artificial flavors are are a win win for
a lot of people because they are a cost effective
way for these flavor scientists that we just described to
make something taste like strawberry or snawsberry. I let that
part out, yep, yeah, without having to use actual strawberries,
(10:55):
without being dependent upon seasonal harvest nor the weather. When
everything goes according to plan. This is great. But our
question day is how did this whole artificial flavor thing
happen in the first place? Like why does grape candy
taste so unlike grapes? And what hell is a blue raspberry?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
And why do I love me a grape knee high?
But I don't really care for a grape off the show.
You know what I mean, I really and I like
a banana flavored popsicle. I'm not the biggest fan of
a banana.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Ah. Great, that's gonna play the whole banana quandary.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
But boil boy, should we just dive right in this
is let's do it, let's do let's do some science.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yes please? Okay, So we talked about umammy. The tongue.
The human tongue has taste receptors. These taste receptors are
the reason you prefer some foods to others, and they're
they're like five basic ones. Umami is the controversial one.
But we know there's sour, salty, bitter, sweet, and this
(12:05):
sight smell taste of food. It stimulates the production of
saliva of different chemicals in the stomach. You, if you
are human, are designed to prioritize some taste over others.
And that's entirely because of evolution. For most of human history,
(12:27):
humans were always about to starve.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
So that's a very good point bend, and it wasn't
as much of a luxury as it was about like
just getting those calories and making sure you didn't die.
So as evolution and you know, the evolution of science
and technology became more a thing you were able to
sort of be able to prioritize preference and aside, I
(12:52):
like the way this tastes versus that, and you could
like pick and choose. I was just going to ask,
real quid, do you think people who are really picky
eaters who I have a few of in my life
and sometimes it drives me bonkers, are they is? Is
there something about their actual equipment that leads to that.
I know sometimes people have issues with texture and it
can be a combination, but some people maybe just taste
(13:13):
things too strongly or it makes them It makes them
they don't like the way it tastes because something hits
them too is too.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Sour, too sweet, too savory. Quite possibly, Yeah, there there
are psychological, neurological, and physiological factors in all of those.
Like we know there is a real life genre of superpower,
super taster, super taste or so uh, those folks will
(13:42):
those folks have a very Princess in the Pea approach
to things like capsaius in or salt. Princess in the
Pea being the Western fairy tale about the princess who
was so sensitive that she could lay on one hundred
mattresses or something and still feel a piece.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
A tiny p And you can also kind of bring
it back around to another Western fairy tale of Goldilocks
and the Three bears, referring to the perfect amount, the
perfect level of spice or seasoning, which would be that
Goldilocks zone.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah, and the thing is, so every animal on the planet,
so far as we know, prioritizes some sources of nutrition
over others, whether that's a carnivore, whether that's an herbivore,
an omnivore, or things like the koala or the panda bear,
which mostly eat one sort of thing bamboo or eucalyptus leaves.
(14:42):
We know that the big difference between humans all the
other animals on this planet is that the human proved
capable of not just finding their favorite flavors in the wild,
but also creating those flavors or the semblance of them
for similarite. For most of human history, people tended to
(15:08):
eat what we would call fresh food, the kind of
stuff you find in the produce section of the infamous
Beauford Highway farmers market. That's right, Yeah, you know, just
your regular old fruit and veg but then as the
need to keep thinking, there's a couple. It's interesting because
a lot of these techniques were established or were started
(15:31):
because of a need to preserve things, but they also
affect the flavor. And once you get a taste of
something that's been fermented that's got a little bit of
that funk to it, you can't really go back if
it hits you and you like it. So this is
when you really start to see technol food technology that
was designed for one purpose starting to gradually change the
(15:54):
way people perceive flavor. Yeah, it's so nuts. You know
what we got to do. You know, We've got to
give everybody the Food and Drug Administration's definition of artificial flavoring.
You'll see how complicated this issue becomes in the history
when Noel, could you give us the quote because it's surreal. Absolutely,
(16:17):
the FDA has this to say.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
The term artificial flavor or artificial flavoring means any substance
the function of which is to impart flavor which is
not derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable
or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf,
or similar plant material, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy products
or fermentation products thereof ding.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Ding ding ding ding ding ding. But that's its own category, right,
because it transforms the flavor of these things into something
else entirely mm hmm. And this is not an inherently
bad idea, right, artificial flavor, So either to our point earlier,
(17:01):
it can yield some fantasmical, very interesting combinations of texture
and flavor that can be very appealing and dare I
say exciting, right, do you have a candy bar that
tastes like a beetroot that can be you know, again,
I mentioned Heston Blumenthal. He had a TV series for
(17:23):
a while where he would kind of approximate the food
of different eras, like he would do like medieval stuff
or whatever. And a big thing that he likes to
do is like disguise something as something else where it'll
be it looks like a piece of fruit, but it's
actually made of meat. And there's something your brain does,
sort of like when you think you're gonna take a
sip of soda water but it's actually sprite or vice versa.
(17:46):
Your brain kind of recoils and that's not good.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
But you can weaponize that in a way that is
interesting and exciting, and artificial flavoring is a cool way
to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, one hundred percent. Also shout out to our buddy
Richard Blaze. That guy's living in the future boy at
the gastronomic level. The Blaze me. We were on his
podcast Food Court once we talked about bacon and sausage,
and I didn't know him super super well before that
as a personality, but since then he's blown up, and
I'm a huge fan of his Next Level Chef series
(18:19):
with Gordon Ramsey, who I've been a fan of for
many years. It's sort of this dystopian like they've got
to like grab food off this lowering platform or whatever,
and like some of the teams are in the dungeon,
which is the crappiest kitchen. There's the middle kitchen, which
is just fine, in the upper one, which is like
the elite kitchen. But I think it's a really clever show.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
It's based on joy film that has to be there's
like a European film that is very much a dystopian,
quite violent thing. They don't reference the film in the show,
but I'm pretty sure somebody saw that film.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
I can't remember, I'll try to remember what it's called. Yeah,
our buddy fluency. Our buddy Richard also made my day
when he so he is one of those guys at
the forefront of gastronomic science, right, he's combining chemistry with
fine dining. And he recently we both saw this. Uh,
(19:14):
I think we have sent it to you. You saw it,
you posted it. The popcorn thing. He recently taught me
that you can just use a straw at a movie
theater popcorn butter dispensary to even to better distribute the
butter through the popcorn. The guys in the future man
and also you lest you be thinking, ew, that's gross.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
No, a straw is what's the word like, it's sanitary
because it's it's wrapped so you can like unwrap it,
don't touch the end you put into the common little
nozzle and then you just touch the middle and then
you're you're totally clear.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You haven't contaminated anything. By the way, that.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Film is called The Platform Spanish is from twenty nineteen,
and it is a very bleak dystopian film that they
made into quite an intense and delightful cooking show. But
to your point about the butter too. That's artificial flavor
at work too.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
I mean, it is that movie theater popcorn butter that
tastes like no butter I ever put in my monk.
Yet it has the feel of butter, doesn't it. Yes,
the taste of butter exactly. So I love this idea
of the word you used earlier was perfect disfluency. Back
(20:28):
in the Middle Ages, it was an historical flex to
make something taste different than it looked like it would taste.
These were proprietary secret recipes for you know, dukes and
kings and emperors and of course queens and empresses and duchesses.
The recipes were sometimes put together jumbled into these collections
(20:53):
called books of Secrets, so they were like food spells.
We know. Before the first modern artificial flavors became a thing,
ancient Egyptians would astract scents and oils from plants. They
would make essential oils. So what we can learn from
(21:14):
this is that people were always searching for the next
great goostation thrill. And it's a pickle, right, because for
most of human history, if you wanted to make a
dish taste like strawberries, you have one option you had
to find and add some strawberries. Humanity took that personally,
(21:35):
and that's why the story of modern synthetic flavoring all
goes back to vanilla. Vanilla is it is it made
from beaver anal Glands ben or is that just an
urban legend. Well, it's there's a lot to it some time,
but this one maybe we should. Yeah, you know how
(21:55):
in American English, the term vanilla just came to mean
like playing or boring, which I think is a little unfair,
because honestly, a good vanilla is really complex.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
One made with vanilla beans's actually got little specks of
the stuff in there, yes, or even like a fancier
one that it urged alatto, where it's got like crazy
cool texture too, and it's not just overly sweet. I
think vanilla gets an unfair rap as like being basic,
but it really is quite complex.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
It's just something like that's gotten attached to that. Dude.
This reminds me of our episode on pineapples as a
flex when people would just rent pineapples. That's right. Yeah,
vanilla is more than anything cartoonishly inconvenient. We know it
comes from meso America. The Aztecs used it to flavor chocolate.
(22:48):
When the Europeans arrived in the Americas, they loved flexing
with vanilla. It was the culinary version of a rolex
at this time, and it became something that you would
never see poor people or even common people consuming, because
(23:10):
it was a pain in the butt to grow. It
was crazy expensive. Part of the reason it's so expensive
even now is because the vanilla beans are collected from
the vanilla orchid, and this little guy only opens up
like one day of the year. It's got a very
short window of time. If it doesn't pollinate during that time,
(23:32):
then it doesn't make a vanilla being. And the only
thing that pollinated it for a long time was a
particular type of bee, like one guy. One little bee
Guy's job is to make vanilla And while.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I'm sure under appropriate lab conditions or greenhouse type conditions,
you know, with great care and expertise, this could be accomplished.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
You know, I mean, you know you can by vanilla beans.
Would they come in a tiny jar sort of like
saffron threats? You know, very very expensive And.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
One could argue that, yes, of an ice cream made
with real vanilla bean is an absolute treat, But you
could also do a Pepsi challenge type situation with the
artificial version.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
And possibly not quite be able to tell the difference
if it's done well. Yeah, yeah. Now, for most of
its history, the vanilla orchide could only be cultivated in
southeastern Mexico, which is home to the melipona bee, which
was the only thing that could pollinate this delicious, troublesome thing.
(24:43):
To mane, I'm wrong.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Maybe it would be very difficult to do it under
you know, controlled circumstances.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I don't know, I think you're onto something.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Maybe it seems I don't know this for a fact,
but it just seems like these days, with you know,
specialty greenhouses and all of that kind of stuff, you
could import the bees and you know, basically, what's the word,
kind of duplicate or you know, simulate the exact climate
conditions and make it work.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
And part of the reason why vanilla's a synonym for
boring today goes back to the story of a guy
named Edmund Albius, twelve years old, enslaved in a French
colony about five hundred miles east of Madagascar, this kid
discovered how to replace the bee hand pollinating the orchid
(25:34):
by pressing, Yeah, by pressing the stigma and the anther
together using a stick. So this is still very intensive,
laborious work, but it created a vanilla market in Madagascar
which now produces the majority of the world's natural vanilla.
(25:56):
But if you go in a grocery store, folks, honestly,
less than one percent of anything vanilla flavored comes from
actual vanilla, and you could tell the difference to your point, Noel,
because the stuff that uses actual vanilla from the actual
vanilla bean, it's insanely expensive. Vanilla is the world's second
(26:16):
most expensive spice after saffron. You nailed it. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
It was cool going to Spain and going to some
of those markets there, Like I can't remember, there's a
really really big one in the Laramblac district and I'm
totally spacing on the name. It's very very popular, huge,
incredible a selection of spices, and you could get at
least little jars of saffron, but they'd be like twenty
five euro you know, for just like a little tiny jar.
But it's also a really intensely strong flavor. You only
(26:44):
need a couple of.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Threats over using saffron it's like trust, it's like it's overkill. Yeah,
and it's a waste. Yeah. Just follow the Persians. The
Persians understand how to cook with saffron, you know what
I mean, make that rice's rice. Now we have the problem,
(27:08):
and this is gonna show us the larger history of
artificial flavoring. There's something everybody wants, so there's a lot
of demand and there are clear supply chain issues. You
just can't make enough vanilla, even with human intervention. It
takes too long. So in the late eighteen hundreds, a
guy named Nicholas Theodore Gobli isolates the organic compound that
(27:34):
is the main mover of that flavor we call vanilla.
He names it vanillaan vanilla, yeah, vanilla.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
The discovery there paves the way to a little bit later.
German sciencest Ferdinand Tiemann and Willhelm Harman are able to
synthesize vanilla from the bark of a of the humble
pine tree, which is very I guess maybe I don't know,
you think about pine sap having sort of a savory,
(28:06):
almost mentee kind of flavor. I wonder, I'm just wondering
if it has anything to do with it. So they
opened the very first vanilla factory in eighteen seventy five.
So at this point, what was once a very rare,
sought after, highly expensive ingredient is now accessible to everybody.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And this is probably when you start seeing it a
little bit overused, and it probably leads to the association
of vanilla with like basics, basic flavor. Yeah, and it
becomes more democratized, more accessible. It's no longer just the
food of the aristocrats. You know, picture some chimney sweep
out in London, say you know, bloy me vanilithan me exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I think we should take this as an opportunity really
quickly to bust a bit of a myth. I mentioned
beaver anal secretions earlier. There have been in the past
sort of alarmist suggestions that artificial the modern artificial vanilla
flavor that we know today. You might buy the store
(29:11):
called Vanilla Extract, which is, you know, a successor to
this vanilla, and I think you know, it's not exactly
the same, but.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
That's where we've ended up today. Is made using a.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Secretion from the anal glands of beavers known as castorium,
and it apparently it is used or has been used
in the past as a food additive, also known as
I believe it's not the same as castor oil or
the oil of the castor bean is castorium.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
It's something separate.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
It's a yellowish brown, kind of pungent liquid with a strong.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Odor that beavers hold in this sack that's located in
this cavity between their pelvis and the base of their tail,
and they spray it, that's right, And they spray it when,
you know how. And the cats it's like it's not
pe that that old chestnut, it's something else, and they
mark their territory. And it has been used as an
(30:14):
additive in things like perfume, uh, you know, because it's
it's got these notes. They give you kind of like
a like a leathery sort of musky odor, and they
have been in the past you use as food added is.
But today almost never will a regular you know, consumer
or grocery shopper come across anything that contains castorium. Yeah,
(30:37):
because there are thankfully some more regulations involved. But I
love that you're bringing this up, because who hasn't been
just nose deep into beaver's button. Thought, this reminds me
of vanilla, these fun bags.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And the funny thing is is also it's it wouldn't
be artificial, would it's.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
It's it's it's organic. It comes sprays out of a
beaver's But we have to go back to the FDA definition.
I don't see. Oh well, they say, they say it's
generally safe. They do recognize it, and they refer to
it simply as a natural flavoring. I can't. At some
times you've seen, if you've ever seen lists of ingredients,
(31:23):
you will sometimes just see natural flavorings. You might call
that into question because Snope says it's mostly false that
caastorium is used as commonly used as a food additive.
Also check out our stuff they don't want you to know.
Episode on the cartoonish problem with the phrase natural flavoring,
(31:46):
the synthetic vanilla sources going back to vanilla, Yeah, come
from all kinds of places. Eugenol, which is a chemical
compound you find in clove oil, so for anybody smoking clothes,
sort of spoken word, open mic. You got a vanilla
thing going on, and then something called lignin, which you
(32:07):
could find in plants, wood pulp, and cowfeces. Fun, fun,
fun stuff, In short, vanilla is the plant. Vanilla Linton
is one of up to two hundred and fifty different
chemical compounds that make up the flavor we call vanilla.
And with this story, with this discovery, we see the
(32:28):
larger story of artificial flavoring in general.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
And today you do have vanilla available, that is what
it is, still that pure vanilla, or there's an even
stronger form of it called ethyl vanilla, which are both available.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Those are two options. Or there is vanilla extract, which
is derived from real vanilla. So it's almost like a concentrate.
I guess it's like the essential oil of vanilla. I
think that's right. So maybe it isn't the same. I
think a constant is largely artificial.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
But I'm always been a little confused, like when orange
juice says not from concentrate. Something in concentrate is real,
or it's derived from the real thing. It's not just
whipped up in a lab.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
It's called orange juice. Is so weird? Yeah, that might
be anothertographer for another day. Do you like yours with
some pulp ben or you a pulp free? Guard? To you? Like?
Oh the pulp? You know what? I'm just happy to
be around the juice. Okactually, that's one of my first
published short stories is entirely about orange juice. So I'm
(33:33):
kind of biased, weird. Sometimes the juice is worth the
squeeze ben. Yeah, but you can't get lost in the juice. Wait,
lost in the sauce, yeah, or the juice juice sauce interchangeable.
And this is a two part episode. This often happens
when all of us Noel, Max, myself and you begin
(33:54):
exploring the history of food. We got soa to vanilla
and beavers and cowfeecs right that we didn't even get
to the Crystal Palace exhibition in London. That might have
to be part two. Oh man, Yeah, I mean you know, look,
we love talking about food in general, we love eating food,
(34:15):
we love the history of food science. So I think
it's only right and natural, not artificial at all, to
make this a two parter, because we are gonna we're
gonna have some fun callbacks about vanilla, because, as you
can tell ridiculous historians, that is sort of the like
the first step in this flavor synthesis revolution that then
(34:38):
opens wide up. We teased banana.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
There's a whole story in that that really should and
could be an episode in and of itself. We're going
to talk about that as well as the idea of like,
you know, the what essentially is like flavor deep fakes.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah, ooh, I'm glad to pick it up. That phrase,
was that going too far? No? Not at no.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
That is a ben ism right there, and I think
it's absolutely accurate because it does get to the point
where we're like, not no longer are we talking about
just the using artificial flavoring as a way of saving
some money, but almost as a way of counterfeiting.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Oh, intrigue, cliffhangers, high stakes. You love to see if folks,
we love that you're here. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Big thanks to Max the Free Train.
Williams are super producer, and a big big thanks to
our composer. I still can't believe we have a composer,
Alex Williams who made this slap and Bob, Hey, Nolan,
(35:40):
have you talked to Alex recently? How's he doing? It's
been a minute. He was in town for a bit
and we hung out a few times. But no, he's
he's back roaming the wild West's class.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
He's the United States Classic Alex But we love that
guy huge thanks to Chris Frosciotis n Heaves, Jeff Coats
here in spirit, Jonathan Strickland, the quizzor.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Who is in fact books. We got to book that.
We got to book that guy. Now he's hot, he's
in demand. Also aj Bahamas Jacob's the Puzzler, who I
know we will have back again very soon as well,
hopefully for that oft promised quiz slash Puzzle Off Yes Yes,
(36:18):
which we have sort of voluntold both the Puzzler and
the quizt just participated. So we also want to thank
all the hard working flavor scientists that we can't wait
for you to join us for Part two of the
preposterous History of artificial flavors. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.