Fermenting Flavor

And all the ways our palates shape how we experience the world

This is the third installment of the Our Fermented Lives book club for paid subscribers.

Our book club includes weekly discussions through the month of January, plus a live author Q&A session and over 60 pages of never-before-shared material from early drafts of the book, footnotes and rambling historical asides intact.

If you don’t have a copy of Our Fermented Lives yet, you can snag one from your favorite local bookseller or from Bookshop.

Ferments + folks at the Our Fermented Lives book launch party at Cultured South in Atlanta

Chapter Three: Ferments for Flavor

There were a lot of directions I could have gone in a chapter on flavor and fermentation. I could have discussed, and indeed I did touch a bit on, things like: the science behind flavors (e.g. the Maillard reaction), our perception of flavor and shifting perceptions of flavor over time, and the relationship between different fermentation processes and ingredients and different flavor profiles.

But I also didn’t want the chapter to feel detached from the reader: In other words, I didn’t want them to just read about how other people experience flavor, and how flavor works from an objective perspective. I wanted them to have a chance to reflect on their own relationship to flavor, too. I hope as you read the chapter, and read the bonus material this week (which is some of my favorite text) it helps you think about the individual, subjective nature of taste (as flavor/as other things maybe too), and to think about your own relationship to the flavors in your world. How do they shape your experiences? Are you seeking out or avoiding certain places/dishes/etc, for example, because of the taste/olfactory experiences they offer? Can you imagine how that might have looked for our ancestors, too?

This chapter also includes one of my favorite poems, which we had to cut but which I’m thrilled to share with you in its original context.