Did you know that the middle
of the galaxy smells like rum and tastes like raspberries? Nicole, you're sure you
didn't just sneak a flask into Lush cosmetics again? You're gonna end up on a list. Are you two okay? This is "A Hot Dog is a Sandwich"! Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal. So what? That makes no sense! A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast,
"A Hotdog is a Sandwich," the show where we take on the
world's biggest food debates. I'm your host Josh Scherer. And I'm your host Nicole Enayati. And we have a very special
guest joining us today. She has a PhD from UC Davis. Go Aggie's baby, with a
focus in flavor chemistry, she co-founded the
Fermentation Lab at Noma. She served as the science officer for Alton Brown's TV show, "Good Eats." And she's the author of "Flavor-ama" A Guide to Unlocking the
Art and Science of Flavor. Arielle Johnson, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me on the show. Do we call you Dr. Johnson? You can if you want. But I
never make anyone do that. Oh my gosh. Have we had a doctor on the show before? Oh yeah. Dr. Mike. Literally somebody called Dr. Mike. Oh yeah, but I like Dr. Johnson more. And he was very particular
about, he was like, "I need you to spell it out, D-O-C-T-O-R," because that's what we have
the trademark in, I believe. Wow, okay. And he was very nice. Go off, King. Like you should trademark Dr. Johnson. No, but thank you so much for joining us. You are one of the smartest
people I've ever met in my life, which is really fantastic. And I love that you put all
of that smarts into food and especially into this incredible book. Absolutely.
Tell us a couple of key takeaways from the book and how you got here. Yeah. I mean, I wrote this book, I studied flavor like as a scientist, but like I really got into it 'cause I wanted to like
make things more creative and delicious and amazing
out in the real world. So, once I'd kind of
absorbed all there was to know about this, I'd
talked to people about it and like, everyone loves flavor, but like, nobody understands how it works or even that like there
is any science involved or that there's anything
understandable about it. So yeah, it's not just vibes. I mean there are vibes involved, but yeah, there's like real molecules. So like flavor is taste and smell. I guess one takeaway is that smell is as important if not more
important for flavor than taste. And, sorry, like wow. Which, which, takeaway? I have to think about
every single takeaway and compare them together to
find the most simplest one. I mean, I think like the big thing is, people, you see like expert cookbooks or like books about science and a lot of it's kind of intimidating and like trying to tell you what to do and like that "Oh, you have
to study this to use it." Like everything in here
is designed to work with the most casual of cooking. So it's really about
informing your intuition about cooking and understanding while you're doing what you're doing. Rather than telling you like what to do. No, I love that. You use
a phrase in the book, "Using flavor science as a liberating tool for innovating in the kitchen." 'Cause so many people, they
get locked into this idea. I know so many, I lovingly use the term like "cooking nerds". Right?
Sure. I remember having somebody explain to me the science of a, the glutamate formation in
my yard reaction, yada yada as he made me a steak and
his steak sucked. Right? Ah, well God bless him. Been there done that. But like you said, there
are certainly vibes involved and whenever anybody says
"cooking is science," it's like absolutely. But everything is science. I have no idea how this microphone works right now, whatsoever. Science has something
to do with it I'm sure. Of course. Of course. But that's what I love,
that you actually digest it and you like give people
usable information there. Yeah. Well like I, as soon as I finished my PhD, I moved to Denmark and started
working at a restaurant called Noma all the time. Ever heard of it?
Huh. Have you? So yeah, for like two and a half years I was constantly figuring
out how to talk to chefs and be like, "Well, I know you understand how this works in a practical way and I understand the theory." But like, how do I communicate this to you who have not taken chemistry at a college level or something like that? So like once you explain
that over and over and over and, and over
and over again, then the actual useful parts
become much, much clearer. Were you ever out there forging alongside any of the chefs and stuff? Oh yeah. I have many
memories trying to climb, like elder berry trees. I also say fistful of currents. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Picking like black
current buds in the rain and stuff like that. Very glamorous. That's awesome! How cool. I think it's fascinating
'cause I've known a lot of chefs who drop outta school at age 15 and end up cooking.
Absolutely. Yeah. And I know a lot of people who, and intelligence is measured in many different ways of course. But I know a lot, this one
chef once explained to me, the reason that you soak
liver in milk is because, things want to be how
they exist in nature, and milk is a body fluid. Ergo, liver exists in the body naturally it wants to be in a bodily fluid. And that's why milk
makes liver taste good. You're sure this was a chef and not like a 17th century alchemist? A weird doula you found off of Craigslist? He put a lot of leeches
on me and I was like, "This seems normal." A lot of blood clotting. He made by far the best foie
gras torchon I've ever had. And so it's almost like he's arriving at the correct conclusion
using the wrong science. What is the importance
in kind of understanding the right science? Well, I mean, I think about
it like the difference between being able to follow a recipe, which is important is like, putting waves up on your phone and following the GPS, turn by turn. Understanding how and
why things actually work if your phone dies or waves goes down, do you understand like the city's roads enough to find your way around? No, no, Arielle, I don't. Really, I do, I'm pretty good, but like, drop me off in Frog Town? God help me. I cannot get around. I once, I'm so sorry for this aside, but it just illustrates
how I view the world and exist in it. My phone died in my car and
the charger wasn't working and I have two turns to get home, I literally live four miles
away in North Hollywood. We're in Burbank. It's one
straight shot going west. And I was like, surely
I know how to get home, I've been making this
drive for six months. I ended up in what I
thought was my neighborhood, and I looked around and
nothing looked familiar. I finally got my phone to
charge. I was 1.2 miles away. Oh my gosh.
Amazing. Yeah. So-
So wouldn't it be cool if you could do that? 100%. Yeah. And I think a lot of people- This book teaches you to do that. Yeah. A lot of people
somewhat instinctively, we were just talking about the science of reducing a sauce. And you have an incredible graph in there. Such a great graph.
Thank you. Thank you.
Oh no, 100% the artwork in the book's incredible. Yeah. It's very cute. But for some people, like for
me it was always intuitive. Right. Yeah.
You see steam rising, steam is water. You're looking at how thick it's getting and is it taking on a color? And like, I mean it's
the kind of thing most of human's knowledge was
developed through trial and error. And it took inventing
the scientific method to get like an idea about mechanism. So yeah, I mean for me, just like chemistry is really about mechanisms and I would rather teach
chemistry to somebody who can like sear a steak
or do a foie gras torchon and have them understand why they're doing what they're doing than
start someone just off on pure chemistry and then be like, "Okay, now cook something tasty." Yeah.
Yeah. That's interesting. Well, the thing that we really
wanted to get into today, we recorded another podcast
with your homie, Dave Arnold. Yeah. Cooking issues. Cooking issues. Check it out. And somebody asked a question
about Limoncello LaCroix and you'd never had it before. And I ran to the fridge to get you one. He told me about this.
I was so impressed. And I watched you like
crack it open and sip it and you're like, there's
obviously a vanilla compound. They're probably using sodium butyrate. I'm making up chemicals here. But it was really incredible
to watch it in action. And so we wanted to talk
today about the concept of snack companies just sort
of running out of flavors. There's been a recent run
of Coca-Cola launched, what is it called? The Creators Program. Sure.
Cool. Where they introduced a
Coca-Cola Starlight flavor. Oh yeah. And we have right here, this is galaxy flavored Torani syrup. Wow.
If anyone can see. Cosmic. There was a God, some sort of headline that came out in 2009 that the middle of the galaxy apparently
tastes like raspberries and smells like rum. Do you know what any of that's about? Okay. We might have to
fact check me remembering the name of the molecule correctly. I believe. Well, okay. So like taking a step back. Like flavor is molecules. And so like, some of those
molecules are usually made by like plants or cooking, but like chemistry can happen anywhere. So, there's lots of carbon and methane and the building blocks of this stuff floating out in
space and crashing together and getting hit by UV rays. Eventually, just from pure
chemistry you'll form like very simple sugars and
other small molecules. My organic chemistry professor described it as "space candy". Yeah, in addition to sugars, I believe it's ethyl
formate, which is like one of the smallest and simplest
fruity smelling molecules that you can make that's
also in raspberries and rum gets made in this
sort of like cosmic juice of molecules. And that's-
Wild. I mean it's kind of like, if a smell molecule forms in space and no one's there to smell
it, like does it have a flavor? We gotta send someone
out there to smell it. I know. Yeah. We gotta send someone to the
center of the galaxy, Nicole. Why did you make direct
eye contact with me? What? You love adventures. You always say you don't
get outta the house enough. You think I'd fare well in space? Yeah, I think you'd fare well in space. I already poured this
in my cup a little bit. Oh this color is- But I also mixed it with hot water. Yeah. The colors are alarming. It's like deep violet? It's almost like blue. Why do you think they went
with that color though? Because I would never equate the galaxy with like this weird muted violet color. Well I think like, I mean
if you look at it head on, going back to my wine-tasting days. Yeah. If you look at it head on it's like so dark that it's almost black. And then if you kind of
tilt it a little bit, you see this like inky
blue purple tinge to it. I mean I guess it kind of
looks like the night sky and maybe the closest thing to
like the absence of color? A void.
Yeah, a void. It's void colored. It's void colored if you will. Drink the void! Yeah. "Do the Dew" is so 2008. But no, take a sip of this. I'm curious about what you're tasting. Yeah. I mean it's like very, very sweet, very raspberry. Like not so much raspberry jam, but kinda like raspberry
top notes, light and heady. Like you pushed a raspberry
in between your fingers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Although now I mean like
I may be being thrown off by the color and the
viscosity, tasting it, it kind of reminds me of
like Dimetapp cough medicine. Did you ever take that
when you were a kid? Yeah, totally. The like purple grape stuff.
Totally. I'm getting grape butter pop. Yeah. It's not like full on- I mean it's like a cotton
candy kind of nuance to it. Can I ask you about
the cotton candy thing? So a lot of people say we have tried all of these new Coca-Cola products and the reason we said snack
companies are running out of flavors is because I remember
every new Coca-Cola product that came out when I was a kid. You had, vanilla Coke was
relatively new at the time. They did an orange Coke, cherry Coke, they did a blood orange Coke,
when they launched these like fancy diet Coke flavors. They did a raspberry Coke. They even had the Coke
Black, the espresso coke. Yeah, you loved that one, right? It came out. But these are all flavors
that exist within nature. And then it seems as if
they've sort of run out and now their flavors are
called like Coca-Cola GX 3000 partnered with Rosalia actually that one was called Coca-Cola
Move partnered with Rosalia. And all of their flavor notes are paired with like verbs and emotions. Like this tastes like excitement and hope and I think that's what
the galaxy thing is. But a lot of the tasting
notes that people get, they all say cotton candy. Yeah.
What is that cotton candy thing that
people are tasting? Um, cotton candy- Well, so like when you make cotton candy, you like melt sugar and spin
it into this like fine filament basically as soon as
you start applying heat to sugar it starts breaking down. And like kind of, it's almost like, like a truck hitting your car mirror and like shearing it off. That happens to it. And so it gets all these
like kind of naked edges and then becomes like smellable
in addition to tasteable. So Ethyl maltol is one
of those byproducts of like melting in the early
caramelization of sugar. So it's basically like
simple things form when you start to break down sugar. But don't break it down all the way. That would be getting more into caramel and cotton candy is mostly clear. Not caramelized. That's fascinating 'cause
you like smell a bucket of sugar and you don't
really smell anything. Exactly. Yeah. But if you smell the cotton candy even after it's cooled down, right? Like it does have a smell to it. Yeah, of course. Also they're pouring their blue razzes and their pink whatever that smell- The association is just like a carnival. Sure.
Vibe. It's incredible. I mean
blue raspberry is kind of the OG flavor that didn't exist. Right? And then they just
conjured it from nothing. But now it certainly exists in our consciousness, which
I think is incredible. Have you noticed anything
just like watching snack food trends change over the years from like a chemistry perspective? Oh, I mean like a big
one is obviously like spicy snacks. Like they were not as
popular, 10 or 15 years ago and now like everything has
to have a spicy version. Everything. And I mean that's a
molecule that's capsaicin, the spicy component of peppers. Yeah, I mean like a lot of these flavors, even if they're named
after things from nature, even if it's like, "Oh, this is cheese." Or like, "This is blue raspberry." I mean, not that there is blue raspberry, but a raspberry, they'll be
named after things in nature. But like the way that
these snacks are made, they'll take like all of
these flavorless ingredients to make the chip or
the liquid or whatever. And then add a flavor to it. So like the flavor comes in
a bottle from a flavor house. There's like several of these places that just compose flavors from bare molecules all day long. Kind of like, I don't know, early electronic music when you had to program a synthesizer to make a noise. Yeah.
Cool. Yeah, so, now they're making more
abstract sounding ones. But even when all of the
flavors had like a referent in reality they were still
not made from that thing. So you wouldn't like
distill a piece of cheese and then make like cheese chips out of it. You would take like isolated
butyric acid and diacetyl and like several other things and then blend it together. So there's always this
element of making things up involved in creating flavors. So it's not like
necessarily that surprising that people would start being like, "Well if we're making things up anyway, let's just like make everything up." Yeah. That's interesting 'cause
I always thought about it from a perspective of I knew Coke wasn't adding actual raspberry juice into their raspberry flavored Coke, but at least the fact that
it had a basis in reality, I was like, "Oh, this makes sense." But no, it was always,
they were retrofitting the term raspberry into just
a combination of chemicals pulled from the void. And so now they might
as well be doing that with Coca-Cola Soul Blast,
it was launched alongside a thousand year blood war. It had an action flavor. I actually can't tell if
you're joking right now. I'm serious.
Oh, okay. Did you say thousand year
blood war, was a flavor? So bleep thousand year blood
war is, I believe an anime. Oh, it's an anime.
Sorry. But Coca-Cola Soul Blast was launched in- Coca-Cola, Thousand Year Blood War. Yeah. Tastes like metal, I guess. God, it truly does and yeah, there was Coca-Cola Y3000 that tasting notes were
quote "liquid from Maraschino cherries mixed with grape cough syrup. Even has a little bit of
that medicinal burn" was from one food critic trying it. Wow.
Which is fantastic. But my question is what does Coca-Cola gain from
doing all of these silly, wacky wild things? Like what? Like what's the point? Like being inventive, getting new people to come buy the Cokes? I don't understand the purpose of it. I mean I think like a lot
of it is just marketing and like trying to maintain market share. I mean like Coca-Cola just
plain regular Coca-Cola as a like manufactured
product is about like as close to perfect as you get. I agree. Why mess around with perfection
just to be innovative? I mean, so if you like start it, it's almost like a tail
wagging the dog thing instead of like, "Oh we want this thing so we're gonna respond to it." It's like, "Well if we like
make this thing that's crazy, people will talk about it
and get excited about it." You'll be hearing the name
Coca-Cola all the time. Sure.
And then the next time you go to the store you'll be like, "Maybe I'll try to find, Warlord Skull Throne Coca-Cola" And then if you can't
find it you'll just buy like vanilla Coke and stuff. What was that? What was
that thing that Lay's did where they had what like four- "Do Us a Flavor Challenge". Do Us a Flavor, do you remember this? I don't actually. So Josh, I think you might
know more about it, but they- Oh I submitted. Oh I submitted to Lay's Do Us a Flavor. You did? They decided on like a cappuccino flavor, a chicken and waffles flavor and some other ones, I
dunno if you wanna like? Yeah, about the Coke
thing and the new stuff. Yeah they definitely, all of their sales are from Diet Coke and regular Coke. That's like a vast, it's like 90% plus. And it's these new things that just get their name
spiked in media's the same way that 7-11 introduces a Halo 3
Mountain Dew flavored Slurpee so they can sell more
cigarettes and lotto tickets. Fair.
Right? It's not about the Slurpees,
they're getting people- The loss leader. The loss leader. Right.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so I think it's fascinating but no, the Lay's Do Us a Flavor Challenge. It came out in, what was it, 2014 was the first time they did it, they had 14.4 million submissions to it. They basically asked people,
"Hey we've run out of flavors, we need you to submit new ones." They said it themselves? They did, but it was a
really fantastic campaign and I got really excited about it until I actually tasted all of them and there wasn't a single
flavor that I was like, "Oh this could actually
compete with the other one." So we'll go through the
winners from every year. There were a lot first year,
Bacon, Mac and Cheese, which to me-
Makes sense. Makes a fair amount of sense. Right? And it was the height of- That faken bacon mania. Yeah. But that bacon flavor,
it just bothers me so much. I love liquid smoke.
Liquid smoke. Yeah. Don't love it. Don't love it. I remember, okay so one, I don't think it was the Lay's
Do Us a Flavor Challenge, but it was in their era where
they eventually flipped it to like the Lay's Taste of America and then Passport to flavor where they were we getting international. No, they did because they had
a Szechuan chicken flavored Lay's chips that I ruined a
fantasy football draft party by because that was the only chips I got. Were they like mala flavored? Did they have like Sichuan peppercorn? I wish.
Like licking a battery? I wish they did, Also,
we made mala chips here when we made our puffer fish flavor chips. Sure, I remember. Which was really fun. But no, it had this like
deeply just burnt meat flavor to the chips that was really unsettling. And I looked on the list of ingredients and it said like Lay's
natural brown wok flavor and it had a trademark on it. Oh, okay. So Wok Hay? Exactly.
Literally. They made Wok Hay into a flavor? And boy does it not translate on chips. Oh my gosh. But how would you go about making something like that from scratch? Yeah. So the first thing
I would do if I, yeah, like Wok Hay flavor for example is I would fire up the
trusty gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. Oh sorry, go back to what
was that? What was that? So a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. You remember earlier when
I was talking about my PhD and it was like we're all just a bunch of chemists measuring different things. So yeah, a gas chromatograph
mass spectrometer is how you measure flavor molecules. So the flavors are mostly like a soup of many molecules together. So this machine, this instrument very carefully
separates them all from each other and then like tells you what they are all in a row. And then you can also
like calculate how much of each you have if you do more work. But yeah, so like the
first thing would be like, "Okay, so I'd like make some wok food and or maybe even just like, heat up a wok really high and then like- Add some oil.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have different ways of collecting smells essentially. So you basically get like,
it's like a little needle and it has like you, it's a little needle and you can push a thread
that's inside the needle out and it's like coated with this coating that's very sticky to smells? So you like
Collects it? Yeah. Like extract it, like put it in the, we call it the headspace because you know smells kind of, well the reason you can smell them is 'cause they travel through the air. So they're like, you can't see it, but you'd imagine there's your food and then there's this
cloud of flavor molecules above it in the headspace. Collect those molecules, put
them in the gas chromatograph, separate them all from each
other, figure out what they were and then go about trying to see, is there a commercial source for this? Do we need to just like
cook a wok a thousand times and then extract it and
put that in somehow? I mean that is kind of how
like natural flavors work. Wait, how do natural flavors work? Well, okay, so like- Josh and I are a state of shock right now. Yeah.
We love this. We're like basking in the
glow of your intelligence. Thank you so much. Keep going. Well, okay, so you ever look on an ingredients list and it'll say natural and artificial flavors? So artificial flavors
are just made from like, from scratch from maybe you like they used to make vanilla flavor by taking wood pulp and the woody part of wood,
which is called lignin. It's like the thing that
makes wood like wood and not like a bendable stem. Got it.
If you break that up, it'll release basically vanilla smell. So that's one of the reasons why like smoke smells kind of sweet 'cause you're literally
like breaking down the wood and then creating these,
like vanilla like molecules. They would never take vanilla bean 'cause that would be a natural flavor. Well they, yeah. So then
to make a natural flavor that is like flavors that come
from a food that they have, carefully extracted
out with, I don't know, some kind of organic solvent
and purified and then bottled. So, I guess the thing
with natural flavors is, you could have something
labeled as a natural flavor. Like natural raspberry
flavor, does not mean it comes from a raspberry. It means that the components come from something that was once food. Wow.
So they might then be blended together. Yeah, into something
that resembles raspberry that technically is natural because they didn't do
any chemical synthesis. They just did extraction but comes from things
that aren't raspberry. Fascinating. There's been, and I've sort
of talked about this before. I have two things I wanna address. Should we start with beaver butt holes? I mean why not? What's the deal with the beaver? Why didn't we start
with that from the top? That's what I'm saying. What's the deal? Josh is shy. This thing about the
beaver butt holes, right? What's going on with those? Oh are you talking about castoreum? That's the one.
Castoreum! So this is, yeah, so if
smell's a big part of flavor, so if you know stuff about fragrances, then that also helps
enhance your understanding of flavor and vice versa. So like a big thing with
fragrances is basically the idea that like having a small amount of something really nasty
makes all the nice stuff much richer and nicer and more amazing. So like Ambergris. Exactly. Ambergris, which is like a
type of whale vomit castoreum which is a beaver anal gland. There's a lot of deer
musks and things like that. So if you smell them in pure form, it's like, I mean it's musk. There's a reason that we use the term musk for other stuff. Really intense, really unpleasant. But like just a little bit
of it with a bunch of other flower smells or something like that gives it like gravitas and deliciousness. So yeah, just a little bit of something horrible
makes things taste great. It's like life. Lays: Beaver anal gland.
It's coming at you in 2024. Castoreum chips. So you talked about spicy chips and I remember talking to somebody who was a flavor scientist for Lays and they were talking about
how it had just become an arms race on how spicy
can you make a chip, but there's obviously going to be a cliff that drops off where it's too
spicy for people to consume. The Paqui One Chip
challenge nearly failed me. Sent some people to the hospital, I think. Somebody died recently. Somebody died? Oh my gosh! Heart condition, died. Yeah, it's tough out there. So point is, the chips are so
spicy they're killing people. They've made chips so sour now that Lizanne went to the hospital. Like a lesion on your tongue. Oh yeah, I remember that. And so there's kind of nowhere
to go in the spicy or sour sector anymore that they haven't hit. What do you think the next frontier is for these snack companies? Well, I mean there's
like an upper limit to how salty you can get. Probably as bitter as
possible is not gonna fly. I mean umami is kind of like
the dark horse of flavor. A lot of people don't know what it is or it's hard to identify. It's basically the taste of savoriness. So I mean I guess you could
dip a chip in MSG which is glutamate, it's pure umami. and then have like the most umami chip that you could ever have. Wow.
And it would be very, very, very like brothy and rich tasting, but just like completely Umami. They already made that and
it came out like four years. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's called Chicken in a Biskit. Ah.
Oh yeah. Have you had a Chicken in a Biskit? Oh it's been a while. But yeah. Pretty iconic. It's literally, it's MSG and onion powder and I swear to God it
is the greatest tasting thing in the world. Mm. It is delicious. But no, it would be fascinating
to see places go into like the black garlic territory. Like finding these things that
have a ton of umami in them. But that might be a little bit limiting. And talking about loss leaders,
the most popular flavor of potato chip is plain. And it outsells every single
other flavor two to one. Absolutely, as it should be. I refuse to eat a plain
chip unless I'm dipping. I love plain chips.
Unless I'm dipping. Or salt and pepper chips. If it's a really good plain chip, then I, interestingly, sorry,
salt and pepper chips? I love salt and pepper chips. But have you noticed that like it's not just
salt and black pepper? There is like the savory
garlicy thing too. Absolutely. Yeah, it carries it. Do you like that or not? I mean, I like it. It's tasty. I would enjoy the opportunity to have just plain black pepper and see what that was like. Probably would be boring though. It might be. I mean it
might, I don't know. It might be like having like
a palate cleanser, almost. A palate cleanser.
After the umami bomb. I think the chip world
should make a complete harsh left turn and go into
like weird sweet flavors. I think a blue raspberry chip, would be an absolute trip. And something that we've
never like imagine like Laffy Taffy Banana, but you're
chewing in a chip instead of it being like a candy experience. I think that's something as a human being we haven't seen before. And I really want us to like explore and see what'll happen with that. Like an appletini chip. I would-
Oh my god, Midori Sour chip? Nicole
loves Midori Sours. You remember? Dude, I started making
Midori Sours because of you. Oh my God. And I started making Midori
spritzes because of you. I have a whole bottle of Midori. I'm gonna cry!
At my home. Cheetos made Sweetos.
Mm. I mean if you hit the right
like sweet salty thing, I think that's like really nice for people. Honey Butter chips.
Exactly. Honey butter chips are are delicious. Those are ridiculous. Yeah. I mean I think there's
some flavors that like would be too unfamiliar for
people in a chip context. Kind of like this, like Wok
Hay didn't work as a chip. There's actually like a sweet spot where like people like
things to be like novel, but also familiar. So like there's a point in the middle of like medium familiarity, medium novelty that like everyone loves. The Maple Bacon bar-
And then it starts dropping off. Yes. The Maple Bacon bar is
like the perfect middle point. Exactly.
Where it came out at the time. And it was like, oh, maple syrup, bacon, breakfast plate, donut. Like this all makes sense.
Yeah. And then it was all downhill from there. I'm curious to see where stuff goes. The rebranding of Sierra
Mist to Starry I think points to the big direction we're going. Oh, is that what Starry is?
Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was some kind of off brand, Dr. Phillips instead of Dr. Pepper. So no more like Mountainy Rangey. We don't want that anymore? Yeah. That's like pastoral, rugged pioneer salt of the earth. No, now we're reaching out to
the stars. We're optimistic. We're living in the digital
age, we're in the cloud. We don't exist in physical form anymore. I totally thought it was
like a self-confidence thing. Like star. Like you're starry. Oh it sure is!
Shoot for the moon. And even if you miss your
landing among the starry- See that's where I went. You were thinking it was from the galaxy. I was thinking it was all
about like, self-esteem. What if I told you whatever
you think you're right as long as you drink the soda? That's exactly. Whereas Sierra Mist is only one thing, your John Muir laws . Who likes real things. We like AI and the cloud and
no gravity and stuff like that. And we sure like to taste them. I got good news, Nicole. No, I got great news!
What? I got the best news you have ever heard. "The Mythical Cookbook" is
officially out! It's on sale. We published it. We wrote a whole damn book
and that's pretty rad. The entire team knocked
this one outta the park. And we are excited for
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I like pretend passed out. Oh pretend, pretend. There's a picture of
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me up here in my ivory tower and you say, "Wow, he's different." But no, no, dear listeners,
I'm just like you. I also have tons of subscriptions
that I am paying for every single month and do not want or use. For instance, Nicole, how
much European Grand Prix track and field are you watching? Just about zero. Like 0% of my time is spent doing that. Okay. So we're way different, right? I have to download a new
subscription service generally from some European broadcasting
corporation to watch these track meets. And then I always intend
to cancel it of course, after outdoor track and
field season's over. But then those 12.99 a month payments, they just keep racking up and
sometimes you don't notice them 'cause they just come through an app. But what if I told you, there's a service that can completely get rid of this? Wow. Would this service
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subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com/hotdog. That's rocketmoney.com/hotdog, rocketmoney.com/hotdog All right, Nicole and Arielle, we've heard what you and I have to say. Now it's time to find out
what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the universe. Well, it's time for a segment we call "Opinions Are Like Casseroles" Casseroles. All right. Get to the first opinion. My name is Nick, I'm from Michigan. A longtime listener, in my opinion, best
YouTube channel out there. Hell yeah, brother.
Thank you. So watching the shows, I always thought that the blood lava cake from food fears and that the blood taco from
"Will It Taco? Reheated" looked like the most interesting
stuff Josh ever made. Mm.
And after going to London for my honeymoon and
having black pudding, I have to say blood, really should
be put in more dishes here in America and I'm gonna
be keeping an eye out for dishes like that. Hope you guys have a great day. Thanks for all the awesome stuff you do. I agree. I I, yeah. I love blood. I love blood in food. I mean, it sounds like
we're being like edgy, but like black pudding, Morcilla, Dinuguan in Filipino
cuisine, all delicious. Sundae from Korea. There's a French jugged hair dish where they bleed the hair and then they cook it in its own blood and then they emulsify
the blended liver into it. And it's all a metaphor for Christ being risen in the springtime. So cool.
Ah, so good. But the flavor actually comes through and all of these things
are just an animal exists and you should try and use all the parts to nourish your body. Well, exactly, yes. It's about not wasting this thing that gave its life for us to eat it. 100%.
Americans need to have more open minds about eating
awful organs and blood. What are the flavors? 'Cause there's some people
that are very sensitive to it, like Rhett & Link, the
founders of this company, Link especially like he hates
the taste of liver, of blood, a lot of awful. What are the actual things
that you're tasting? I think the thing that turns a lot of people off is the like metallic flavor. And we can taste metal ions,
they're usually bitter tasting. So the metallic flavor
is actually an aroma. And it's kind of same sort of mechanism as when you like pick up a penny and then your fingers smell like a penny. The metal will actually like catalyze other molecules like fatty acids and things like that to
form, to like break down and form into like smaller
volatile molecules. So you get like aldehydes and the smell of the flavor of raw meat that can be like quite
intense and like blood and stuff is epoxy
decennial is the molecule. So I think some people
are especially put off by those flavors. Damn, that's rad. That's so rad. But when you cook it, it kind of, it gets rid of that, doesn't it? That metallic-ness of blood
kind of goes away right, when you cook blood? Yeah. I mean like- Maybe you mask it with
all the onions and garlic. Yeah. Like it depends. Like everybody has, we have like 400 different
types of olfactory receptor and so everyone has like a
different kind of profile of do they have more of this
one or more of that one. So it's definitely
possible for some flavors to be like much more intense to, person A versus person B. And that can be good or
that can be like off-putting There's a stat that
people very casually throw around that taste is actually 70% smell. Is there any validity to that number? Or how does that interact? So I think what they're referring to is that like flavor is both taste and smell. So like strictly speaking taste is just what happens on your
tongue with taste buds. So like sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami. If you're talking like metallic
aromas or roasted meats, or coffee or floral or fruity,
whatever, that's all smell. And if you've ever had a cold or like more likely if you got
Covid in the last four years and you like lose your sense of smell and like food tastes
really flat and boring, it doesn't actually change
the taste of the food, literally speaking, that
is just flavor minus smell. So it's like taste without smell. So if you think about how muted that is when you can't smell versus when you can, obviously like smell
is a huge part of that. It like, I don't actually know how you would like
quantify the percentage. I think it like, depends on the situation. I mean, 'cause also smells
without tastes can be a little weird seeming as well. But yeah, I guess as a
thought-provoking statistic that makes people appreciate that smell is a big part of flavor. Sure. Yeah, 70%, why not? Science communication 100%
accurate all the time, 60% of the time. All models are wrong, but some are useful. Hi Josh and Nicole, this is Grace from Buffalo, New York and I've got some opinions and questions. Oh my gosh.
So as someone from the city where chicken wings originated
from, why do places outside of Buffalo call them Buffalo wings? They should be called chicken wings only and should be ordered as hot,
medium, mild, or barbecue. I hate the term Buffalo wings. Also, I'm a vegetarian but I'll
always defend the proper way to eat chicken wings. You must eat them with blue
cheese, which I find disgusting, but eating 'em with ranch calls for war. Thanks for listening. Love y'all. And go Bills! Go Bills mafia! So like you don't call 'em
French fries in France. No. You call 'em frites. You call 'em frites, you call 'em fries. Yeah.
You don't call 'em Buffalo wings in Buffalo. I call 'em freedom fries. I went to a restaurant in the year of our Lord 2018 in El Reno, Oklahoma. And they had freedom fries on the menu. Oh my God.
I don't even remember why people were mad at France. I think its like Iraq war
or something like that? This is like a 20-year-old argument. I know. Give it up. But anyways, yeah, I get that, people from Buffalo, they have one food that was two foods that
were invented there. But nobody cares about
Beef on Weck anymore. Unfortunately. Have you ever had a Beef on Weck? Yeah. Yeah. Super good.
It's incredible. Better than Buffalo wings, I would say. I agree.
Yes. She mentioned that blue
cheese is disgusting. Are you a blue cheese fan? In certain contexts,
I'm a blue cheese fan. I mean I think it's like good to balance out the like
high acid, high spicy of Buffalo sauce, definitely. Yeah. This is interesting. So like Buffalo wings are
fascinating to me as a case study of how to balance flavors. Because you just have
capsaicin and vinegar and salt. And then you throw basically pure fat, like dairy fat into the mix and it's this incredible alchemy. You can use that knowledge for anything. But in terms of pairing that
with ranch versus blue cheese, like from a science perspective, what do you think works better? Because we had this debate,
ranch vs. blue cheese. We sure did.
I'm a ranch guy, perennially.
I'm a blue cheese girl. I love the herbs. I think specifically I
generally prefer ranch and ranch-like dressings
categorically if I had to pick one. But like specifically for the wings, I think there's something about
the like funk of blue cheese that just like really synergizes well with that like punchy, spicy, pungent
thing of the Buffalo sauce. So I would, yeah, I would go with blue cheese definitely,
if offered the choice. Lactonic mold wins again, Josh. Oh yes. Go with the science words. I know words.
Damn! I just, but the thing that like I'm confused about
is why not put respect on Buffalo wing's name? Like what's the problem? Self-loathing Buffalonians, man. Being from Buffalo should
be proud that one of the greatest things that
come out of your town/city is the chicken wing and
covered in delicious sauce. I would say no. Do some
deep-seated reflection. Think about what you're
saying here, my friend Grace. I do find it difficult to believe that no one ate a chicken wing
before someone in Buffalo... I think it's the sauce
decided to. Right, so then as a style of wing, I think it would be properly
called Buffalo wing. It's sort of like, you can't call it champagne unless it's from the
champagne region of France. If it's the wrong sauce on Buffalo wings, it's just a
Chicken wing, Sparkling chicken wing, I guess. Can we make it?
Oh that sounds horrible. Of course we can make it. Taco Bell put Pop Rocks in
a burrito a couple years ago and tried to make a sparkling
burrito and it was not good. Were the pop rocks sweet? Yeah, they were.
Oh, that's the problem. I know but you can make
an unsweetened pop rock. But like sugar gives it that- Like isomalt or something. We'll go to the drawing board
and see what we can get. We made a Baja Blast Isomalt Cage once. Do you remember that?
Of course I remember that. It was encasing a Baja Blast Pannacotta. Oh my God. We used to be on the cutting
edge now we're washed. We're washed. Hi Josh and Nicole. So I've been dating a guy for a long time. Congrats.
Who has been convinced by his parents that he
is lactose-intolerant. Oh!
And I have spent our entire relationship building a menu and buying the groceries and cooking surrounding his
supposed dietary restriction. I decided to start experimenting with small doses of dairy. Oh my gosh. I hope she
got an IRB form for that. There's been no reaction whatsoever. And if he knows that he eats
something at a restaurant or orders something in
that has dairy in it, he has a reaction. If I put it in the food
that we make at home, he is none the wiser and I feel kind of bad about it, but... You should. So I guess this is more of a
confession than an opinion. Yeah.
You guys have a good day. Okay. This is like the opposite. So it's like Munchhausen's
by proxy, right? I'm not a doctor A little bit, yeah. I'm not a doctor even though
I would be a really good one. And nurse judge as hell yeah. I cannot condone this behavior. I'm so sorry. Yeah, stepping away
from the science advice and into the relationship advice. Like, I've been married for a while and like sometimes you really
need to like give up your need to be right about something. Yes, thank you. As an also
married person I agree. Yeah, yeah. And just like
accept the irrational crazy thing that they insist on. I mean if it's everything, then
fine you deal with it, but- You don't need to be right all the time. It's like, I'm sure I have idiosyncrasies that drive people crazy, but to a certain extent
just accepting those about people is a nice thing to do. You're right. Now I ain't married but
I'm hurtling towards it and I also have a fiance
with fake food allergies. Hear me out. Hear me out.
Hear me out. Hear me out. She's allergic to quote "beans", but that is a very large category. And so she's not allergic
to like beans, right? She's allergic to something within a bean that has caused a reaction to her before. Yeah. And when I say she's
lying, she's not lying, but chickpeas she can eat. That's the one that she knows she can eat. Those are like kind of
the highest protein beans. And is it lectin? Is that the protein that tends
to cause negative reactions? I dunno. I mean there are
lectins, but that's like, it's like a different kind
of molecule than a protein. I would be curious, is her reaction like indigestion or like a rash? Vomit. Like straight. Just expelling. So yeah, I mean like-
Both holes. Sorry.
TMI. I get that with oysters. So unfortunately, I
mean, so like there are, there are like basically forms of soluble fiber in beans,
Fructooligosaccharides and stuff. That's like what gives
you gas if you have beans. So, but it sounds like she's reacting to something more than that. I mean, didn't Pythagoras
die from eating fava beans? My brother-in-law has that. My brother-in-law, if he eats or is near fava beans, he will die. Wow!
Well maybe not that dramatic, but like he
cannot consume a fava bean. Some sort of like genetic
thing in his makeup. Yeah.
So anyways, she's allergic to beans,
can consume chickpeas. And I'm like, what about lentils? And she's like, "No, I can't have that." And she doesn't know at all. But I just don't push it and I don't cook anything with
any bean or bean-like things. And when we go out to restaurants and we will go to like a
traditional Lebanese restaurant or something and she'll go, "Can you ask them if it's
only chickpeas in the hummus?" And I go, yes, they are all speaking Arabic in the back. Humus is literally Arabic
for chickpea. It's only that. And instead of saying that,
now I just ask the server and they say I may. And that's love.
Great! That is love.
That's love. That's a very mature take. Whether or not they can process
lactose is not the point. It's about trust and there's so many good lactose alternatives. Yeah.
Hey y'all, this is Martin from Minneapolis. Two opinions: First, kale is
a maligned piece of produce. Kale is just spinach that
learned to stand up for itself. Everywhere, you see a spinach, I use kale. Second, really the only
beverage you should have with a meal is water. You can have something
else as an accompaniment, but you're not using it for lubrication. Those are my two opinions. Thanks for your work. How much lube does this man need? I'm confused that the like primary role of your accompanying
beverage is lubrication. And not some kind of sensory experience. I mean, I guess lubrication
is a sensory experience. Yeah, ish. But I don't know. I've never thought about it that way. I mean, I think the idea is
that it's not so much that the tannins in the wine help
the food go down faster, but that you get like
an enhanced experience. You get synergy between
like what you're drinking and what you're eating
and it could bring out different stuff or balance it. I mean like drink water if
you wanna drink water. But- Is he like just eating
old crusty bread heels? Like an 18th century French laborer? Probably. They actually make like thickeners to put in liquids.
Thick-It. So that like people,
like very elderly people who like don't have the
muscle control to swallow can swallow it. So like maybe he would like, if he's like that concerned about
lubrication, he might want- Maybe, hear me out. You know what I think, I
think my friend Martin, Martin is their name. I think they chew their food and drink it. You know what I mean? I think they chew it,
keep it in their mouth and use the water to push it down. If I'm in a rush, I'll do that. We've all been there. I mean, from sensory science, I do know that there are
people that are high salivators and low salivators. So you can vary in the volume
of saliva that you produce. So it could be that he
is lacking in that arena. It's very possible. Al pastor tacos and a real sugar Coke is the best. Or the, what is it? The sangria soda? That's a sensory experience.
That's a special thing. Even if you're not drinking
alcohol with your meal, that's a fun time. Oh yeah. I'm a fan of like very
promiscuous beverage pairing. Not just wine. Yeah. Nothing better. What about the kale and the spinach? Oh, the kale. Eh. Everything's so cyclical now, right? We went from kale's just
lining the Pizza Hut salad bar. Yeah. Ornamental. They were the world's largest buyer of kale for a period. And then we went to Beyonce
wearing a kale sweatshirt, and then we went to "Kale sucks" and then now we're back
to actually kale's good. And round and round we go. It'll be turnip greens tomorrow, mustard greens the next. I think people should
eat more turnip greens. I was going to say-
I agree entirely. Let's see more turnip. Let's have a more bio-diverse leaf diet. Yeah, let's bring it. I love me some chard. You know what I'll say? I hate baby spinach.
Gimme that mature spinach. Yeah. Want something
that'll spinach stand up to. I mean talk about spinach
has grown a backbone. Yeah, 100%. I disagree with the both of you. Baby spinach is leaps and bounds better than regular spinach. Are we talking about cooked
spinach or raw spinach? Both ways. Oh, no, no, not cooked to baby spinach. It just turns into like nothing. Doesn't got no taste. So does regular spinach. You're eating the stems. It's got like more texture. I can't with you two. It's thicker, tastes like tar. It's more flavor. It's
like richer tasting almost. Like regular curly kale. Does it? I mean I cook with a lot of curly kale 'cause it's just there and available and I need greens and I put flavors in it. I like Dino kale. Like Lacinato?
Lacinato. Hablanero. I think? I think they're the same thing. I mean, that's why I like
mustard greens for example 'cause like it does have
like, kind of more things beyond vegetal that you can enjoy. I will say I run through about a head and a half to two heads of cabbage a week. Cabbage is delicious. Cabbage is amazing. Big cabbage, guy. Cabbage is having a moment. The world has run on cabbage
for thousands of years, and I will continue that tradition. My people, it subsisted on beats, cabbages and small frozen river fish. And that's how I want to eat. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. On that note, thank y'all
for stopping by the podcast and thank you so much
to Dr. Arielle Johnson. Dr. Arielle Johnson. Google that one. Dr. Arielle Johnson,
author of "Flavorama". Check it out. Arielle, where can they
find you elsewhere? Oh, online. Sorry. No, what's your location? Sorry, My social security number?
I live in New York, so come check me out in New York if you're in town. Oh, if you wanna be featured on "Opinions Are Like
Casseroles", give us a ring and leave us a message. At DOG-POD1 I fudged the outro. My computer went to sleep and
I was Googling other things. That's why this is clunkier
than it used to be. If you wanna be featured on
"Opinions Are Like Casseroles" give us a ring, Nicole,
just let me have this one! See y'all next time.
