The Magic of Food Fermentation in Eng-Sci 24
When asked about the inspiration behind Engineering Sciences 24: Flavor Molecules of Food Fermentation: Exploration and Inquiry, Pia M. Sörenson’s smile widens and her eyes light up.
“This course is my love project. This is where I get to do things that I really care about,” she says.
Undergraduate students may know the Chemical Engineering and Applied Math preceptor from Gen Ed 1104, Science of Cooking, which began in 2010 as a means to show how science can be applied to everyday life. Throughout her time teaching Gen Ed 1104, Sörenson noticed the different trends in the culinary industry, beginning with molecular gastronomy before shifting towards local ingredients and finally landing on fermentation. Her educational background, an M.A. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry as well as a Ph.D. in Chemical Biology, prepared her to teach about how microorganisms can transform ingredients like yeast or milk through the process of fermentation.
Eng-Sci24 uses a small-group format, with a cap of 20 students. Sörenson says this allows her to“experiment with the students pedagogically.” She collaborates with the cohort as they undertake a class-wide project and watches as their independent projects evolve throughout the semester.
“One of the things that I love about teaching science with food is that it’s so incredibly connected to people’s everyday experiences,” she says.
Eng-Sci 24 is a lab course focused on innovation. Because the class requires a strong scientific background, it mainly attracts seniors and science concentrators. But at times, she says, “someone who doesn’t have as strong a science background, but they’re just so into fermentation” can make the course work. Despite its culinary application, the course draws students with career interests varying from food writing to sustainable food production.
The independent class project encourages students to answer unasked questions about food fermentation. “This field still has much potential for discovery and there is every reason to be ambitious in your choice of research topic,” the syllabus reads.
When asked about memorable projects, Sörenson recalls one that focused on “multisensory flavor perception,” which mixes taste with different senses to create a quasi-three-dimensional experience. Students collaborated with peers at the Berklee College of Music, where the Eng-Sci 24 students played with distinct yogurt flavors that the Berklee students used as inspiration for compositions. One song used a high frequency note to relay the acidity of yogurt, while staccato notes mimicked the popping sensation after a spoonful of the fermented milk.
Sörenson also emphasizes the applications of fermentation when discussing class field trips around the greater Boston area. In one, students explored a cheese cave and spoke with fermentation experts to understand how the science they’d learned became someone’s job.
“I really feel like it’s the next step of any innovation to think, ‘Well, what could become of this?’” she says.
Sörenson is far from alone in her passion for the course. Alejandra Touceda Suarez, the Eng-Sci 24 teaching fellow who previously worked at a three-star Michelin restaurant in Girona, Spain, is just as enthusiastic about fermentation. When I ask her to visualize the process of fermentation, Touceda Suarez immediately reaches behind her table and pulls a mason jar into view, showing the cloudy white liquid that indicates a fermentation process.
Sörenson and Touceda Suarez’s interest in food fermentation also extends beyond Eng-Sci 24. Sörenson describes a beauty and magnetism to the field. To her, the process of taking simple ingredients like milk and transforming them into cheese, yogurt, cream — and exploring so many different flavors — “seems magical and enticing.”.
“I love that it’s connected to that original thing that came from the ground, that vegetable that you want to preserve or the beautiful smell of tea leaves and flowers,” she says.
Touceda Suarez sees an even greater significance of fermentation. “In this world that we’re living, it’s a trend,” she says. “In others, it’s essential to life.”
Touceda Suarez explains that for many around the world, fermentation means having potable water or access to more nutrients, allowing consumers to select “microorganisms that you trained to be there and you know they’re good for you.”
Fermentation, Touceda Suarez notes, has been a pattern in civilizations across the world — from kimchi in East Asia to chicha in South America.
“In order to have civilization, you needed fermentation,” she says.
— Magazine writer Anna G. Farronay can be reached at anna.farronay@thecrimson.com.