BBC 6分钟英语学习 认识调味师

English from BBC Learning English. Hello.

This is 6 min English from BBC Learning English.

I'm Sam, and I'm new. In this program, we're finding out all about food flavors.

Although everyone knows what food they like, the taste of the science behind flavors is complex.

Flavor involves much more than tasting with the tongue.

It's also influenced by how food looks, smells and even how it's described.

In this program, will be meeting the flavorists, scientists who combine different natural and artificial ingredients to create the flavors we love to taste in our food.

And of course, we'll be learning some new vocabulary as well.

Sounds delicious, neal. But 1st, I have a question for you.

No one really knows why, but certain flavors seem to work well together.

Some scientists think classic combinations, like lemon and lime or strawberries and cream, are so popular because their chemicals overlap in special ways.

Sometimes this creates new, interesting and unusual flavors.

So what weirdly popular combination was invented by British chef Heston Bluementile.

Was it a dark chocolate and sea salt, b milk, chocolate and chili, or sea white chocolate and caviar?

Well, I've tried sea salt and chocolate.

I think it tastes great, so I'll say a OK now, I'll reveal the correct answer at the end of the program.

Nowadays, the flavor industry is big business.

Flavorists work in high tech laboratories, and every new ice cream, crisp or tooth paste.

Flavor is the result of years of scientific research.

But it wasn't always like that.

Here's food historian Doctor Niger Baronstein describing the beginnings of the flavor industry in the 19th century to Ruth Alexander, presenter of the BBC World Service program.

The food chain, there's really only a handful of people and maybe a dozen or so companies that are really involved.

And at that point, they really are kind of working with secret recipes that were kept very secure and sometimes passed down within families from father to son.

So it really seemed like a gild structure from the Middle Ages at that point.

Was it seen as some kind of dark art?

Yes, the term black art does come up in some of the early writing of people who were producing flavors.

At this point, to begin with, there were only around a dozen, that's twelve companies experimenting with food flavors.

The recipes they used were kept secret and only shared with family or trusted friends.

DR Baronstein compares these companies to a gild an organization of people who do the same job or have the same interests, because it was so secretive and mysterious.

People saw making flavors as a dark art, a method of achieving something in a clever but dishonest or wicked way.

But all this changed after the 2nd World War, when the invention of processed food, which could be bought in supermarkets and kept fresh at home in the fridge, increase the demand for new and exciting flavors.

Here's Doctor Barrenstein again explaining the work of present day flavorists to BBC World Service Program the food chain.

So essentially, becoming a flavorist today is still an apprenticeship process.

There's no academic path to it, right?

Your training is on the job, working alongside a master flavorist.

Add a flavor in fragrance company, or at some of the bigger food companies, will have their own flavor divisions.

To scientific profession, for sure, you have to know a lot about chemistry, but it is a creative profession that the very heart of this industrial food system.

There is these craft artisans who are essentially designing the molecule by molecule, the flavors that shape the way that food is made to taste.

Today's flavorists learn their art by serving an apprenticeship, a period of time spent working for a skilled master, often for low payment, in order to learn their skills.

Although a background in chemistry is important, you can't study flavors at university.

The training happens on the job, actual place of work.

While you are working, dr Barrenstein calls flavorists craft artisans, people doing skilled work with their hands.

And she describes their creations as the marriage of science and art.

Yes, I love the idea of the flavorist as a magician, adding a pinch of this flavor or a drop of that oil to create the perfect magical taste.

I wonder if that's what British chef Heston Bloomentile was trying to do.

In my question, I asked what popular flavor combination was invented by chef Heston Bluementile.

And I said it was a dark chocolate and sea salt.

So was I right? It's true that sweet and salty flavors go together well, but the correct answer was white, chocolate and caviar,

a combination described by Swiss master flavourist Francois Benzi, as weird but wonderful, right?

Let's recap the vocabulary we've learned, starting with a dozen, which means twelve.

Something described as a dark art refers to a method of achieving something in a clever but dishonest way.

A gild is an organization of people who do the same job.

And apprenticeship is the period of time and apprentice spends watching and working with a skilled master in order to learn their skills.

When you do something on the job, it happens in the workplace while you're working.

And finally, an artisan is a person doing skilled work with their hands.

Once again, our 6 min are up.

Bye for now. Bye.

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