Diane Fresquez's Blog

Author Diane Fresquez spent a year investigating the link between taste and memory, trying to uncover the secrets of flavour and sensory science.

She joins Michael Williams to recount her culinary journey. Along the way she met scientists who create flavours, learnt how what breast feeding mothers eat influences the tastes of their children and had a ‘dark dining’ experience where all food was consumed in complete darkness. Listen to the interview on ABC Australia, here.

Brussels has one of the largest tram networks in the world, but there’s one tram ride in the city where it’s not the journey, nor the destination that pleases — it’s the food.

To paraphrase the Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte, “This is not a Tram.”

Indeed, this is not a restaurant, either — this is the Tram Experience, one of the hottest gourmet dining tickets in town.

“Eating out is the national sport in Belgium,” writes Bill Bryson in his book “Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe.” This small European country, about the size of Maryland, has 127 Michelin-starred restaurants, with 24 in Brussels, compared with 20 in Berlin and 14 in Milan.

But increasingly, the residents of this cosmopolitan city are eager to try fine dining in novelty venues, especially restaurants with a view. Read the full article on Zester Daily.

With Europe on edge after the bombings in Paris, it is good to be reminded of the joy of sharing a meal with strangers. But what happens when you don’t know anyone at a dinner party, not even the host?

During a recent evening in Brussels, I rang the doorbell of a complete stranger’s home promptly at 7 p.m. His ground-floor apartment was in an art nouveau-style row house built in the 1930s. The door opened, and Maher, an Egyptian political science Ph.D. candidate 
at Ghent University, gave me a warm welcome. (He, like other hosts of such dinners, chooses not to publicize his full name.)

I was the first to arrive for his “Egyptian Evening” (dinner and a movie), and as I took off my coat in the entryway, I resisted the temptation to blurt out that famous quote from “A Streetcar Named Desire”:

“I’ve always depended on the kindness (and in this case, the cooking skills) of strangers.” Read the article on Zester Daily here.

Part of what makes eating together so pleasurable, in any language or culture, is the conversation. But when London-based photographer Chris Terry was in Niger photographing an ordinary family enjoying a spaghetti dinner, he was surprised that no one spoke.

“It’s a great privilege to have food to eat,” explained the grandmother, the head of the household. “It’s not the moment to chat and say silly things.”

The spaghetti had been paid for with vouchers from the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). Under the program, Terry had been invited into the family’s home to document what has become the photo exhibit, “The Family Meal: What Brings Us Together.”

Read the article here.

Flemish chef Michael Venheste’s famous Madeleines. Photo: M. Vanheste

What’s your favourite comfort food? Tweet your answers, and photos if you have them, @DianeFresquez for the upcoming event, “Surprisingly Comforting,” February 11, 2015, at Nottingham Trent University. Read more here.

It tastes like wine…but it’s nothing more than honey, water and yeast.

Xavier Rennotte, a Belgian beekeeper, was obsessed with recreating the flavor of his first boyhood taste of mead, known as hydromel (“honey water”) in French. And so he used science to track down this fleeting, Proustian taste from his childhood in the Belgian countryside. Read more in Zester Daily, an award-winning online destination for food, wine and travel enthusiasts eager to discover what’s new and delicious in the world. Their mission is to promote spirited, intelligent dialogue about what we eat and drink — a critical step toward establishing a more healthful, environmentally sustainable and just food culture.

Book review in the November 2014 issue of Nature Chemistry. Click to read.

Read the book review, “An enchanting personal tale on the relationship between food and memories, with some interesting and accessible science on the side” by Rebecca Ingle, on Shot of Science, the new on-line magazine of the popular, international science festival, Pint of Science.

Watch “From Beer Came the pH Scale” filmed by Videnskab in the Media Tent of Science in the City, ESOF 2014, June 23, 2014.

The pH scale is used all over the globe in education, research and industry—and it was developed by Soren Sorensen at the Carlsberg lab in 1909! Let’s celebrate the remarkable story of the pH scale during a lively, hands-on Q&A with Prof. Dr. Jürgen Wendland, of the Carlsberg Laboratory: Monday, June 23, 10am, Science in the City, ESOF 2014, Copenhagen “From Beer Came the pH Scale.” Start by sending us a “SelpHie” to be displayed during the event: take the pH of any substance–use your imagination!–and tweet to @sel_pHies. 5 tickets to ESOF to be won. Winners announced June 15 on Twitter and FaceBook.

Diane Fresquez is an American journalist living in Brussels. She’s the author of the new, popular science book called “A Taste of Molecules: In Search of the Secrets of Flavour,” an entertaining blend of food science, memoir, humour and recipes. It’s a journey of the senses through Belgium, the Netherlands, England and Denmark. A Taste of Molecules not only mentions the fact that the pH scale was developed at the Carlsberg laboratory in 1909, but the book also includes 3 chapters on some of the exciting food science research being conducted at the University of Copenhagen!