The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/food-science/)
After two years of research and development, Rahanna Bisseret Martinez ’26 published a cookbook highlighting the cuisine she saw in her household and across the California Bay Area.
Instead of tastings in the Statler Hall Auditorium, professors teaching Wines, Cider Production and other alcohol-based classes have been getting creative, making at-home tasting kits for students.
Part 1 — Amelia Clute and French Macarons
French macarons are only scary if you actually care about doing it well. Let me elaborate — you would have to try extremely hard to produce a legitimately inedible macaron. Almost any combination of almond flour, sugar and meringue will give you an extremely tasty pastry. So why are macarons touted as one of the most difficult, fussy and intimidating challenges in the culinary world? Simply put, it is because we place too much emphasis on aesthetics without asking ourselves if we actually enjoy what we’ve created.
In the early 20th century, 3,500 gallons of milk, which was purchased from local farmers, would be ready for packaging each day. At the Cornell Dairy Bar of 1928, customers had two flavor options: white, with no added flavor, or a chocolate mix.
With graduation looming, the frequency of nosy questions about post-graduation life from parents, friends, friends of parents and parents of friends far and wide reaches its peak. “What are you doing after graduation?” Is a question every senior dreads answering, but for Jessica Kwong ’18, the question brought on an entirely new crisis: Accept the return offer for one of the biggest snack companies in the world or start from scratch building her very own company? She eventually decided on the latter, and Kwong declined the job offer in favor of creating what would eventually become Jack & Friends in March 2019, a plant-based jerky line with jackfruit as a main ingredient.
Although mention of the word “vegan” can bring up disturbing images of proselytizing protestors armed with signs and graphic visuals of animal cruelty, people often overlook the environmental impacts of reducing their consumption of animal products. Prof. David Wolfe, plant science, revealed his insight on the crippling carbon footprint of the meat industry, and what a plant-based diet would entail for the environment. “A lot of the major meat producers in this country are coming from fairly large operations and corporate farms [where] the carbon footprint is quite a bit higher,” Wolfe said. “The animals are all confined in one place — it could be very far away from where the crops are grown and are then transported to feed the animals.”
According to Wolfe, the excessive amounts of fossil fuels utilized in the production and transport of these crops alone have a significant environmental impact. Ruminant animals, like cattle, have the added detriment of methanogens — microbes required for digestion that release methane, a notorious greenhouse gas.
Making ice cream is a precise process. It requires students to not only know the ins and outs of making ice cream but also and the science behind the entire process.
“Our lab focuses on ovarian follicle development in chickens at the molecular level and how it relates to the whole organism,” Scoville said. Follicle development is the process by which an ovarian follicle, a small sac of fluid which contains immature eggs, matures.
Because of the nutrient deficiency and the unique sensitivity of wheat to the bioavailability of copper, Dovirak decided to focus on better understanding and further improving the process of copper absorption, regulation and transport in grains.
Food researcher Brian Wansink had two more papers retracted, putting his total for the year at 15. Following his previous retractions, Wansink resigned as professor from the University.