Tag Archives: Flavor

Lickable Monitor Tastes Like What’s on Screen: Willy Wonka, Here We Come!

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Because some people still care about making the future we all dreamed about as kids a reality, professor Homei Miyashita at Meiji University in Japan has developed a monitor that can imitate on-screen flavors, appropriately naming it Taste The TV (TTTV). I just licked my own old television set to test it, but it appears to be a regular TV and not a TTTV. Tastes like static.

Using a carousel of ten different flavor canisters, the TTTV can mix the basic flavor building blocks in different proportions to create a variety of tastes, which it dispenses via spray on a hygienic film overlaying a flatscreen. But do the snozzberries really taste like snozzberries?

Miyashita estimates a retail version would cost around $835 to produce, and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see them in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog before next Christmas. I only hope they figure out what taste an explosion leaves in your mouth so they can make action movies that much more real.

[via 9gag]

“Food Crayon” lets you playfully garnish your dishes with ingredient-flavored shavings! Move over, SaltBae!

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Instead of sprinkling fresh herbs or grating parmesan shavings over your food, these flavor-packed crayon-shaped edible sticks let you garnish your food in a playfully fun way!

The wacky idea for crayon-based garnishing comes from Montreal-based Nadia Lahrichi, who runs the company along with her brother, Kamil, and mom, Veronique. Together, they call themselves the Foodie Family and with their combined backgrounds in cooking, biochemistry, and marketing, they’re reinventing how we interact with our food! The Food Crayons really don’t need much explaining – traditional crayons are made from wax and dye and are formed into the crayon shape… Food Crayons, on the other hand, are made from food ingredients suspended in an edible substrate, agar-agar. Commonly used as a gelling agent, and a vegan alternative to animal-based gelatine, the agar-agar helps bind the ingredients into the crayon shape. Once the crayon’s been cast, they can easily be shaved over food, flavoring it in an absolutely engaging and exciting way!

The gastronomic crayon sticks come in a variety of flavors – both sweet and savory. Perfect for seasoning your dish with, they add a touch of brightness without you needing to grate, shred, julienne herbs, grind peppercorns, or even prepare sauces, compotes, and vinaigrettes. The flavors include classics like basil, lemon, ginger, and shallot, to more exotic ingredients like porcini mushrooms or black garlic, and even interesting combos that include chilli and garlic, balsamic and figs, curry and turmeric, or honey and mustard. Perfect for upgrading your dishes, the creators recommend adding 5-10 shavings on top of your food. It’s an incredibly fun way to make food taste better, and the crayons barely occupy space on your kitchen spice rack!

All the flavors are plant-based, gluten-free, and vegan (barring the honey mustard). You could buy individual crayons, or create your own box-set of colors/flavors to choose from. Food Crayon even sells a neat little sharpener to do the trick, so you don’t have to borrow one from your kid’s stationery set.

Ultimately, the same way a crayon adds a dash of vibrancy to a blank paper, the Food Crayons bring about vibrancy to your regular meals or drinks, giving them a zing or a pep that’s difficult to miss. Yes, I said drinks, because the company just released a Piña Colada-flavored crayon too! Don’t judge me if I directly chomp right into that one…

Designer: Food Crayon

This instant noodle’s water-soluble packaging becomes its sauce!

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The very concept of packaging instant noodles in plastic is baffling to me. The noodles take barely 5 minutes to cook, and another 5 minutes to eat… but the plastic packaging takes nearly a century to biodegrade. Sounds really odd, doesn’t it? Well, for Holly Grounds, a product design graduate from Ravensbourne University London, it seemed like a problem that definitely deserved fixing. Grounds’ clever little solution eliminates plastic and replaces it with something much more sensible… an edible, water-soluble gelatinous skin that actually turns into the noodle broth when dipped in water.

The Dissolvable Noodle Packaging finds a unique, no-waste packaging solution for instant-ramen. Instead of wrapping the noodles in layers of plastic (with an extra plastic sachet filled with the tastemaker powder), Holly decided to develop an edible, spice-infused biofilm to package the noodles in. When you want to cook yourself some ramen, just insert the pre-packaged noodle-cake into hot water and the biofilm dissolves in the water, turning it into a flavored broth! “The packaging becomes the sauce”, says Holly, who managed to design and develop her solution right in her own kitchen! The biofilm uses simple, edible ingredients like potato starch, glycerin, and water. “The ingredients are blended and heated until the mixture is at the right thickness. At this point, I add the spices and flavorings before pouring it into a mold to set for 24 hours”, Holly mentions.

Designer: Holly Grounds

Here’s a look at the biofilm that’s been pre-seasoned with spices and garnishes. In its pliable state, the film can easily be wrapped around a cake of noodles, allowing it to set and harden as the film dries out.

It’s worth noting that this solution translates perfectly onto packaging for other products like rice or even pasta! The biofilm can easily be seasoned with spices and powders, sort of turning the packaging into the product’s flavoring. In a way, it also replaces the need to use labels and graphics on product packaging. With Holly’s Dissolvable Noodle Packaging, you can quite literally see the ingredients like sesame seeds, chili flakes, and seaweed strips in the packaging, allowing you to visually judge and differentiate between different flavors!

Green Bean, Corn, and Carrot-flavored Hard Candies: Be Sure to Eat Your Veggies

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Because apparently there’s a market for absolutely everything, Archie McPhee has created these hard candies that taste like vegetables. A 2.5-ounce tin will set you back $5 and contains a mix of green bean, corn, and carrot flavored candies. Can anybody else feel their lunch rising in their throat?

These would be perfect to set out on your coffee table and wait to see a friend’s reaction when they eat one. They would also be perfect to hand out on Halloween, although you won’t get to see the reactions of the children when they eat them unless they’re your own children, in which case I say go for it – it’s never too early to start developing those trust issues.

Apparently, the flavors are so realistic that “they’ll freak out your mouth.” Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my mouth freaked out any more than it already is. That said, if my mom agrees I can have dessert if I eat these in place of my actual vegetables I will swallow them whole, wrappers and all.

Ketchup Flavored Candy Canes Are the Ultimate Christmas Condiment

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Were you a good boy or girl this year? Doesn’t matter, 2020 has spoken and we’re all getting ketchup flavored candy canes for Christmas anyways. Created by Archie McPhee, a six-pack of “rich tomato flavor” ketchup candy canes costs $6.50 and is sure to be absent from every single Christmas list this year. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t getting them anyways!

I think my favorite part about these things is they look just like traditional candy canes, so you kids won’t realize Santa thought they were bad this year until it’s too late. Will I still sharpen the end of mine to a point and poke my brother in the leg with it until he tells on me? Well, it wouldn’t be Christmas if I didn’t, now would it? They’re called traditions after all.

So… are you thinking what I’m thinking? If it’s “I wonder what one of these would taste like melted on a hotdog” you are! And I, for one, plan on finding out. If it’s as delicious as I imagine, fingers crossed for spicy mustard and sauerkraut candy canes next year!

[Archie McPhee]

This Device Can Synthesize Any Flavor on Your Tongue: Taste the Rainbow

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Back in the 1990s a team of engineers created a device called the iSmell. This unusual gadget used scent cartridges to simulate a wide variety of aromas, which could be triggered through computer code. The iSmell ultimately failed due to lack of market interest, but I always thought the idea that you could create anything from the smell of hot chocolate to pepperoni pizza just by mixing chemicals was pretty fascinating. Now a scientist in Japan has developed a similar technology, though this one simulates flavors rather than scents.

Homei Miyashita of Meiji University’s Miyashita Laboratory created this novel device that he calls a “taste display.” It uses a set of five electrolytic flavor gels which are electrically stimulated to produce taste sensations on its user’s tongue. The process of electrophoresis is used to subtractively adjust the amount of sweet (glycine), salty (sodium chloride), bitter (magnesium chloride), acidic (citric acid) and umami (glutamic sodium) flavors which are released. Theoretically, these five base flavors could replicate just about any flavor you’d like, and the system has already been used to simulate flavors ranging from sushi to gummy candies.

Now, taste alone isn’t enough to truly experience flavor, as our sense of smell is also a big part of that mechanism. Perhaps they could dust off the old plans for the iSmell and combine them, then sell this as some kind of gadget for dieting.

You can read the full research paper about the taste display in the Association for Computing Machinery’s digital library.

[via Syfy]

McCormick hands over its spice R&D to IBM’s AI

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McCormick might be a brand name you recognize from its herbs and spices, French's Classic Yellow Mustard or even "edible" KFC-flavored nail polish. For more than 40 years, it's recorded reams of data on product formulas, customer taste preferences an...

10 Cool Tea Infusers For Tea Lovers

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Tea is such a wonderful drink. It’s healthy, it’s tasty, and has more benefits than many other tasty drinks. You really can’t go wrong when it comes to tea, whether it’s green, black, or any color under the sun! Of course, sometimes tea can taste like hot water, so in order to avoid that and drink flavorful, delicious tea, you might need a tea infuser! I’ve put together a list of cool and cute tea infusers so you can get on your way to drinking yummy tea.

Yellow Submarine Tea Infuser


This cute tea infuser is great for fans of The Beatles. Remember that song, “Yellow Submarine?” “We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine…” It’s also great for fans of submarines in general. That’s a thing people are into right?

Piggy Tea Infuser


We’ve all had a piggy bank at some point, so why not have a piggy tea infuser? It’s just as adorable and just as useful. I love this little thing.

Penguin Tea Infuser


So there’s going to be a lot of animal shaped infusers on this list. Sorry, not sorry. I’m in love with this adorable penguin tea infuser. I just hope it doesn’t make my tea as cold as the Antarctic…

Owl Tea Infuser


Aww, look at these darling things. They’re so colorful, I want them all!

Fruit Tea Infuser


Hey, look, it’s not an animal. It’s a precious fruit! It’s making me hungry for some fruit and thirsty for some tea!

Elephant Tea Infuser


Elephants are my favorite animal, so of course, they had to be included on this list! Definitely my favorite tea infusers on the list.

Rubber Ducky Tea Infuser


Who doesn’t love rubber duckies? They’re a part of every childhood and they’re just so dang cute. This rubber ducky tea infuser is the cutest.

Dinosaur Tea Infuser


Dinosaurs are my second favorite animal…even if I’ve never seen a real one and never will. I’d love to have this tea infuser.

Kitten Tea Infuser


Did I say dinosaurs were my second favorite animal? Just kidding, cats are. Or maybe cats are my number one…It’s really hard to decide. I just love animals! Anyway, these kitten tea infusers are a dream to look at.

Babushka Tea Infuser

Russian Nesting Dolls, or Babushka dolls are so adorable! I love the look of this tea infuser doll.

Did you see any tea infusers you liked? I hope you did! Make your way to drinking yummy tea with a cool tea infuser today!

Volatile Flavoring Kits Add Different Food Scents: Smell the Rainbow

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We process flavors not just with our mouth but with our nose as well. That’s why food can taste bland if you have a stuffy nose. Molecule-R claims to take advantage of this with its Volatile Flavoring Kits, which comes with different food scents. The idea is to enhance the flavor of your food or even to add one that’s not actually in what you’re eating.

aromafork volatile flavoring kit by molecule rmagnify

Molecule-R’s Aromaspoon and Aromafork are nothing special; they’re just spoons and forks with a receptacle near their bowl or prongs. The receptacle is meant to hold a tiny pill-shaped diffuser. The difference is in what you put in the diffuser: the aromas.

aromafork volatile flavoring kit by molecule r 2 620x310magnify

The kit comes with 21 different aromas, including chocolate, mint and black pepper.

aromafork volatile flavoring kit by molecule r 4 620x477magnify

Mmmm bonfire flavor.

Breathe in the scent of your browser and head to Molecule-R’s online store to get the Aromatic R-evolution Volatile Flavoring Kit for $59 (USD). Aside from the aromas, it also comes with four Aromaforks, 50 diffusers and four droppers. You have to buy a separate kit to get the Aromaspoon though.