PANTHEON OF FLAVORS

PANTHEON OF FLAVORS
PANTHEON OF FLAVORS
PANTHEON OF FLAVORS

 Marguerite Sheffer

Keynote Talk (excerpt)
Mildred Moore, Independent Flavourist and Trend Forecaster
International Ice Cream Technology Conference 2036: Beyond the Big Chill


Welcome. I’d like to talk about change: how our industry can adapt.

To begin, I ask you to imagine. Imagine you are walking into a classic ice cream shop on a hot day—and aren’t they all hot days?—with its pale pink walls and the great counter-height freezer and the intoxicating smell of waffle cones, sweet and yeasty. You look up at the chalk list.  What do you expect to see?

For my husband it is cookies and cream.  For me, salted caramel. I will be saddened, confused, and disappointed if salted caramel is not there.  These go-to’s are what I call the “pantheon,” the big gods of ice cream.  We know they will be there, we seek them out.

These are the big-sellers, the profit-makers.  There’s not room on that chalk board for everybody.  The pantheon is an exclusive group.  And, like the ancient Greek deities, they reflect the particular societies of their human subjects.

Let me give you a little example. In old doomed Louisiana, before the consolidation, children there grew up familiar with the flavor called Tiger’s Blood for their sno-balls.  You could call that flavor a local deity, a minor god. The name and the red were so vicious; the bright red juice sliding down your hand caused you to imagine the tiger that was maimed and drained for your pleasure. How fun it was to eat that most majestic beast. To be decadent and evil, to demand such sacrifice on a hot summer’s day. Then you see a tiger at the zoo and you know it, too, is full of cold and sweet nectar. This flavor then, acting as reflection of children’s bent towards brutality.

And in the midwest, they worship at the altar of the moon: Blue Moon, a secret recipe.  Some claim it involves castoreum, an exudate beavers use to mark their territory. Notes of citrus, and vanilla. Regardless, the name, vibrant color, and mystery suggest to me a particular regional desire for the unusual, the elusive. Just as most UFO sightings come from that region, the land of crop circles—people desperate for a moment of something from beyond, something more than the familiar flat plains of landlocked sameness.

My expertise is in turning these buried collective compulsions into flavors. If we understand what people truly desire, we can sell it to them.

And tastes don’t just differ by geography.  They shift with time, just as societies do.

The flavors we now consider classic are relatively recent inventions. Cookies and cream was invented by a dairy science student at South Dakota State in 1979. In the Victorian Era they had a taste for cucumbers and fruits and flowers in their ice cream. No longer.

         My prized salted caramel is an even more recent addition to the pantheon: 2008 is when it skyrocketed into our consciousness. Remember your history: that’s the year the US stock market crashed. Now, why might that be? I don’t see coincidence. I see the trend. People were jaded. They wanted that sharpness along with their sugar. They wanted the salt of tears. They wanted a treat that bit back.

I theorize that the events, the societal sea changes we cannot process in our normal, daily lives, make their way out as cravings. See: the urge for sour, fermented flavors by the Millennial generation whose dreams of home ownership, regular employment, and financial solvency had been left out to curdle in the sun. So, sales of kimchi, sauerkraut, and tart greek frozen yogurt soar.

Our world is changing; the pantheon is in flux. We cannot cling to the flavors of the past. There’s big money to be made in predicting where to look next: what the next mover-and-shaker tastemaker flavor will be. For ice cream is not a thing of the past, though some of this weekend’s vaunted experts would have you think so. I’m not here to talk about doom and gloom. I’m not here to talk about the honey bee. I’m not here to talk about the cocoa farms, or vanilla, or refrigeration technology. I am here to point a way forward. I’m here to talk about how tastes change over time. Crises don’t just affect our lives and livelihood, they change our palates.

And that’s what I’m here to share with you today. The future. I’m here to teach you how to be ahead of the curve, to anticipate, to invest appropriately. Let us turn then, to the real question: what do people want now?

Right now, people want penance.

Our survey data, which you can see behind me, indicates that the unprecedented wildfires correlate with a rise in desire for flavors with a smokey profile, and an acrid crunch. The burnt.

Imagine blackened waffle. Imagine overdone toast. Singed marshmallow. It’s not such a stretch. I bet you find yourself craving those tastes right now. I bet they offer comfort.

And what do we have in surplus?  Charcoal. As the prices of vanilla and honey soar, we might as well use some of this excess. Eat the lost rainforests, savor the old growth.

There is precedent. In many cultures, widows eat the ashes of their beloved. In many cultures, “ashes in your mouth” means great disappointment and disillusion. The world is in mourning. Consider Psalms 102:9, “For I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping.”

We, my fellow dairy treat manufacturers, have a chance to be of service to the world, to help its citizens mourn. To pay their respects.

As it gets hotter, people will only want ice cream more. As it gets scarier, they’ll seek out the comfort of the ice cream shop. And as the world burns they’ll want to eat the ash, to buy a moment of atonement by the sweet scoop, the pint, or the gallon.

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