Esculent

This season welcomes co-host Daniela Gutiérrez Flores as we prepare to travel with Fabiola Santiago and the organization Mi Oaxaca -- we are honored to be thinking, sensing, and traveling with care over the next episodes, all about mezcal. Host: Elizabeth McQueen & Daniela Gutiérrez FloresPartner: Mi OaxacaEditors: Santiago Reyes & Stace BaranProduction Intern: Alyssa PulidoTheme by Ronan Delisle This podcast is supported by the University of California Humanities Research Institute and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Center at Florida State University.

What happens when the science of winemaking meets the emerging world of cultivated meat? Distinguished Professor David Block joins Esculent to discuss how engineering principles, chemistry, and scale shape technologies of taste. This episode also considers mouthfeel—how the tactile sensation of food and drink becomes central, or is becoming central, to the experience of the esculent in the food industry. Together, we reflect on how scaling, precision, and sensory expectations intersect in both traditional and experimental forms of food production. Tasting: TCHO “Napa Noir” dark chocolate with cacao nibs, aged in red wine barrels and infused with cabernet sauvignon sea salt from Clif Family WineryViewing: Wonkavision, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) Host: Professor Elizabeth McQueen & Professor Charlotte Biltekoff Producer: Stace Baran Theme by: Ronan Delisle Esculent is brought to you by Professor Charlotte Biltekoff and the Darrell Corti Endowed Professorship in Food, Wine and Culture at University of California, Davis.

How do we understand taste as something measurable and communicable? Distinguished Professor Hildegarde Heymann joins Esculent to explore the field of sensory science, a discipline that transforms fleeting sensory impressions into data and descriptive language. From wine and spirits to chocolate and ice cream, Professor Heymann’s work has shaped how sensory researchers structure panels, train tasters, and translate perception into scientific method. In this episode, we take up the connection between sensory science and esculence: how the languages and systems used to evaluate flavor also participate in producing edibility itself. Audio warning: this episodes audio was compromised in recording, listeners will notice some deviations in quality. Tasting: A panel of Dandelion Chocolate bars Viewing: Violet Beauregarde’s three-course-dinner gum, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) Host: Professor Elizabeth McQueen & Professor Charlotte Biltekoff Producer: Stace Baran Theme by: Ronan Delisle Esculent is brought to you by Professor Charlotte Biltekoff and the Darrell Corti Endowed Professorship in Food, Wine and Culture at University of California, Davis.

What does it mean to study taste, edibility, and food systems through the scientific method? In our season introduction, co-hosts Professor Charlotte Biltekoff (American Studies & Food Science and Technology, UC Davis) and Professor Elizabeth McQueen (College of Fine Arts, FSU) set the stage for a season centered on food scientists — their methods, their imaginaries, and technological and microscopic infrastructures that construct another thread of the esculent. Together, they reflect on the convergence of cultural inquiry and scientific practice, the recent history of sensory analysis, and how these approaches craft a dominant imaginary, but imagined nonetheless, of taste. Tasting: Hershey’s Plant-Based Chocolate Bar Viewing: The Everlasting Gobstopper, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) Host: Professor Elizabeth McQueen & Professor Charlotte BiltekoffProducer: Stace BaranTheme by: Ronan Delisle Esculent is brought to you by Professor Charlotte Biltekoff and the Darrell Corti Endowed Professorship in Food, Wine and Culture at University of California, Davis.

What happens when art invites us to taste through touch, smell, or atmosphere? Professors Hsuan Hsu and Sal Nicolazzo join the podcast to discuss the interdisciplinary work of artist Candice Lin, whose material and multisensory practice challenges colonial ideas of consumption, and esculence in the present. Together, they consider how smell, tactility, and duration expand the sensory boundaries of art and literature, through smelly close-reading. Tasting: An iteration of Alison Knowles “Make a Salad” (1962-) Viewing: Season 1, Drops of God (Apple TV, 2023) Host: Dr. Elizabeth McQueenProducer: Stace BaranTheme by Ronan DelisleAudio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann Esculent is brought to you by Professor Charlotte Bitekoff and the Darrel Corti Endowed Professorship in Food, Wine and Culture at University of California, Davis.

If culinary art is already an “art,” then what does it mean to have an art practice that uses food? Culinary artist Heidi Ross joins us to begin our season on Artists to share more about her somatic practice, relationship to the culinary world, and sonic explorations. Tasting: An iteration of Alison Knowles “Make a Salad” (1962-) by Elizabeth McQueen Reading of: The Futurist Cookbook by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1932) Host: Dr. Elizabeth McQueenProducer: Stace BaranTheme by Ronan DelisleAudio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann Esculent is brought to you by Professor Charlotte Bitekoff and the Darrel Corti Endowed Professorship in Food, Wine and Culture at University of California, Davis.

Thousands of television episodes leave a mark – not only on digital archives of our food media-saturated world – but on the host, the performer, as well. In the final episode of our second season with chefs, we speak with Chef Martin Yan, the host of Yan Can Cook. We discuss Chef Yan’s decades of work wth PBS, the importance of culinary education, not only entertainment, and the development of his archive with UC Davis Library. We are joined by Food & Wine Curator Audrey Russek, and just barely scratch the surface on all the mediums, stories, and impacts that Chef Martin Yan has made throughout his career, including his time as a UC Davis student. Tasting: Wolfskill Reserve Olive Oil from UC Davis Olive Center Viewing: Yan Can Cook: Winter Melon, Steamed Sea Bass, and Black Bean Chicken, aired on PBS in the 1980s Host: Elizabeth McQueenProducer: Stace BaranTheme by Ronan DelisleAudio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Library and the Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections.

Well-baked bread is an art in and of itself, but in this episode, we look at a few representational mediums of yeasty dough: poetry, photography, and animation, as forms that give new light to a thousand-year-old practice. Baker Jim Franks discusses his new book of poetry, Existential Bread (Drag City, 2025), and one of my favorite animations of food ever, evoking faint memories for both of us, just like a whiff of a good loaf. Jim Franks’ book is out now, with a cover designed by podcast favourite Jordan Rundle of Dazer! Tasting: Minh Phan’s Jujube Blossom Shrub Viewing: ‘Portraits of Women with Their Weight in Dough’ by Santina Amato (2019- ) and the 1947 Animated Short, Mickey and the Beanstalk Host: Elizabeth McQueenProducer: Stace BaranTheme by Ronan DelisleAudio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections.

We are back with a dive into the archive featuring Chef Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu’s restaurant in San Francisco - featuring historic menus and historic buildings, and how this influences canonical Chinese American recipes like Peking Duck. We kick off Season 4: Chefs Pt. 2 with our literary inquiries into the work of Chefs, and how words, archives, and texts make the esculent. Tasting: A whiff of UC Davis Special Collections Viewing: Yan Can Cook: Winter Melon, Steamed Sea Bass, and Black Bean Chicken, aired on PBS in the 1980s Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram Host: Elizabeth McQueenProducer: Stace BaranTheme by Ronan DelisleAudio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections.

Can baking brownies save the planet? I’m a little embarrassed I even wrote this question out, but this rhetoric exemplifies the argument of our esteemed guest’s new book: The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can't Hack the Future of Food (UC Press, 2024). For our final episode of this season, we are joined by Julie Guthman, Distinguished Professor of Community Studies Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. We discuss my favorite food film, shifts in university pedagogy, and how to conceive of doing good while maintaining critical thinking. Tasting: Renewal Mill Brownie Mix Viewing: Bong Joon-Ho’s Okja (2017) Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram Host: Elizabeth McQueenProducer: Stace BaranTheme by Ronan DelisleAudio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections. Season 3 is supported by Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores.

How are processed and natural contested categories - rather than objective definitions- of food? These questions are at the center of Professor Charlotte Biltekoff’s new book, Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge. Joined by a special guest, Dan Polsby of Best Friends Wine, to introduce our tasting and complicate “real” wine, we discuss food science, industry, and the Food Inc. documentaries. Tasting: Sfera Bianco, 250mL can Viewing: Trailers for Food Inc. (2006) and Food Inc. 2 (2024) Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram Host: Elizabeth McQueenProducer: Stace BaranTheme by Ronan DelisleAudio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections. Season 3 is supported by Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores.

Back again. This season hosts four thinkers, shaping and questioning the ideas that make food esculent. Reading: Excerpt from Professor Kyla Wazana Tompkins' new book, Deviant Matter (NYU Press, 2024) Tasting: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant: 2023 Coteaux du Loir Rouge “Cuvée du Rosier” Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram Host: Elizabeth McQueenProducer: Stace BaranTheme by Ronan DelisleAudio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections. Season 3 is supported by Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores.