Learn something new every day |

Subscribe and treat yourself to a FREE gift


29 June 2015

A spoonful of sugar helps the environmental message go down

A spoonful of sugar helps the environmental message go down

Tastes like a match strike to some (Image: Center for Genomic Gastronomy)

After battling through congested Manhattan streets on a muggy Saturday afternoon, smog-flavored meringues did not seem like the most intuitive of refreshments, but the crowds around Nicola Twilley’s cart were a reminder never to second-guess New Yorkers.

“We’ve had all sorts of different reactions, from ‘Disgusting, no thanks’ to ‘That’s really nice’,” said Twilley, author of the Edible Geography blog and co-host of the Gastropod podcast. “Some people take a bite and throw it away. Some people ask for seconds. People have said it makes their mouth taste foamy, people have said it’s spicy, people have said it’s bitter, or that they can taste different ingredients. Some people have said it tastes like a match strike.”

Her goal isn’t just to create novelty cakes, but to make people stop and think about urban environments, and specifically about the air they breathe every day. “Usually, breathing smog – unless you’re in a place like New Delhi or Beijing, where it’s un-ignorable – is an unconscious act. When you choose to eat a meringue, it’s a very different thought process, a different interaction, a different visceral response. People are wondering whether they like it or not.”


Simulated air

Twilley had come to New York City’s IDEAS CITY festival with the Center for Genomic Gastronomy, an artist-led think tank that asks how biotechnologies are affecting the systems we use to feed ourselves. Together they handed visitors smog meringues, each containing simulated air from one of three cities, giving New Yorkers a unique tasting that spanned time as well as space. Like wine, smog meringues have vintages.

“We’ve chosen three different types of smog,” Twilley explained. “This 1950s Los Angeles is a classic photochemical smog, while our contemporary Atlanta is a biogenic smog, meaning that along with the usual pollutants there’s a lot of organic material, mostly from all the pine trees there. This 19th-century London on the other hand is an industrial smog… a real pea-souper.”

In 2011, the Center for Genomic Gastronomy began using meringue batter to harvest air pollution. Smog is formed by a mixture of pollutants reacting together – a reaction usually catalysed by sunlight. Atmospheric scientists can replicate this in the lab by mixing precursor chemicals in a special smog chamber and exposing them to ultraviolet radiation. For Twilley the similarities between this and baking were too obvious to ignore, and it was a logical step to hijack the smog chamber as an oven for making meringues.

A spoonful of sugar helps the environmental message go down

The lengths you have to go to just to get that distinctive smoggy flavour (Image: Center for Genomic Gastronomy)

The process is straightforward: fill the chamber with the relevant chemicals, then whip up egg whites inside. “When the egg whites and sugar get into that perfect consistency, a meringue is 90 per cent air. The ones we make in the smog chamber are 90 per cent smog,” Twilley said. “Different places require different baking times. The LA one takes longer.”

Twilley calls the subtle place-specific taste “aeroir”, and the cart was the first in a planned series of Center for Genomic Gastronomy projects aimed at exploring the idea further. “Taste of place is really valuable when it comes to wine, mineral water even. Why not the air? All of these cities taste different. We’re provoking thought about that.”

The possibilities are endless, from smog pairings and food wheels to allow chefs to prepare menus that fit particular atmospheric conditions, through to wearable devices that provide a form of “smog seasoning”. “Aeroir may well be the missing ingredient,” Twilley writes, “that makes tacos taste the same in the restaurant back home as they did on the streets of Mexico City.”

New York City’s IDEAS CITY festival ran from 28 to 30 May 2015

More on these topics: