Microorganisms structure not only our foods but our bodies. Professor Maria Marco joins Esculent to discuss her research on bacteria, fermentation, probiotics, and the gustatory systems that support microbial life. While microbes often appear in consumer culture as wellness buzzwords, Professor Marco offers a another perspective on how microorganisms function as part of systems of eating.

This episode examines how microbes participate in the making of the esculent, and the questions that linger on the edges of studying nonhuman participants in processes of eating.

Tasting: Bouchard Probiotic Dark Belgian Chocolate (72%), infused with Bifidobacterium longum

Host: Professor Elizabeth McQueen & Professor Charlotte Biltekoff

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

Host: Professor Elizabeth McQueen & Professor Charlotte Biltekoff

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 taste in context? Professor Julien Delarue joins Esculent to discuss his research on immersive sensory environments and how surroundings—visual, auditory, spatial—shape our perception of flavor. From reproducing a Korean street market in the lab to considering atmosphere in sensory evaluation, Professor Delarue’s work asks us to reconsider context not as background but as a fundamental component of the sensory experience.

Tasting: Dandelion Semuliki Forest 70% chocolate, processed in both San Francisco and Tokyo

Host: Professor Elizabeth McQueen & Professor Charlotte Biltekoff

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

Host: Professor Elizabeth McQueen & Professor Charlotte Biltekoff

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.

Esculent is an idea - and one that can be applied, theorized, even rehearsed. This week we self-reflect on the aims of the podcast with host Dr. Elizabeth McQueen and editor Stacey Baran. 

Tasting: Strength tea from Harbor Herbalist

Viewing: Esculent outtakes

Host: Dr. Elizabeth McQueen

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.

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 McQueen

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.

Our second live episode, culinary artist Nia Lee joins Esculent following the debut of her performance installation, THE ARCHIVE IS THE BIRTHSEED OF OUR DREAMS at the Manetti Shrem Museum. We discuss a tasting of a miracle berry, or Synsepalum dulcificum with audience reflections on sweetness as a means to understand Lee’s concept of Black Food Futurism.

Host: Dr. Elizabeth McQueen

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 McQueen

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.

Season 5, Artists is finally here. We launch into conversations with artists whose medium is food, matter, and other things esculent. 

Host: Dr. Elizabeth McQueen

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 McQueen

This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Library and the Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections.