Every bee that brings the honey
Needs a sting to be complete
And we all must learn to taste the bitter with the sweet.
Naomi Shemer
lyrics to Al Kol eleh
My name is Sarah Dyer, and I have been fermenting a long-term senior capstone project exploring the human experience of bitterness in food. I began by asking the questions:
Why are certain foods bitter? How do humans biologically experience bitterness? Does terroir affect bitterness in certain foods? What fuels the human love/hate relationship with bitter foods? What is my personal connection to these challenging foods?
I began forming these questions and collecting potential sources for research during the Fall quarter of 2020, in an online program developed by Dr. Sarah Williams and Dr. Steve Scheuerell called Terroir/Meroir: Toward Agroecological Agribusiness? I was introduced to the writing of Michael Twitty, M.F.K Fisher, Harold McGee, and David Dean, and I was inspired to create a “foodoir” exploring my own food history and genealogy. Simultaneously, I was studying ecology, agroforestry, food systems, and sensory evaluation, creating detailed profiles of the foods we were tasting and considering their cultivation through the lens of regenerative agriculture. As a professional cook with over 20 years of experience, I took these intellectual ingredients and started creating an interdisciplinary framework to answer my questions.
I have since spent my time at Evergreen analyzing the cultivation and flavor of food and embracing the foods of my ancestors. I’ve pursued a deeper understanding of terroir-based, regenerative cultivation though the Practice of Organic Farming program, which has been bolstered by independent study opportunities, a Teaching Assistant position in the food and agriculture department, a Mellon internship in the school’s community garden, and a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship at the Organic Farm. I also began studying plant genetics and botany, focused on centers of origin and the spread of different plant species through domestication. I took a deeper dive into my genealogy, tracing my Ashkenazi heritage and researching the cultural foods that had disappeared from my family.
My various paths of study produced a strange longing to understand the bitterness in foods in all its forms: chemical and biological as well as historical and social. In my future research I hope to build a series of case studies highlighting a number of bitter foods, exploring the chemistry, biology, history, and preparation of each.
