Fermentology Mini-Seminars: The Culture, History and Science Behind Foods at Home

Join us for a series of short talks (20 minutes on average) from CALS’ Applied Ecology department about the culture, history and science behind the foods you have at home.

All talks are Thursday at 4pm EST, unless otherwise specified, and open to everyone–the more the merrier! Register to attend the virtual talksby filling in this form and you will be emailed a link to the talk the day before.

Find the full schedule and details at: https://cals.ncsu.edu/applied-ecology/news/fermentology-mini-seminars.

Each talk will be recorded and uploaded to the Applied Ecology Youtube page afterwards.

September 24th: Spices in Mesopotamian Food

The world’s oldest culinary recipes exist in the form of clay tablets from ancient Babylonia dating to the 18th century BCE. In this talk, Patricia Jurado, Gojko Barjamovic and Pia Sörensen from Harvard University will introduce the history and science of the recipes, as well as their team’s efforts interpreting and reproducing them. Their work follows an experimental approach and draws on expertise from their team’s collective backgrounds in assyriology, the life sciences, and culinary practice and history. Join us for this deep dive into culinary history — you may even come away knowing how to cook a 4,000 year old recipe!

The team that conducted this research includes:

• Patricia Jurado Gonzalez (Research Scholar, Harvard University),
• Gojko Barjamovic (Senior Lecturer on Assyriology, Harvard University),
• Pia Sörensen (Senior Preceptor in Chemical Engineering and Applied Materials, SEAS, Harvard University),
• Chelsea Alene Graham (Digital Imaging Specialist at the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Yale University),
• Agnete Wisti Lassen (Associate Curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection, Yale University),
• Nawal Nasrallah (Culinary historian, author, chef)