I’m currently reading the book, “Eating to Extinction” about the loss of food diversity around the world.
In some cases the loss of food diversity is because the food was literally hunted to near-extinction, such as the buffalo or the Olympia oysters or the collapse of fisheries on the east and west coasts.
In other cases the loss of food diversity was because breeders (including scientists) developed breeds that were so superior to the original that the new, enhanced breed was planted or grown in worldwide monocultures which led to the loss of multitudes of diverse (though inferior) local varieties. One example is the Holstein cow which produces double the milk of the older varieties. Another example is specific microorganisms, such as particular strains of yeast or lactobacillus, that produce fermented products such as cheeses. There are companies that specialize in producing and shipping these micro-organisms.
Scientists have now discovered the specific cultures that produce superior-tasting chocolate.
https://www.wsj.com/science/chocolate-flavor-microbes-lab-grown-bb5c9c89?mod=hp_featst_pos4
Scientists Have Unlocked the Secret That Gives Fine Chocolate Its Great Taste
The breakthrough could help farmers standardize their product
By Nidhi Subbaraman, The Wall Street Journal
What’s the secret to the best-tasting chocolate?
It is using the right microbes, and for the first time scientists have isolated a collection of those bugs and made a superior-tasting chocolate in a laboratory.
Chocolate, like sourdough or yogurt, begins with fermentation. Farmers stash cocoa beans scooped out of ripe cocoa pods in wooden boxes outdoors, cover them with leaves and leave them alone for a week. Fermentation is kicked off by bacteria and yeasts that live in the boxes or the soil….
Through a genetic analysis, the scientists zeroed in on the hundreds of microbes that were present throughout fermentation. They narrowed the list to species that were able to produce chemicals found in fully-fermented chocolate, and used a starter culture made of nine species to ferment beans in the lab.
“Lo and behold, they tasted like fine-flavor cocoa,” the kind used in more expensive chocolate. … [end quote]
Fine-flavor cocoa is sourced from Colombia and Madagascar. “Bulk cocoa” which doesn’t taste as fruity, caramel and floral is produced in countries such as Ghana.
If I was a commercial producer of microbial cultures I would be all over this information like white on rice. What an opportunity to provide uniform great-tasting bacterial cultures for cocoa instead of the current unpredictable local microbes.
Wendy