Flavor Tripping Party

My stomach is still roiling from the odd combination of foods recently shoved down my gullet, so it's hard to say whether or not the Flavor Tripping Party was a success. (To read about the origins of the Flavor Tripping Party, click here.) As KW put it, normally you want to say everything was so delicious ... Then G interjected, "There were some highlights."

Eight of us gathered to taste the miracle berries. Because of a last minute cancellation, we had one backup berry.

The spread was the strangest amalgamation of foods that I had ever set upon the dinner table. We aimed for foods that were acidic or bitter as the miraculin in the miracle berry is supposed to work most effectively with those two tastes. Set before us were: cabernet sauvignon sorbet, roasted brussel sprouts, pineapple, bitter melon sauteed with garlic and peperoncini, lemon, grapefruit, limes, Cerignola olives, plain vinegar, white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, anchovies, sardines, sea beans, pickled peppers from the antipasti bar, Sriracha, Chinese red chili sauce, Tabasco, kefir cheese lebne, some sheep's (?) milk cheese, Humboldt Fog, Borenkasse Willamette Valley (cow's milk, medium/firm, sharp), Fleur Verte (goat cheese rolled in herbs), pickled ginger, wasabi peas, Le Pain Quotidienne baguette, Sour Patch Kids, balsamic vinegar, head cheese, maple syrup, mortadella with pistachio, apple cider vinegar, Jose Cuervo tequila, scotch, radishes, Ciao Bella lemon sorbet, spicy arugula from the Farmer's Market, tomatoes, Lipton's tea with some citric acid thrown in, cherries, Guinness, Stone Imperial Russian Stout (San Diego, CA), Stone Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout (San Diego, CA), Imperial Extra Double Stout (England), Rogue Shakespeare (Newport, OR).


We had read such exuberant descriptions of the experience of eating the berries that our expectations were rather high. First we tested a handful of items to get a sense of what their "normal" taste. We each put the berries in our mouth, scraped off the pulp and held it on our tongue for a full minute. The lemon was definitely sweeter, but it still had the tart aftertaste. The effect last a little less than an hour. M took the backup berry after the effects started to wear off. By then, we started trying everything on the table to taste their true flavors, and then it became a more astounding experience. We quickly demanded that he try everything again, tasted it ourselves (marveling at how much more sour or bitter or even salty things tasted), and asked M to describe what he was tasting. This is a sampling of what we noticed while "on" the berry:

Bitter melon - less, but still bitter. Still something that you didn't really want to eat.
Pineapple - completely sweet
Brussell sprouts - about the same
Lemons - definitely sweet and lovely
Limes - sweet and fun to eat
Grapefruit - delicious, no real bitter or sour taste
White wine vinegar - disgusting
Red wine vinegar - less foul, but pretty bad
Cerignola olives - not much difference


Sea beans - barely salty, very odd as they taste of the sea normally (as in taste of the ocean, not taste of the sea the way the oyster tastes of the sea in an almost romantic sense)
Sardines - I didn't touch these suckers, not much difference I heard
Anchovies - still salty
Pickled peppers - sweet and easy to eat
Humboldt Fog - definitely sweeter
Firmer cheeses - not as sharp
Fleur Verte - creamy, not noticeably tart (afterwards it was noticeably pucker worthy)
Lebne - tasted like fromage blanc almost
Pickled Ginger - milder, sweeter, but not a huge difference

Sour Patch Kids - "Patch Kids" without the sour
Balsamic vinegar - sippable!
Head cheese - same
Moratedella - same
Tequila - better than the sh*t it normally tastes like, but same afterburn
Scotch - amazing. Smelled really smoke both on and off the berry, but with the berry the smoky flavor was extremely pronounced.
Radishes - more spicy, almost unbearably so
Arugula - maybe less peppery
Tomatoes - tasted like they had been dipped in simple syrup


Guinness - tasted different, but not chocolaty
Stone Imperial Russian Stout - tasted chocolaty, excellent with the lemon sorbet, fantastic with the cabernet sauvignon sorbet. Not very chocolate off the bitter, very bitter.
Stone Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout - not as chocolaty as the Russian Stout, but off the berry very chocolaty and quite bitter.
Imperial Extra Double Stout - very bitter off the berry, really nice on the berry. Excellent stout all around, recommended.
Rogue Shakespeare - also very bitter off the berry, mellow on the berry.

C thought it'd be amazing to put together a dinner party with a menu that would normally taste horrendous but would work really well with the sweetening effect of the miracle berry. For once, it's a shame that corporate food conglomerates didn't get to tackle this ingredient because it could have been a wonderful boon to the diabetic community. It definitely made lemon, lime and grapefruit very palatable for palates that normally couldn't take the acidity, but judging from our uncomfortable stomaches, the common consumer might not know of ways to eat foods on the miracle berry to get a sweeter effect without ingesting too much acid and seriously damaging her stomach lining. Given that so many Americans eat products that have all sorts of strange ingredients already, it's too bad that we haven't had in the past four decades, Nabisco and General Mills delivering Oreos and Haagan Dazs to supermarket shelves with the same cloyingly sweet taste but without the sugars and accompanying calories.