Our friend Ilya Litvyak, finding time between hard working days, translated the article Nordic Food Lab.

Which, with his permission, we are happy to share. The author's opinion fully coincides with the opinion of the editorial Board, we are simply delighted with such things.

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Is it possible that the waxing of fruit, a symbol of the fact that our industrial food distribution system prefers appearance and practicality to taste, is used, on the contrary, for good?

In fact, many ripe fruits produce a thin layer of natural wax on their surface in order to reduce the water permeability of the peel. Pick an Apple from an Apple tree, RUB it on a t-shirt and it will Shine. All because the natural waxes on the surface of the Apple were polished. In addition to the wax, the surface of these fruits are covered by a variety of wild yeast and other “garbage”. Large-format producers get rid of these yeast and other microorganisms that can reduce the shelf life of the fruit, washing their products and re-covering it with approximately the same amount of edible wax.

But here in the Lab, we love wild yeast and bacteria!

In late September, the draining season in Denmark was coming to an end. We got a box of top-notch plums from a woman supplying us with plums from Sweden. The fruits were perfectly ripe-Golden, slightly drenched in paint and, as we assumed, covered with natural wax and yeast.

We've been obsessed with beeswax for about a year. We started covering the deer's feet with it to protect them from drying out during the long fermentation. We used it to make ice cream for dessert when we participated in the Festival. We even keep some bee honey around just to sniff it sometimes. And we love it not only for the aroma and the ability to saturate the food with a bright honey-like aroma, but also for the ability to isolate products from external factors. The protective barrier allows the product to retain moisture and creates conditions for anaerobic fermentation. As winter approached, we had conservation in mind and it seemed to us that beeswax could play such a role for our plums, enhancing the function of natural wax and prolonging the life of plums for some time. We dipped unwashed plums and whole plums in beeswax, sealed them together with their own microorganisms, and left to ferment.

Plums are delicate fruits. Their skin is easy to penetrate, and the cuttings easily fall off. To avoid both undesirable incidents, the temperature of beeswax should be as low as possible (despite the fact that the melting point of 63 degrees Celsius). In addition, it is necessary to choose fruits with strong stalks, it will facilitate the process of dipping. Hold the stalk with tweezers, dip the plum in the wax and as soon as the plum is fully immersed, carefully remove it. Continue to hold the fruit with tweezers and wait until the wax turns white. Dip it again. And so 5 times in a row. Then carefully put the plum on one side and leave it alone for a while, while doing the remains of the fruit. The process should be repeated 6 times, eventually getting about 30 layers of wax.

The layer of beeswax should be thick enough to prevent fractures and punctures leading to oxidation and spoilage of the plum.

To allow the fruit to ferment, we tied them in bunches and stored them in a dark cool place with a temperature of about 15 degrees.

Seven days seemed like the perfect time for these plums. Cutting one of them into halves began with a slight hiss of gas, more tangible than audible. The exposed halves showed us red flesh, softened to a state of jam, covered with bubbles of carbon dioxide. The texture is soft, supple; the scent of beeswax penetrated through the skin. Hint of alcohol, slight acidity, sparkling gas. We ate them with spoons, drank like oysters and ate with our hands.

We were pleasantly excited about our incredible success. We needed more!

We went to Pomete, fruit garden created by the University of Copenhagen with the aim of preserving and studying the classic Danish fruit. They were very generous. We stopped at eleven varieties of ripe and delicious plums. You can only marvel at the ecological and flavor diversity of apples, pears, plums, cherries, gooseberries and many other fruits and berries originating from such a small country, all of which are stored on one small plot of land.

Although some plums, like the first time, reached its peak the following week, there were those who wanted two, while the other reached its peak in just five days and then it got worse. Some were opened and oxidized, some did not give results. Some were purchased banana flavor, others started to remind plastic. Their initial differences became only brighter during the process — a huge variety of sizes, colors, flavors and textures.

We have taken many taste tests.

Here are the summarized characteristics:

Bella de Septembre (Bella de Septembre): very floral, pleasant

Giant (Giant): tender, sweet, soft

Victoria (Botrytized (Victoria)) : wine, sweet and sour at the end, complex, thick and jam-like, well smeared, very interesting

Diamond Blom (Diamont Blomme) : pineapple, metal, sharp, not very interesting, the taste of old plums from the supermarket, plastic taste

Dumiron ( Dumiron): prickly, overripe banana, unpleasant size-little flesh

Anna Spaht (Anna Spaht) : a lot of beeswax flavor, sour, sharp, not very sweet, flat

Ungar Svenske: fibrous, bitter, oxidized, cherry flavours

The Craig (Kraege) : Pustomyty, grainy, lots of sediment, bitter, boring

Buhler (Buhler) : Apple, not very pleasant aesthetically, sweet, aromas of autumn harvest, fleshy, very pleasant, but very small, little flesh

Grand Prince (Grand Duke) : the texture of the sea urchin, velvet, jeboory, sensual, sparkling, very berry, sparkling, incredibly pleasant.

Esslinger (Esslinger): sparkling, sweet, soft finish

Even after testing the technology on different plums, we do not fully understand the essence of this process. Most likely, fermentation is due to yeast: anaerobic conditions (lack of oxygen), the presence of sugars, the presence of alcohol and carbon dioxide. But maybe it's some kind of bacteria. And we have no idea what yeast was on which plums-a factor that can also affect the differences in fermentation. We should also experiment with temperature. If you store the fruit in the cold, is it possible to extend their life and postpone the peak of maturity for weeks or months? Or maybe it's possible to change the microbial ecology inside a wax sarcophagus?

What we do know is that some of them were “fucking delicious” (“fucking delicious”, “fucking delicious”) and that we will have to wait until next year to continue our research.