Linton Camp School student Oriana Tanoa'i (centre) watches Dr Mahya Tavan separate the milk curds from the liquid, along with Kyla Rangitakatu and Athena Tanginoa (obscured). The curds are then molded into shapes and dry as hard as plastic.
Linton Camp School student Oriana Tanoa'i (centre) watches Dr Mahya Tavan separate the milk curds from the liquid, along with Kyla Rangitakatu and Athena Tanginoa (obscured). The curds are then molded into shapes and dry as hard as plastic.
What does pink icecream taste like? Lime? Candy? Strawberry? That was the challenge for a group of Linton Camp School students last week.
The children from the school’s Māori immersion unit visited Massey University in Palmerston North to participate in some milky experiments with the Riddet Institute. The icecream experiment considered how much perception of flavour is related to what we see.
Workshop presenter Associate Professor Jon Palmer and Associate Professor Nicola Brown from Massey’s School of Food Technology and Natural Sciences asked the first group of children what they thought was the flavour of the pink icecream. They were instructed to take the lid off the individual pottles of icecream and smell them first, then taste.
“It tastes like bubblegum,” Anastasia said. Others were not so sure.
“If you close your eyes, what do you taste?” Palmer asked.
The students, aged between 7 and 10, debated the flavour. Is it candy flavoured? Strawberry? Lime? Kyla agreed with Anastasia about it being bubblegum.
“What you see has a huge role in what we taste,” Palmer said.
Later in the morning another group of Linton Camp School students quickly guessed the flavour: banana.
The next sample was a minty pastel green, the colour again unrelated to the icecream’s flavour.
“This one is challenging,” Palmer warned. “Does closing your eyes change how you taste the green one?”
The children call out their guesses:
“It smells like vanilla.”
“Cookies and Cream?”
“Orange and lime?”
“It tastes like lime first and then orange when you swallow,” says Nikolai, who may have a future career in food tasting. Orange was correct.
Next the children tasted freeze-dried icecream, also known as icecream for astronauts (and tasting a bit like milk biscuits).
“This is all part of food technology, and developing and making food,” Palmer said.
He explained the icecream shrinks to half its original volume with its water content removed and no longer requires freezing or even refrigerating. It will not melt. Instead, stored in vacuum packs, it can last for months, as long as it is not exposed to the sun.
Brown said freeze-dried icecream could go to the moon with astronauts, but also had practical uses down on earth. It could be taken tramping or used as a snack for extreme sportspeople as it contained nutritious protein and fats.
Patricia Soh squeezes curds from the milk liquid so Linton Camp School students (from left) Stany Montiadora, Kanui Patu and Mikah Chapman can make milk plastic.
A second experiment was not tasting milk products but making plastic from them.
The amazing qualities of the casein component of milk were revealed once regular milk was warmed and curdled by adding vinegar. The curds solidify and can be moulded into shapes that set hard as plastic.
Linton Camp School teacher Kayla Cousins said the tamariki had an amazing time and soaked up the science learning.
“I foresee a lot of milky plastic being made at home.”
