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“Me, what I’m looking for is really the emotion triggered when we eat and people say: ‘Hummm, it’s too good!’ Saving the lost flavors of tomatoes, squash or other plant varieties is the challenge that the Conservatory of Taste farm has set itself. Brut spent a day with Rachel in order to understand how it happens.
“It’s a monstrous job to keep strains, because society runs on profitability all the time. So at some point, yes, maybe you have to go against the grain if you don’t want to lose all the spice of life. Me, personally, I get depressed if I don’t enjoy myself.”With approximately 1,500 varieties tested each year, the Conservatory farm identifies, safeguards and promotes plant varieties with a taste interest. The objective is to be able to recreate the desire to eat vegetables while making new species accessible in France.
“The idea is really to be able to identify the best varieties so that they can then be made available in France. So we look for seeds all over the world and then we test them on the farm. Me, I taste them first to make a pre-selection and then it’s tasted with the help of cooks who are members of the Conservatoire du Goût.” With her association, Rachel and her colleagues hope to be able to find the lost flavors of vegetables and other plant varieties. “If we eat a tomato that has no taste, I don’t see how we can get children to eat tomatoes. They’re not good, it’s normal that they don’t want them, they taste better than us!”
“From one year to the next, me, there are varieties that I had identified that I no longer find. And that is quite terrible because it is a long-term job that the peasants have passed on from generation to generation and we are in the process of losing this heritage which is nevertheless incredible..” According to Rachel, the loss of flavors of the products on our plate stems from the mass production observed for the majority of foods. “After the war, we had to feed the population, so from that moment on, the objectives were to produce in volume and quickly. We are no longer concerned with the taste and suddenly, we will buy things that are full of sugar but have no vitality.”