Uncanny Tuesday!

Let’s end our November series about weird food stuffs with my favorite of all time, Castoreum.

This one is going to be good. Full of science. Full of double entendre. Delicious.

Castoreum is extracted from the castor glands of the beaver.

YUP

And why do you care? Well, this extract has been used as a flavor enhancer in many food products for centuries. You may have eaten it. Maybe. We’ll get to that.

Anyway, these castor glands are located directly in the beaver’s gooch, as in that space between its butt and its nads.

YUP

The function of these glands is for scent marking. They mix with beaver urine and anal gland goo and the beaver sprays it on things. Then other beavers come along and smell it and go, “Oh, Gladys was here about an hour ago.” If you have a cat or dog and they have ever squirted that anal gland stuff on you, you’ll know that it smells disgusting. But beavers… well, beavers smell great. Ok, good. Like vanilla and raspberries and dreams.

At some point, somebody smelled the beaver gooch juice and decided it smelled pretty good and thought they could use it. Imagine being that trailblazer. It sounds super gross, I get it, but it’s just chemistry.

But, Jessica, I didn’t pay a bit of attention in chemistry, maybe you’re saying right now. Hey, look, I have a BS degree in Chemistry and I barely paid attention, but on the subject of weird beaver pudge chemistry, I’m all ears.

The castoreum is full of aromatic compounds, nice and volatile.  Volatility, that’s important. Why? You have special receptors on your tongue and in your nose that detect these compounds and then translate to an electrical signal that your brain then processes as flavor. For you to taste, you have to smell. You all know the hold your nose and down the hatch trick, right? Well, that’s because if your olfactory receptors don’t catch the volatile compound, then your brain can’t register the taste.  Volatile compounds are ones that change pretty easily to a gas or vapor.

Where does the beaver gooch juice come in? Okay, so it has these volatile compounds and they smell like stuff, nice fruity, vanilla stuff because of the beaver’s diet. So, when you add the castoreum to other flavors, it strengthens them. It makes strawberries taste much more strawberry-y. It makes raspberries taste more raspberry-y. It makes snozberries taste more… well, you get it.

You simply harvest a couple of castor glands, dry them, grind them up into a powder, then mix with water. Ok, it’s sort of more complicated than that. Look, don’t go thinking you can just make some beaver gooch juice, like how people thought they knew how to make crystal meth from watching Breaking Bad. (There are steps missing from it, so don’t trust Walter White. For reals.)

But isn’t that harmful to beavers? Why, yes, yes it is. But when people were killing beavers for their pelts, they really didn’t care much. Waste not, want not. These days, castoreum can be harvested from the animal without killing it. That’s where the Beaver Milker comes in.

YUP

If you put the beaver under, you can milk the castor glands and collect the goo. The beaver survives to beaver another day. Even still, that’s not a particularly economical way to get a flavor enhancer.  It’s not like you can go to the ITT Technical Institute and get your degree in Beaver Milking. Anyway, nobody is clamoring for that job. Most of the time, we use synthetic vanillin, which does pretty much the same thing as the castoreum, just not nearly so cringy and entertaining.

If castoreum is used, it’s listed as a natural flavor enhancer. They don’t actually put the name on the ingredient list. But not everyone is ashamed and tries to trick you into eating beaver pudge. Some people revel in it.

Baverhojt is a Swedish schnapps flavored with castoreum.  The name means “beaver shout” and unfortunately you can’t get it at Ikea. (I WISH)

There is also a craft distillery in New Hampshire, Tamworth Distillery, that makes Eau De Musc, beaver whiskey. It makes some sense as whiskey often has smokey, vanilla flavors, so the castoreum just brings those notes out for your enjoyment. Check out Tamworth Distillery for the Eau De Musc and many other interesting flavors of whiskey.

So, in conclusion, we owe so much to the beaver gooch juice. I mean, yeah it’s not used so much anymore except by crafty gourmet types, but at one time you definitely owed that amazing strawberry flavor of that red goo in the strawberry pie to the beaver pudge. Now you owe it to mass-produced synthetic organic compounds. That should upset you more than the beaver gooch juice.

 

Whew! That was a good one. Next week we’ll start a special series dedicated to weird holiday stuff, some history, and science, and whatnots.

Until next week!

 

Jessica