Published: 6 April 2023
1. Scuba Diving Pizza Delivery Man
Getting pizza delivered to you 22-feet underwater is definitely bucket list material. Guests at the underwater hotel “Jules’ Undersea Lodge” in Florida get to experience an unorthodox Friday night meal with freshly-made pizza, WIFI and a fishy view.
But who delivers the goods from land to sea?
Thane Milhoan is one of the underwater pizza delivery men who braves the cold waters to deliver the garnished dough to the sunken guests staying at the lodge. The former diving instructor started a new life in the Sunshine State after loosing his job as a high school sports reporter in Hawaii during the pandemic.
Getting to interact with people from all over the world is by far Milhoan’s favourite part of the job. “I enjoy the reactions that people have to getting their pizza delivered and to the whole experience of staying in the underwater habitat,” Milhoan explains to Metro.
On the flip side, diving into murky, wintry waters during wintertime can prove to be rather daunting. That being said, the Hawaii native believes the biggest challenge is by far delivering a warm, dry and evenly topped pizza to the guests.
To avoid a soggy mess, the pizzas are usually packed in a watertight container clipped to 40-pound weights to help combat buoyancy. The lodge also delivers other food items (including salads and meatball subs) and ensures proper transportation of sensitive equipment for visiting marine lab scientists.
2. Flavor Guru
Playing with food and eating copious amounts of ice cream are non-negotiable job requirements for a flavour guru working at Ben & Jerry’s.
When asked about the job, Sarah Fidler explains: “It’s basically a combination of some food science and a lot of chef skills.”
Back in 1988, Peter Lind became the first hired flavor guru for the Vermont-based ice cream company. His task? Come up with delicious new ice cream flavors for customers to enjoy all year round.
“My therapy is helping people find their favorite ice cream,” says Lind. Beforehand, Lind had some experience creating new ice cream flavours and selling them with his roommate from college from a small freezer across their local mall.
Natalia Butler, the first Hispanic flavour guru at Ben & Jerry’s, completed a masters in food science before finding her dream job on LinkedIn through a recruiter. According to the mastermind behind fan-favourites Tonight Dough and Cherry Garcia, one of the hardest parts of the job is “finding the good balance of chunks or swirls to ice cream ratio.”
Now you might be wondering “what does a typical day look like for a flavor guru”?
Well, for Eric Fredette, the day usually starts at nine o’ clock on the dot: “you are sitting in the cutting room tasting ice cream. No coffee, you want a clean palette for that. Some mornings, very early, you could be on the factory floor testing something new or making a new item for the first time. Then, usually coffee. Getting ingredients out, setting up machines, and then usually afternoons, back to either meetings or I usually like to make ice cream in the afternoon.”
An undeniably cool feature of this unusual job is the endless supply of ice cream available to employees. “My freezer is always filled with ice cream—as well as my neighbor’s, as well as my family’s, as well as anyone who wants to be friends with me,” explains Chris Rivard, currently head of Research & Development North America at Ben & Jerry’s. “Within our community, it’s great to share that, and I’m lucky because I’m in R&D so I have my own secret stash of ice creams as well.”
Ben & Jerry’s currently have nine flavour gurus on deck, eagerly working on their next sweet masterpiece. From scratch, the flavors can take up to two years to finally reach the market.
Did you know? Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen has anosmia, a condition that results in loss of smell and limited sense of taste. This seems to be one of the reasons why Ben & Jerry’s ice creams are so generous in terms of textures and colors.
3. Professional Gum Chewer
Chewing gum is no joke. Candy companies go through hundreds of applications before finally selecting the lucky candidates joining their expert panel of tasters.
Fancily referred to as “gumologists”, these expert masticators are hired to help provide feedback on chewing gum texture and flavor.
Jesse Kiefer is one of the professional tasters at Cadbury’s Gum Center of Excellence in New Jersey. In an interview with Fortune Magazine, the chief gumologist explains “some days I don’t blow any bubbles. Other days I have to blow a lot. It depends on what stage we are in the project. A piece of gum weighs just one to seven grams, but it’s packed with a lot of different technology. It has to deliver a burst of flavor, a lot of sweetness, and a lot of tartness if it’s a fruit gum. Our team figures out how to combine all those.”
At Cadbury, gumologists are required to complete a 6 month training to “learn the scales, terminology and measurement techniques used to evaluate products.” They also need to avoid food, caffeinated drinks, toothpaste and mouthwash at least an hour before chewing the gums.
Kiefer completed his graduate studies in chemical engineering and worked on detergents and soaps before working in the bubble gum business. “If you go back ten years ago, chewing gums may have lasted ten to 12 minutes before you noticed the flavor was diminished,” he explains. “We’re doing about 20 to 35 minutes today. When we work on the gum in its raw form, sometimes we use a hatchet to chop it up.”
Gum taster Sue McNamara is committed to her job at the lab, showing up four mornings a week to chew gum and provide necessary feedback. “I have lawyer friends who tell me they want my job, and I’m definitely the most popular mom in the neighborhood,” she says in an interview with The New York Times.
From classical musicians to retired hospital administrators, professional gum tasters come from all walks of life to share their love for gum.
4. Culinary Trendologist
Passionate about uncovering the next big food trend? This might be the job for you!
Culinary trendologist Kara Nielson defines her job expertize as “the art and science of spotting food and beverage trends and translating them…for strategic insights, for innovation inspiration, for education and more.”
To keep up with the latest and scout out upcoming trends, culinary trendologists spend a lot of time performing market research. This involves reading blogs, magazines and news from the culinary industry as well as watching food television and trying new foods and restaurants from all over the globe.
For trendologist Mike Kostyo, it all started in the communications department for the Indiana Democratic Party. His interest for food sparked during his work for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, when he got to talk about important food issues with farmers in Iowa.
“Food was a real thrill point on the campaign. We were a bunch of young people who just graduated college and spent a lot of time together either cooking at each other’s houses or going to restaurants together,” he explains to Huffpost.
Kostyo later enrolled in a gastronomy program at Boston University before getting hired as a trendologist at a food and beverage market research firm.
As for global culinary trendologist Christine Couvelier, she began her career in the food service industry, working in restaurants and offering catering services. Later, Couvelier worked for major food brands, directing corporate culinary strategies, before launching her own consulting company “Culinary Concierge“. There, her services range from trend watch reports and recipe development to food styling and writing.
In an interview with Quench Magazine, Couvelier highlights the indisputable influence of food memories on new food trends: “I think that’s really important for anyone putting a food product on the shelf or thinking about a new menu item. Food memories play such an important role for customers and consumers. Food memories travel from person to person and we love to share food stories and food memories.”
Having insight on future trends is essential for food & beverage companies to meet business goals. This ultimately means more pressure for trendologists to get it right. As Kostyo puts it: “The trends we predict can affect if they have a good quarter and may even affect whether or not people get to keep their jobs.”
Trendologists must also distinguish between trends and fads, which are “typically driven by social media” and short-lived.
According to Datassential‘s latest predictions, flavors and ingredients to look forward to in 2023 include Yuzu, Salsa Matcha, Spicy Maple and Mangonada (a Mexican dessert made with mango sorbet, chamoy and chili powder).
Future trends in upcoming years are believed to include Cherry Blossom, Black Tahini, White Coffee and Savory Granola.
5. Vinegar Sommelier
A sommelier is usually defined as “someone whose job is to serve and give advice about wine in a restaurant” but this expertize has quickly expanded to include other edible food products.
In fact, there is a number of little-known sommeliers that exist around the globe including water sommelier, olive oil sommelier, honey sommelier and even vinegar sommelier.
Oak’s Heart vinegar, a Japanese company known for its vast selection of fruit vinegars, claims to have the country’s first ever vinegar sommelier. Mitsuyasu Uchibori comes from a long line of experts. It is said that his family has been producing vinegar in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture for over 130 years.
Uchibori’s expertize includes a trained nose and palate able to discern the different notes of acidity found in vinegar.
A vinegar sommelier usually gains valuable experience by regularly attending tasting sessions, seminars and practicing pairing different vinegars with different dishes.
For this vinegar connoisseur, there are preferred ways to cook with vinegar. Uchibori recommends “kagensu”, a combination of vinegar and other flavourings such as soy sauce and sugar.
“It is a method to make seasoning by adding plenty of soup stock, water, and other flavouring to vinegar”, he explains. “As a guide, I think it would be better to use vinegar diluted with water or broth with ratio of 1:10 (vinegar:water/broth) so it can be used as cooking/brewing water.”
To ensure optimal quality, vinegar can be stored in the fridge door or slightly salted to help prevent spoilage.
In fact, you might even want to give your bottle of vinegar a little shake ever so often.
“Invisible wild acetic acid bacteria flying in the air will attach to the surface of the vinegar and multiply, leading to deterioration of the scent of vinegar,” explains Uchibori. “If you shake the vinegar regularly, even if the wild acetic acid bacterium enter in its bottle, the acetic acid bacterium will not be able to act due to the vinegar’s frequent fluctuations.”
6. Culinary Historian
As Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard once said: “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.“
When it comes to safeguarding the past, culinary historians help to ensure a proper retelling of humanity’s past relationships with food.
Culinary historians should not be confused with food historians, who investigate “the social, economic, ethical, and political dimensions of food production and consumption.” Rather, culinary historians focus more on “ingredients, cooking equipment, methods, and the re-creation of cooking processes.”
“Culinary is really about what’s going on in the kitchen,” explains Ken Albala, Director of Food Studies at The University of The Pacific in San Francisco. “What’s being cooked, the aesthetics of eating practices.”
According to Albala, experts who juggle both culinary history and food history are rather scarce. “There are not a whole lot of people who could claim to be both, in other words, who write about food history and also love cooking and write cook books. I do both, which is unusual. I find that a lot of food historians aren’t actually into cooking, which is bizarre to me; I don’t understand that.”
For renowned culinary scholar Michael Twitty, investigative travels led him to explore the culinary traditions of enslaved Africans and their monumental impact on the culinary history of the Old South.
“Our story is told through our plates,” emphasizes Twitty in an interview with Vice News. “The great migration and the domestic slave trade are two of the biggest shapers of American culture.”
In an interview for the food documentary “Taste of the Tenement”, Twitty also highlights the resilient nature of inherited food cultures: “What the food does is it points arrows at certain things, like migration patterns. Food also speaks to preferences. Preferences are very strong and they last across journeys on ships and exile.”
Culinary historians work as researchers, writers, teachers and even TV hosts. They are also hired by movie and television producers to ensure an accurate depiction of food served on the big screen.
Did you know? 19th-century French chefs such as Marie-Antoine Carême and Auguste Escoffier played a fondamental role in shaping today’s culinary arts. In fact, Carême was the first to categorise “the five great mother sauces (béchamel, espagnole, velouté, hollandaise and tomato) from which all others were derived.”
Want to learn more? Check out the BBC’s insightful History Extra podcast episode with culinary historian Annie Gray.
7. Corn Detasseler
Every summer, thousands of Midwestern teens gather in cornfields to take on the dirty job of detasseling corn.
In exchange for their hard-work, youngsters get paid 9 to 18 dollars an hour, making anywhere from $600 to $3,000 in a season.
Corn detasselers are tasked with the peculiar job of walking down endless rows of corn, pulling out pollen-producing flowers (called “tassels”) atop 6 to 8 feet tall corn stalks.
According to former corn detasseler Zach Brokenrope, unbearable humidity, ridiculously early mornings and corn rashes are just some of the challenges of this unconventional occupation.
But why go through all this trouble? One word: Quality.
By preventing self-pollination, farmers are able to produce “a superior breed of corn” which yields high-quality kernels. The latter are usually planted to supply the following year’s livestock feed, syrup, and ethanol.
“Historically, detasseling was all done by hand,” explains Randy Lloyd, research facility coordinator at West Central Research, Extension and Education Center in North Platte. However, nowadays, there are machines that help to remove 60 to 90% of corn tassels, leaving the rest to manual labour.
Detasseling is far more than just an employment opportunity for young Midwesterners. For many teenagers in Nebraska and the rest of the Corn Belt, it’s a rite of passage. According to Taylor Gage, former staffer for Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, “detasseling is a huge cultural part of the state of Nebraska.”
Climate change and the rise of guest workers under the H-2A program are accelerating factors for the vanishing of this traditional, bitter-sweet practice.
Detasseling is reserved for seed corn and usually starts in July, lasting only lasts two to three and a half weeks.
Did you know? Stephen King’s supernatural short story “Children of the Corn” is set in cornfields in rural Nebraska.
8. Sin-Eater
To uncover this forgotten profession, we must travel back in time to the Victorian Era.
Sin-eaters are said to have roamed the streets of England, Scotland and Wales until the late 19th century.
Usually hired by families mourning the recently deceased, sin-eaters were paid to eat the misdeeds of the departed through a bready meal.
“Bread placed on the chest of the laid-out body sucked up the sins of the dead, clearing them for passage to heaven,” explains Shoshi Parks in a 2018 Vice article.
A 1852 meeting of the Cambrian Archaeological Association provides further details on this macabre practice:
“When a person died, the friends sent for the sin-eater of the district, who on his arrival placed a plate of salt on the breast of the defunct, and upon the salt a piece of bread”, explains Matthew Moggridge. “He then muttered an incantation over the bread, which he finally ate, thereby eating up all the sins of the deceased. This done, he received his fee of 2 [shillings], 6 [pence], and vanished as quickly as possible from the general gaze . . . he was utterly detested in the neighborhood—regarded as a mere pariah—as one irredeemably lost.”
These grim ceremonies were condemned by the Church but kept many homeless travellers, beggars and poor, social outcasts fed.
After the ceremony, the sin-eater was often severely mistreated by the families. “(…) Mourners kicked, punched, and otherwise abused him right out the door to keep the vulgar contents of his belly from contaminating the house,” writes Parks. “For his efforts, the sin eater made the equivalent of just a few dollars per meal.”
Richard Munslow is believed to be the last known sin-eater in England. Oddly, this well-established farmer was far from shunned by his community. Munslow was buried in 1906 in the town of Ratlinghope in the historic county of Shropshire.
9. Cured Ham Slicer
Jamon Iberico slicing is a fine art requiring dexterity, expertize and great passion.
Master slicers like Florencio Sanchidrián work with one of Spain’s most treasured delicacies: the Iberian ham.
“(…) A good cortador de jamones should try to manipulate the joint as little as possible and when serving the meat, help people appreciate it with all of their senses,” Sanchidrián explains to Vice.
Sanchidrián first discovered his love for this physically demanding profession when he was asked to replaced a sick colleague at a restaurant where he worked as a waiter. Since, he has become renowned at his craft, slicing paper-thin cuts of high-quality cured hams for the likes of Barack Obama, Robert De Niro and the King of Spain. For his services, the expert carver can charge up to $4,000 to steadily carve a 13 to 17 pounds leg of ham, a task requiring 90 minutes of tremendous skill and focus.
Jamon Iberico de bellota, the highest quality ham, is known for its generous stripes of fat, and its sweet and nutty flavors. These Spanish Ibérico pigs are usually fed acorns and left to roam freely to help promote a homogenous distribution of fat in their bodies.
Iberico hams are heavily salted and hung up to dry for 6 to 12 months before being aged in a cellar for at least three years.
In a 2020 interview with CNBC, meat specialist Fidel Toldra explains “it’s like wine. The more you age the ham, the more flavor you get. This explains also why it is so expensive. Because of the long processing time.”
In recent years, a new generation of women have been mastering the art of carving legs of Iberian ham. In fact, the 2021 Benalmádena ham-carving competition saw a significant amount of female participants.
“I think to become a master or a champion means to have ability to transform a cutting process into sensations and emotions,”explains the organizer David Romero to SUR in English. “Women can cut ham with more impressive delicacy than their male counterparts. That is why those women who dare to devote themselves to ham-cutting are successful.”
Not all professional ham cutters are able to work full-time on their craft. According to a 2013 NYT article, “lower-rated cutters earn about $250 to slice a leg, forcing them to combine that job with other catering duties.”
10. Cheese curd taster
Can you resist the “squeaky call of the curd“? If not, you must be a curd nerd at heart!
In 2019, Madison-based online food ordering service “EatStreet” made headlines for their curd campaign and their unexpected job offer for “curd nerd“.
Amid nine hundred applications, Chris Attaway was selected to document her 2-week quest to find the best cheese curds in Wisconsin, all expenses paid.
For $12.50 an hour, the turophile rated fresh and fried cheese curds based on flavor, texture, smell, squeakiness, presentation and sauce.
According to Wisconsin’s first cheese curd Master, Steve Stettler, the best curd is “squeaky, a slight tough of salt and a little warm.”
Fried curd is also a favourite among locals. “Crisp on the outside, creamy, stringy, gooey on the inside, they make for a perfect snack, a fantastic cocktail accompaniment, or even a great meal,” writes award-winning author Jeanette Hurt. “Yes, you can dip them in ranch or barbecue, but I think they’re best fresh, just out of the fryer by their lonesome.”
Variations in cheese flavor may occur due to a number of factors including the cheesemaker’s skills, milk quality and the type of rennet used to curdle the milk. According to third-generation artisanal cheesemaker Chris Renard, it takes roughly 10 pounds of milk to produce only 1 pound of cheese.
Cheese curds can range in color from white to orange, a color obtained by tinting pasteurized milk with annatto seed extract (a flavorless plant-derived substance).
Wisconsin, a.k.a America’s Dairyland, is the only state in the US “that requires cheesemakers to be licensed if they want to sell their cheese.” According to Jeanne Carpenter, founder of Wisconsin Cheese Originals, the license entails short courses at the University of Wisconsin, a two-hour written test, over 200 hours of apprenticing under a licensed cheesemaker and a 75$ fee.
Did you know? The Canadian province of Quebec is another big cheese curd lover, especially when it comes to combining it with fries and gravy. According to local historian Guy Raiche “(Poutine) was created in 1957 at the restaurant Café Idéal” when “a customer entered one day and requested that the owner Ferdinand Lachance give him fries and cheese curds together in a paper bag because he was in a rush.”
