At the Food Design Studies Conference, Esteban Pueblo discussed new physical and chemical approaches to food preparation. In his research, he questioned the experience of the bite – how can the experience of biting into food be manipulated? Pueblo focused on one particular method: vacuum impregnation.
Vacuum impregnation (VI) is a recent development in the osmotic treatment of foods. More technically, “VI of a porous product consists of exchanging the internal gas or liquid occluded in open pores for an external liquid phase by the action of hydrodynamic mechanisms promoted by pressure changes.(1)”
![](https://academics.design.ncsu.edu/yesand/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/11692259-o.jpg)
In simpler terms, this method can put a liquid into a solid. For example, you can put wine into a slice of pear. Different that poaching a pear in that same wine, you preserve the original properties of both liquid and solid, thus creating a new experience through bite.
Listening to Pueblo’s discussion reminded me of the potential speculation and exploration has when designing for experience. Trying to imagine what might happen when you put a liquid into a solid is a design prompt for food studies. In what ways, as designers, can we speculate unknown experiences and design those into existence? How might the impregnation of a pear inspire us to design new experiences?