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One person that Purdue and Smith, in particular, have helped is Dennis Fry. A food entrepreneur, Fry was approached by a Taiwanese company that was looking for a chicken-broth concentrate. But the broth couldn't taste like it came from just any chicken. "It was supposed to taste like 'Taiwanese mountain chicken,' which is a type of semi-wild bird there with a stronger and more distinct taste than the chicken we eat in the U.S.," Fry says.
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These pouches of flavor base for soups, stir-fry and rice are produced in Columbus, Ind., and marketed to consumers and restaurants in Taiwan. Indiana food entrepreneur Dennis Fry used Purdue University's food science pilot plant to develop products for the international market. |
Smith and others helped Fry set up a miniature production line and develop a flavor profile that matched that of the mountain chicken. It took a year of canning different chicken broths and shipping them to Taiwan before he finally got it right. "You know how the whole room smelled of chicken when your mom made you chicken noodle soup?" Fry says. "We finally got the concentrate to have that special aroma when it was re-hydrated, except with a distinctly Asian flavor.
"Chicken broth is an important food in Taiwanese and Chinese culture, and consumers in Asia have exacting tastes for it. I knew when I pleased them that I had made a good product, which would have been almost impossible without Purdue's help."
Fry's chicken broth concentrate has since become the highest-selling product of its kind in Taiwan, tripling in sales every year since its launch in 2002. His company, TasteMakers Inc., sold more than 200,000 pounds in 2006, all produced in his Columbus, Ind., plant. He plans to expand TasteMakers into mainland China, where he has already completed a market study, selected Chinese corporate partners and identified manufacturing locations near Shanghai.
Wining, dining and refining
Work in the pilot plant also has other beneficiaries. Consider the very different work of Christian Butzke, professor of enology (wine-making), and Li-Fu Chen, professor of food science and expert in biomass conversion.
Some of their projects reside in a room off the pilot plant, where bright white walls separate a refrigerated chamber from a collection of large tools and strewn bits of brown pulp.
In the chamber, a bitterly cold closet redolent of yesterday's vineyards, crates and crates of white and red grapes dry. They will soon be made into experimental wine from new grape varieties that grow well in many parts of Indiana.
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