Ice cream, mascarpone and milk-washed cocktails may sound like simple pleasures — but the ones served at a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in Denmark contained a little extra something: ants.
Alchemist in Copenhagen, currently ranked No. 5 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, describes itself as “part science lab” and has a thing for experimenting with food.
The restaurant’s ant-ics began when staff noticed that milk started to curdle when a chef left it in a fridge with an ant inside. This led to experiments involving anthropologists, culinary innovators and food scientists, food innovation researcher Nabila Rodríguez Valerón told CNN. She is head of flavor fermentation at Danish food tech company Summ Ingredients (formerly Nutrumami), a former food scientist at Alchemist and coauthor of a study describing the results that was published Friday in the journal iScience.
Alchemist in Copenhagen, Denmark, is ranked No. 5 on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list. Søren Gammelmark/Alchemist
The fermentation of milk into cheese and yogurt dates back about 9,000 years to Anatolia, part of modern-day Turkey, according to the study.
Microbes from natural plants like pine cones and nettles added to the milk would start the fermentation process that turns milk into thick, acidic yogurt.
However, after
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