Synthesizing the Tropics: The Ghost Banana Chemical Mystery

Anyone who has ever eaten a banana-flavored candy knows that it tastes absolutely nothing like the bananas sold in modern supermarkets. This synthetic flavor is actually a culinary ghost, haunting our palates with the exact taste of an extinct fruit. In the mid-twentieth century, Panama disease practically wiped out the Gros Michel, the world's dominant and most flavorful banana. By the time the...