Science, experience, theory and practice at MACC

The students of the new Degree in Gastronomy and Culinary Innovation at Comillas visited INEA, the School of Agricultural Engineering in Valladolid. There, they got to know the farm, the orchards and the greenhouses up close, and they experimented in the laboratory analysing the products recently harvested from the land. The stay at INEA was completed with visits to companies in the sector: the Yllera winery and the Virto Group's deep-frozen vegetable production plant. Science and experience, theory and practice, provided the opportunity to get to know "the back of the kitchen" at first hand. The connection between good gastronomy and culinary innovation with the meticulous checking of organic production, of the characteristics and culinary properties of each fruit. "The value of things that are well done matters because gastronomy belongs to everyone".

Teresa Suárez de Lezo García and Victoria Platas Muñoz, delegate and subdelegate of this first year of the degree, share the learning experience of these days. Firstly, because it has been an experience to get out of the comfort zone. And they explain it because never in their lives would they have imagined they would have enjoyed themselves in this way, observing onions and tasting the soil to get to know in depth what minerals to nourish it with. Neither of them has their future as cooks in mind, but rather in the field of gastronomic business. "Even so, these days we got to know that part of the process that is necessary to understand it as a whole", they say. Satisfied with the experience, they no longer think of it as a complementary activity, but rather as a necessary activity to learn and innovate.