infection, when the galls on a single ear can weigh as much as a pound/500 gm and are about three-quarters black inside When cooked, these immature galls develop a sweet, savory, woody flavor thanks to glucose, sotolon, and vanillin In the United States, corn smut was simply a disease until the 1990s, when growing interest in Mexican food led some farmers to cultivate it intentionally A related smut, U esculenta, is eaten in China and Japan An Asian wild rice, Zizania latifolia, develops the infection in its upper stem, which swells with hyphae The stems are cooked and eaten as a vegetable (Chinese kah-peh-sung, Japanese makomotake) whose flavor is said to resemble bamboo shoots Mycoprotein, or Quorn Mycoprotein is a 20th-century invention, an edible form of the normally useless underground hyphae of a common fungus, Fusarium venenatum A strain of the fungus originally taken from a field in Buckinghamshire, England, is grown in a liquid medium in a factory-scale fermenter The resulting mass of hyphae is harvested, washed, and rapidly heated This produces microscopic fibers that are rich in protein and about 0.5 mm long and 0.003–0.005 mm in diameter, or about the dimensions of muscle fibers in meat This essentially tasteless mycoprotein (from myco-, “related to fungi”) can then be manufactured into meat substitutes and a variety of other food products ... microscopic fibers that are rich in protein and about 0.5 mm long and 0.003–0.005 mm in diameter, or about the dimensions of muscle fibers in meat This essentially tasteless mycoprotein (from myco-, “related to fungi”) can then be manufactured into meat... A strain of the fungus originally taken from a field in Buckinghamshire, England, is grown in a liquid medium in a factory-scale fermenter The resulting mass of hyphae is harvested, washed, and rapidly heated... mycoprotein (from myco-, “related to fungi”) can then be manufactured into meat substitutes and a variety of other food products