Sourdough bread, fermented herring, blue-veined cheese: the list of victuals enjoyed by people in various parts of the world includes many fermented, slightly spoiled, soured, or rotten foodstuffs. 

Milk, vegetables, fruit juices, sometimes even meat. Over the course of hundreds or even thousands of years of culinary exploration, we have tried to ferment, or “spoil in a controlled manner,” just about anything. Never by ourselves, of course—we couldn’t do it without fungi and bacteria, the alchemists of the micro-universe. 

We tend to think that we are in charge of the fermentation processes, that all these single- and multicell reactors are slugging along on our human leash and chew up and digest organic matter just because we allow them to do it. But when something goes wrong, the true dynamics of the relationship governing these processes becomes apparent. As soon as a fetid pest creeps into the Garden of Eden and the