Know of a Muhlenberg student-athlete with an interesting or unusual summer job or experience? E-mail falk@muhlenberg.edu with details.

for lax captain, summer has unique flavor

Matthew Schroeder’s summer has been a little spicier than most.

For the second straight year, the Muhlenberg lacrosse captain is interning at McCormick & Company in Hunt Valley, Md. A chemistry major, Schroeder works Monday through Friday in the Flavor Creation Lab at the Technical Innovation Center, doing several research projects.

According to its Web site, McCormick is “a global leader in the manufacture, marketing and distribution of spices, herbs, seasonings, specialty foods and flavors to the entire food industry.” When Schroeder was looking for a job related to chemistry, McCormick was a natural – his grandmother had worked for the company for 26 years as a secretary, and his father knows one of the McCormicks.

Working on flavor creation might sound like something that goes on in the kitchen, but this is more Marie Curie than Julia Child. Schroeder is a special project chemist for a team of Master Flavorists, who are responsible for looking at different components and putting them together to make flavors.

“We’re the building blocks for most of the corporation,” said Schroeder.

Among his responsibilities is a six-week stability project that looks at several different ingredients and how long they last with a particular

Schroeder was third on the Mules with 33 ground balls and scored his first career goal in 2009.

base. “Can we still taste these ingredients over time? How well are they going to stay in there? That’s what I’m looking at,” he said.

“These ingredients could go into a flavor,” he continued. “I’m only testing one chemical at a time, not actually looking at a flavor.”

Schroeder also is involved in other projects, one dealing with solubility, particularly looking at different powders that go into flavors within different solvents, and another examining new components within different bases that may be added to McCormick’s library.

It’s not the sort of thing you’re likely to see on The Food Network.

“You don’t know much about this industry,” Schroeder said. “When you walk into the supermarket you don’t think about what’s going into your food to make it taste the way it does.

“But when you get into it, it opens up so much. There are so many different components that make up these flavors. I’ve learned so much about what ingredients go into what flavors.”

Although Schroeder gets to taste the results of his experiments, his palette is nowhere near as discerning as those of the Master Flavorists, with their years of experience. But he has noticed a difference when he eats.

“I find that my taste buds have matured, if that’s the word,” he said. “I feel like I can pick up smaller things that I wasn’t able to before – that’s kind of cool.”

Schroeder will hang up his McCormick lab coat next month and return to Muhlenberg for his senior year, which will include his last lacrosse season. But the flavor he got the last two summers may be long-lasting, as he is considering a career in food chemistry or natural product isolation.

“It’s been a great experience,” he said. “It’s such an interesting industry.”