Photographer Anna Pogossova takes a look into the history of artificial flavours in her still life series for Edition N°8, FLAVOUR.

“As large-scale food manufacturing started gearing up in the 1920s, creameries realized that in order to sell a product on a national scale, it needed to taste both distinctive from other brands and the same as everything else marketed under the same name—not an easy feat when a single butter brand might use milk from dozens of different dairies.Dutch chemists soon discovered that the compound diacetyl, produced either synthetically or by microorganisms, could add a “buttery” flavor to foods. Creameries then started adding a chemical that doesn’t naturally occur in butter to actual butter in order to make it taste more like…butter. Our sense of what butter “tastes” like is in many ways shaped more by diacetyl, now found in everything from imitation butter to movie theater popcorn, than the real deal.” – The Absurd History of Artificial Flavors.