Conceptual Cooking

Apologies for not posting last night; I have a huge exam coming up and my time is getting precious. I couldn't abide the thought of two postless days in a row, though, so I decided to write up a quick one for today. Rather than a recipe, I want to talk about the concepts I try to keep in mind when I'm cooking. This is something that I'm probably going to revisit over and over again over the lifetime of this blog, and it is hand-down the most important thing for someone to realize if they're learning how to cook.

Everything in cooking is about having flavors that complement each other. Simple, right? Keep reading.

A huge portion of flavor is actually smell - this is why food doesn't taste as good when you have a bad cold. Take a bite of an apple and a bite of raw onion with your nose pinched shut, and you'll be surprised how similar and muted they both taste. Your brain integrates smell from the nose and taste from the tongue to create what we perceive as flavor. I mentioned in a previous post that there are hundreds of different receptors in the nose for different types of chemical compounds, and that individual odorants can potentially trigger different combinations of these receptors with variable intensity. This allows us to identify an absolutely outrageous number of different chemical compounds.

In spite of this obscene amount of nuance that smell provides, it alone does not provide the full experience of flavor. Taste is responsible for rounding things out, and it (fortunately) does so in a less complicated manner. Greek antiquity established four tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and  bitter. About 100 years ago in japan, a fifth big player was identified: umami, which English-speaking cooks often refer to as savory. While sweet receptors ferret out different sugars and sour receptors find acids, savory receptors of the tongue look for compounds containing the amino acid glutamate. Glutamate is an incredibly important molecule both for the synthesis of proteins throughout the body and for cell communication in the central nervous system. It's most commonly found in meat, fish, and shellfish, although it can also be found in certain foods that we generally would call "full-bodied" - such as tomatoes, aged cheese, soy sauce, and spinach. The tongue also has a few other receptors hanging around. The tongue is almost certainly receptive to fatty acids, certain metals, and __. The tongue's sensitivity to pain is interesting - the receptors are in place so that we don't hurt ourselves,  but the masochistic among us take advantage of them when we enjoy the burn from a spicy food or a drink with a high alcohol content. The well-understood bitter receptors have a similar phenomenon - we naturally try to avoid bitter compounds because the body has evolved to attach a bitter taste to most poisons. Nevertheless, some people love dark chocolate. I love extremely hoppy, bitter beers.

The important information to get from all this sciency stuff is that flavor is a complex beast. As a cook, you want to think about trying to satisfy as many aspects of flavor as possible. Specifically, a lot of the 'S' words are responsible for the creation of a tasty meal:

  - Sweet
  - Salty
  - Sour
  - Savory
  - Spicy

By satisfying as many of those taste types as possible, you create a more complete experience within the mouth. This makes a more satisfying and memorable meal. It isn't necessary to have each S in each dish, but I like to make sure that I have at least four of them in most meals I make. Saltiness is probably the most critical one. Adding salt to a dish not only stimulates the salt receptors on the tongue, but it induces foods to release additional odor. This intensifies the smell-based aspect of flavor. The other 'S' words can act as flavor enhancers as well, but aren't quite as critical. An under-salted dish tends to simply taste bland.

I also like to throw "Starchy" into the mix as a sixth 'S', but it's probably the least important one. Starchy foods like potato, bread, and pasta are lovely, but not in any way necessary for a good meal. A lot of starchy foods aren't terribly good for you, anyway.

Once you've established a good S profile, odds are pretty good that your meal will be at the very least edible. Playing around with specific ingredients and learning what combinations work well with each other will pay off in the long run. For example, a lot of people like to put broccoli with cheese. I've found that broccoli is also complemented very nicely by lemon, which I can use to satisfy the Sour profile in a dish.

Okay, that wasn't quite as quick of a post as I had intended. But hopefully you learned something!