by Jeff Potter
To alter the flavor of fresh fruit, you can sprinkle it with sugar (try this on strawberries) or salt (on grapefruit), wet it with lime juice (papaya, watermelon, peaches with honey), or combine it with an ingredient from another taste family (sweet watermelon and salty feta cheese). If you can find fresh papaya, try slicing it and sprinkling a bit of cayenne pepper and salt on top of the pieces for a salty/sweet/hot combination. Try replacing the papaya with other tropical fruits and the cayenne pepper with other hot items. Guava and chili pepper? Mango salad with jalapeños and cilantro? Strawberries and black pepper?
Note
Black pepper has no capsaicin (the chemical that gives cayenne pepper and jalapeños their heat) but is still pungent due to another chemical, piperine.
For another twist, try mixing foods high in fats with hot ingredients. They should pair well with ingredients that contain capsaicin, because capsaicin is fat soluble. Experiment with avocado and sriracha sauce, commonly known as rooster sauce for the drawing on the bottle of one popular brand.
Note
Rooster sauce (sriracha sauce—Thai hot sauce), it has been said, can improve the taste of any dorm food, but beware, it’s spicy. As one friend quipped to me, it’ll hit you like a freight train and then leave like a freight train.
For you visual thinkers, here’s a diagram of the combinations of the four basic flavors, with a few foods labeled for each combination. Ask yourself: what other foods have these combinations? When cooking, think about which tastes your dish emphasizes and in which direction you want it to go.
Many foods are combinations of three or more primary tastes. Ketchup, for example, is surprisingly complex, with tastes of umami (tomatoes), sourness (vinegar), sweetness (sugar), and saltiness (salt).
Taste combinations are equally important in drinks. The hallmark of a well-mixed cocktail is the balance between bitter (bitters) and sweet (sugar). Likewise, unless you’ve learned to enjoy bitterness, coffee and tea (slightly bitter) are commonly combined with sweeteners (milk, sugar, honey) or acidifiers (lemon juice, orange juice) to balance out the tastes.
In some cases, the combination of different primary tastes is achieved by serving two separate components together, pairing one dish with a second on the basis that the two will complement each other. In Indian food, for example, the salty sweetness of a yogurt lassi balances out the spicy hotness of curries. Consider the following combinations of primary flavors. With the exception of bitter/salty, every pair of primary tastes is a common combination.
Combination
Single-ingredient example
Combination example
Salty + sour
Pickles
Preserved lemon peel
Salad dressings
Salty + sweet
Seaweed (slightly sweet via mannitol)
Watermelon and feta cheese
Banana with sharp cheddar cheese
Cantaloupe and prosciutto
Chocolate-covered pretzels
Sour + sweet
Oranges
Lemon juice and sugar (e.g., lemonade)
Grilled corn with lime juice
Bitter + sour
Cranberries
Grapefruit (sour via citric acid; bitter via naringin)
Negroni (cocktail with gin, vermouth, Campari)
Bitter + sweet
Bitter parsley
Granny Smith apples
Bittersweet chocolate
Coffee/tea with sugar/honey
Bitter + salty
(N/A)
Sautéed kale with salt
Mustard greens with bacon
Watermelon and Feta Cheese Salad
If it’s summertime and you’re able to get good watermelon, try this simple salad to experience the contrast in flavors between the salt in feta cheese and the sweetness of watermelon.
In a bowl, toss to coat:
2 cups (300g) watermelon, cubed or scooped
½ cup (120g) feta cheese, cut into small pieces
¼ cup (40g) red onion, sliced super thin, soaked and drained
1 tablespoon (14g) olive oil (extra virgin because it imparts flavor)
½ teaspoon (3g) balsamic vinegar
Notes
Always soak onions that will be served raw. When cut, an enzyme (allinase) reacts with sulfoxides from the onion’s cells to produce sulfenic acid, which stabilizes into a sulfuric gas (syn-propanethial-S-oxide) that can react with water to produce sulfuric acid. This is why we cry when cutting onions: the sulfuric gas interacts with the water in our eyes (the lacrimal fluid) to generate sulfuric acid, which triggers our eyes to tear up to flush the sulfuric acid. Because sulfides are water soluble, soaking the cut onions removes most of the undesirable odors. You can soak them in water, or try vinegar to impart a bit of additional flavor. Also, cutting onions in a wet environment provides liquid for the sulfur compounds to dissolve into. Try pulling off the onion skin under water and then cutting with a wet blade on a rinsed-but-not-dried cutting board. Another method to reduce tearing is to chill the onion, because this makes the cell structures firmer and reduces the amount of intra-cellular fluid available for the allinases to react with.
If you’re lazy, skip cubing the watermelon and feta and instead serve a slice of watermelon alongside a slice of feta, and alternate back and forth. You can also make appetizers by skewering a cube of watermelon and a cube of feta with a toothpick.
Dicing a watermelon is easier and faster than using a melon baller. Using a knife, make a series of parallel slices in one direction, and then repeat for the other two axes.
Virginia Utermohlen on Taste Sensitivity
Virginia Utermohlen is an associate professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University, where she studies individual differences in taste and smell sensitivity and how those differences relate to our personality and ability to perform.
Do different people taste things differently?
Yes, there are genetic variations all over the place. We have differences in the taste buds and the trigeminal nerve, plus people differ in their saliva, which influences taste. What I taste and what you taste in the same food is going to be different.
One difference is sensitivity to 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP). People are genetically capable or incapable of tasting it. Certain populations such as the Sub-Saharan Africans tend to be very sensitive to it, and then there are populations in Europe where insensitivity is very common. The British are famous for simple flavor systems and they tend to be fairly insensitive tasters, whereas if you look at the flavors in Asian, Sub-Saharan African, and indigenous American cuisines, those people are highly sensitive tasters and their foods have complex flavor profiles.
The trigeminal nerve senses hot and cold, pain, texture, and to some extent sweet, independently of the taste bud cells. Compounds like menthol bind to the same receptor that changes shape in response to cold temperatures, so the brain interprets what menthol is doing as cooling, even though it’s not colder than anything else around. Similarly with capsaicin: it binds with the receptor that changes confirmation with warm or hot temperatures so the brain says, "This is hot!" It really isn’t hot, but the brain interprets it as that. There are differences [in trigeminal sensitivity] from one individual to the next. Some people will put an Altoid on their tongue for the first time and think, "This isn’t bad!" Another person puts one on their tongue and thinks it’s got to get out of there as soon as it can. Once those trigeminal nerves get overactivated, it’s painful. Another thing that the trigeminal nerve senses is pungency. French cheeses are very pungent.
Is there something about the French that causes them to like pungency in cheese?
In my rather small sample, the people of French descent tend to be more sensitive to the cooling sensation from mint. So on the average my guess is that they would be more trigeminally sensitive.
If the French tend to be more trigeminally sensitive, it seems like they would be more sensitive to the pungency in cheeses and
thus not like them very much.
This is something important and interesting: if you are sensitive to something, it can be either adverse or pleasant. Now pungency, in my opinion, is not aversive. Some people think it is. I personally like chocolate that’s quite bitter. Just because something has a quality doesn’t mean it’s aversive or pleasant. That varies from person to person.
Something you said makes me wonder about beer and wine, and low trigeminal sensitivity versus high trigeminal sensitivity.
The carbonation and pungency of beer give it a trigeminal kick. If you are sensitive to the pungent, the trigeminal side of things, but not sensitive to the bitterness of beer, you’re going to like beer a lot better than I do. I can’t stand it!
So could one take a PROP test strip and a menthol candy and between those two things figure out which a person likes more, beer or wine?
That’s possible. I’ve never done that experiment before.
Dr. Utermohlen had previously explained to me that individuals who define "reasonable" as "logical" are generally less trigeminally sensitive and those who define it as "justifiable, fair" tend to be more trigeminally sensitive. Note that trigeminal sensitivity is a separate phenomenon from PROP sensitivity.
We talked about how people define the word "reasonable" in a previous conversation. Why would somebody who is more trigeminally sensitive define reasonable as fair?
Well, here is my hypothesis—not that I necessarily have any proof of this—but taste and smell go to the orbitofrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that is critical in evaluating whatever you experience. That’s its job: to evaluate whether something is good or not.
When you reason something through, it’s another way of getting at whether something is good or not. Logical reasoning makes use primarily of another part of the brain called the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex. That part of the brain gets no input whatsoever from taste and smell.
Which way you decide to think something through will depend on which way you decide how something has value. It depends on whether you go to the that-smells-fishy-to-me sort of evaluation versus a logical evaluation.
Does this mean that when people talk about making decisions from their gut versus logical decisions, they’re making decisions with their orbito-frontal cortex versus their dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex?
Yeah. I think so. I really do.
What about geeks?
In my experience, geeks are very mixed in their sensitivities. In our data, the more mathematically oriented computer scientists tend to be on average nontasters. The computer scientists who are more interested in the purpose of a program tend to be more sensitive tasters. One group of geeks will be creative in ways that are highly logical and scientific. That other crowd, however, will be interested in emotion and expression and look at programming in a holistic way. That crowd will "get it" when you ask them if sunsets or the crackle and flame of a wood fire spark their imagination.
Wait, what’s this?
Some of the questions that we ask have to do with a phenomenon called absorption, the capacity to become completely immersed in a sensory experience. On the average, from the data we have, people who are moved by a sunset, or for whom the crackle and flames of a wood fire spark the imagination or may produce visual images are highly trigeminally sensitive.
I believe that people who have a high capacity for absorption should imagine what a dish would be like, and then work toward it by maybe adding a pinch of this or that, tasting as they go. They should really spend time experimenting at what the differences in tastes are like, and not be religiously bound to a recipe.
And the other type?
The other type might stick to a recipe, because they are probably going to have better success if they follow A, follow B, follow C, follow D, and the thing will come out. It requires less guesswork, and so is less dependent on a person’s sensitivity.
Trigeminal Sensitivity Experiment
Researchers, of course, go about their work in a controlled, reproducible way. Scientists in Germany looked at one way of measuring differences in trigeminal sensitivity by using strips of filter paper coated with various levels of capsaicin and asking subjects if they could perceive any sensation (such as burning, prickling, stinging) when tasting.
For the "home scientist" (or the just plain curious), there’s an easier experiment you can do to get a rough sense of how sensitive you are to trigeminal stimulation. Menthol, the compound in mint that gives it its cooling sensation, is the primary flavor in candies such as Altoids and Peppermint Lifesavers. First, get a fresh peppermint candy. No, the one you recently discovered between the couch cushions from who-knows-when won’t work: menthol is a volatile compound and evaporates away from the mint over time.
Pop the fresh mint in your mouth, clamp down, and breathe through your nose for half a minute or so, giving your saliva a chance to soften up and break down the candy, then chomp down on it without opening your mouth. If the cooling sensation you have is a really strong, whooo that’s strong, then you’re likely to be very trigeminally sensitive. If you hardly notice anything, then you are likely to be mildly sensitive. Most people, however, find that the cooling effect lies between these two extremes. Then, just for fun, breathe through your mouth. You should notice the cooling effect become even stronger.
"Flavor Tripping" with Miracle Berries
Try tasting chocolate, blackberries, apples, strawberries, lemons, and blue cheeses while "under the influence" of miraculin.
Our taste buds are chemical detectors full of receptor cells waiting for a chemical to come along that "fits" to trigger them. You can think of it a bit like a lock waiting for the right key to fit before it opens. But what if there were a way to pick that lock?
Miraculin and curculin are two proteins that do exactly that. They bind to sweet receptors and trigger them when acidic compounds wander along, thus causing foods that would normally taste sour (due to the acids) to taste sweet.
The miracle fruit plant produces a small red berry, aptly named the "miracle berry," which contains a large concentration of miraculin. Chewing the berry flesh for a few minutes is enough to "dose" yourself with enough miraculin that chomping down on a lemon will give the taste of lemonade.
You can order the berries online, but they are perishable. Dried tablets derived from the berry are also available. (For sources, see http://www.cookingforgeeks.com/book/miraculin/.) Once you have the berries or tablets in hand, invite a bunch of your friends over, munch on them, and serve up some sour foods. Grapefruit works amazingly well; try slices of lime and lemon as well.
The "flavor tripping" isn’t limited to sour foods. I’ve had one friend swear that the roast beef sandwich he was eating was made with a honey-glazed variety and other friends try Worcestershire sauce and compare it to sashimi. Try foods such as salsas, tomatoes, apple cider vinegar, radishes, parsley, stout beers, Tabasco, and cheeses. Keep in mind that miraculin makes sour foods taste sweet but doesn’t actually alter their pH, so don’t pig out on lemons, lest you give yourself a bad case of heartburn.
Other compounds, such as lactisole, do the opposite of miraculin and suppress the sensation of sweetness, but without affecting our perception of saltiness, sourness, or bitterness. The food industry uses these types of compounds to alter the taste of things like jams to reduce the taste of sugar and bring out the fruit. Lactisole is used at around a 0.1% to 1% concentration by weight; search for Domino Sugar’s "Super Envision" (it’s listed on food labels as part of the general category "artificial flavors"). We’ll cover more of these types of food additives in Chapter 6.
Adapt and Experiment Method
You’ll have an easier time cooking as you learn about more flavors and the ingredients that provide them. Take time to notice the odors in the foods you are eating, taking note of smells that you don’t recognize. Next time you’re eating out, order a dish you’re not familiar with and try to guess its ingredients. If you’re eating with a friend
who doesn’t mind sharing, play a guessing game with your dinner companion to see if you can identify the tastes and flavors in both dishes.
If you’re stumped, don’t be shy to ask the staff. I remember being served a roasted red pepper soup and being completely stumped as to what provided the body (thickness) of the soup. Five minutes later, I found myself sitting across from the chef, who had brought me the kitchen’s working copy of the recipe and told me the real secret of the recipe (Armenian sweet red pepper paste). I learned not just about a new type of flavor that day, but also about a new technique (toasted French bread puréed into the soup—an old, old trick to thicken soups) and the location of a great Armenian grocery store.
Another way to learn new flavors is to play "culinary mystery ingredient." Next time you’re at the grocery store, buy one thing you’ve never cooked with before. For "intermediate players," pick up something you’re familiar with but have no idea how to cook. And if you’ve progressed to the "advanced" level, choose something that you don’t recognize at all. You’d be surprised at how many foods can be unfamiliar in their ingredient form, but once cooked into a meal are familiar, maybe even downright commonplace. Yucca roots? Try making yucca fries. Lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves? Try making tom yum soup. With the thousands of items available in your average American grocery store, you should be able to find something new to inspire you.
If you’re just now learning your way around the kitchen and aren’t yet familiar with that many recipes, think about the ingredients that go into dishes you like. If you like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (and what self-respecting geek wouldn’t?), it’s not too far a leap to imagine a grilled chicken skewer coated with a sweet jelly and sprinkled with toasted peanuts. Or take another geek favorite: pizza. Maybe you like it topped with artichokes, feta, dried tomatoes, and anchovies. You could experiment by taking those toppings and adapting them for use in a pasta dish or as toppings on bread as an appetizer. Serving this to guests? Coat the bread with olive oil, toast it, and you’ve got bruschetta.
