Flavor alchemy

Right now I can cook from recipes. That’s a level 3 cook. Some cooks don’t need recipes. They look at the fridge, at the pantry, and thirty minutes later there is something great at the table. How do they do it? Practice, they tell me. Necessary but not sufficient, I discover.

Encyclopedic knowledge is needed in cooking. Should I boil or fry asparagus? How many saffron twigs for two cups of rice? Salt and pepper to taste. How much is that? And then there is all this conflicting information. Transmuting gold seems easier than cooking octopus. Even Joy of Cooking, that time tested oracle seems at loss. So part of my education will consist of reading the non-recipe sections of Joy and also the second edition of McGee’s On food and cooking.

Flavors are even harder to figure out. The science is still in the air, but the craft is even harder. If you are one of those people that was just born being able to pick out ten different aromas in your wine, you would still have to go through a seven year apprenticeship before being a certified member of the Society of Flavor Chemists. I first learned of the flavor industry through Eric Schlosser’s writing on how the fast food industry capitalizes on their knowledge.

Ketchup is a great example of how difficult it is to get flavors right. Heinz dominates the market. Marketing I used to think, until I read the story by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yoker about Jim Wigon and how he is trying (and failing) to create the Grey Poupon of ketchups. Heinz ketchup turns out to be well blended. You don’t taste tomato or vinegar or sugar, but ketchup. All that while striking a note on the five tastes.

As I explore, I hope to report.