Slashdot Mirror
Debate Simmers Over Science of Food Pairing
carmendrahl writes "Why do foods taste good together? Scientists aren't anywhere near figuring it out, but that hasn't stopped one popular idea from spawning a company dedicated to discovering avant-garde new pairings. The idea, called flavor-pairing theory, says that if foods share a key odor molecule, they'll pair well. But some scientists say the idea can't explain all cuisines, and another contends his work with tomato flavor (abstract) shows that flavor pairing is 'a gimmick by a chef who is practicing biology without a license.'"
-- Mitch Hedberg
They always wondered why spaghetti and french fries sounded good to me late night in college....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You can't call that biology. That and the premise itself is flawed. "Why do foods taste good together?". More like, "Why do we think foods taste good together?".
More like practicing comedy without a license.
Yeah, unfortunately you do. I can process and fast-track your license application for you for $100.
The guy will dip french fries in ANYTHING.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
It's a metaphor. You wouldn't understand.
Its not a food attribute to taste good or bad, is a cultural/personal thing, what you associated to that kind of tastes since early childhood (or even before). Mixing 2 could raise odds of reviving what you felt in the past while tasting one of the components.
I tried Domino's today and their tomato sauce did NOT "pair" well with the cheese (too spicy/strong). Next time I'll try marinara sauce or goback to Pizza Hut.
I also don't like the so-called Sweet & Sour chicken my asian friends sometimes feed me. Just straight sweet is my preference.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Weed + any food = yum.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Good metaphors don't need an explanation.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Besides. It's not biology that you would be "practicing without a license". It's chemistry.
What rules you use to judge the result are another matter.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Just tell me how the conservative and liberal politicians weigh-in on this debate so I can form my opinion without knowing any of the facts.
Although it's not exactly Shakespeare, it doesn't need explanation to people outside of the autism spectrum.
There's a reason that a professional sommelier is something yet to be replaced by a computer. Gastronomy is a young science, but an ancient art. Modernist Cuisine is cool and all, but if I want something that tastes good, I'm more likely to trust someone using a recipe perfected over several generations or even several centuries.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Its both actually... /T
olfactory receptor proteins in the nose... neurons firing... local inter-neurons combining the signals....
chemical neurobiology/chemical ecology
(ecology as it relates to other organisms... (plants etc.)... think kairomones!
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
that hasn't stopped one popular idea from spawning a company dedicated to discovering avant-garde new pairings
Next up: patenting food combinations as "inventions".
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Until you have a reason to cook. Then cooking gets awesome.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
For reasons I can't really explain, I got it into my head to try peanut butter and Marmite in a sandwhich. It's the only food combo I have ever eaten where the 2 flavours stay completely seperate, even as you chew. It's the oddest sensation eating it. Everything else becomes a blend when you mix it up but not these two. Very, very strange and well worth a try for the experience.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
...mixed with one or two spoons of trend. Often common, but a bit unavoidable when you're in the "gap" between the the "hard" and the "soft" sciences - following the scientific method of either often makes you to discard the other.
Yes, how food tastes is molecular. Is biological - that's why no culture will like foods that smell i.e. like shit. But if you try to analyze it as just Bio, and just throw out the social part, your research won't go well.
Using just as an example as how much culture affects your tastes, read De Re Coquinaria (Roman recipe book, from Apicius) and check how many of that food pairings you would do: honey in hard-boiled eggs? Fermented fish stock and wine in lamb? Vinegar and egg yolk in shrimps? Even for most Romance peoples now, this would be considered "yuck", yet it was high cuisine in another culture.
Nerdy news for your nerdy needs? http://www.soylentnews.org Soylent News is people!
Weed = yum.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Pinch your nose closed and take a bite of your favorite succulent cuisine. You'll quickly realize that taste is not what you think it is, and that what your brain perceives as "taste" depends much more on olfactory stimulation than on your tastebuds.
I learned that first watching Mr. Wizard's World way back in the 80s. :)
So, old man, care to explain the metaphor or what?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Engineer: antithesis of a 'foodie'
PBJ for lunch every day!
Correlation does not equal causation; just because you are an engineer and a cretin does not mean that all engineers are cretins.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
We find meat taste better with onion and garlic because onion and garlic helps prevent meat going bad. That was one conjecture I've read and sounds feasible on evolutionary ground.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Dark chocolate and coffee, dark chocolate and pretzels, dark chocolate and pinot noir, dark chocolate and mint... hmm, gotta find a non-chocolate example. Tequila and lime?
Engineer: antithesis of a 'foodie'
PBJ for lunch every day!
You know, there is a place in the world for "culinary engineering." I'm not talking about the manly art of flipping burgers on the grill. (Although there are actually better and worse techniques for that, too... empirically-derived....) If you don't make use of at least two kitchen scales (with different levels of precision), a superfast probe thermometer with thermocouple, an infrared thermometer, and a pH meter in your kitchen on a regular basis, you're not living up to the engineer's creed.
(I know what some of you are thinking -- what the heck is a pH meter doing in a kitchen? Very useful for testing the place of sourdough in its life cycle, whether your dill pickles and sauerkraut are properly fermented, even getting the perfect lemonade strength...)
My kitchen is also outfitted with a bunch of lab glassware -- Erlenmeyer flasks make great containers for oils and things you don't want to spill (laboratory glassware tends to have good lips to prevent a lot of dripping). A 2-liter or 5-liter beaker is great for measuring the rise of bread dough and its "doubling." All my spices are conveniently alphabetized in large test tubes in a test tube rack.
Engineering can be applied to most problems. Cooking is just applied chemistry, and therefore it amounts to chemical engineering on a very small scale. For example, using precision instruments can actually give your cooking an edge (particularly in baking), as long as you know what you're doing.
If you want to get even more fancy, keep a "lab notebook" of your "experiments." Note successful techniques to replicate your "experiments" for a dinner party. Record the weather and kitchen conditions when you're doing anything involving yeast or other microorganisms (like making your own cultured buttermilk). etc.
One can go overboard. I have yet to set up a distillation column to make my own extracts and essential oils, but that will probably happen at some point....
By the way, perhaps the problem is terminology. I spend a lot of time cooking, and I enjoy a fancy dinner at many "fancy" restaurants. But I'd never associate myself with the term "foodie," which I think of almost as an insult. Perhaps that's because most of the people whom I know and consider themselves "foodies" are pretentious idiots who care more about what the "hot" restaurants are, what the "hip" ways to make certain food are, etc., rather than whether it actually tastes good to anyone.
You're right -- "foodies" are not engineers, any more than an haute couture dress designer is an engineer. But that doesn't mean we can't use engineering to create newer better fabrics, better dyes, more efficient or durable designs for clothing, etc. Whether the fashion snobs will accept it (as the foodies judge the new restaurant or sniff their wine) is beside the point. Unlike in clothing fashion, most people are happy to eat good food cooked at home, without the approval of some elite.
Sure. A metaphor draws on the likeness of two things, actions, or ideas, to say something about one using expressions more conventionally suited for the other. The expression 'practising without a licence' is usually used in the medical profession, where in fact one does need a licence, which takes a bit of education and expertise to acquire. There, practising without a licence would mean you're passing yourself off as something you're not, most likely defrauding your customers in the process (and potentially harming them).
What goes well together is very much a cultural thing, as I think anybody who travels will know. Personally, I've had boiled sweets with garlic or durian flavour in Thailand; my Chinese wife tends to combine foods in surprising ways too - like apple pie with baked beans or cakes with a fruit and chicken filling. Or take this new, stomach churning trend where you get chocolate sauce with meat (shudder).
I guess if you are open minded enough, most things can go well together. And if you are pregnant, well.... let's say no more, but I knew one lady who had a craving for fishcakes and blue cheese (with nothing else).
Yum
a. likening Henson Blumenthal with a biologist and
b. likening practicing biology with practicing medicine
I might not be autistic after all.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Former chef here. You have to be sonewhat licensed for food handling in several countries - certainly here in Oz. Also cookery is more chemustry than biology, unless you don't clean down after service.
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.- Shelley