Would a rosehip, by any other name, taste as sweet? What exactly is in a “flavor” anyways? The four traditional flavor profiles are salty, sweet, sour, and bitter…but then a Japanese chemist named Kikunae Ikeda isolated a fifth flavor profile, Umami, which translates approximately to “yummy.” There’s an interesting story about the five flavors in the NPR archives.
But where does this leave us? Clearly we don’t eat a bowl of chicken soup and taste the same thing as when we eat a roast beef sandwich. A raw turnip and raw radish taste similar, but different–and food certainly doesn’t taste one dimensional! It’s the way that we combine flavors that makes cooking so exciting. Most of my cooking involves adding a little of this and a little of that, pairing flavors and textures that I know will complement one another.
Now, some scientists in Boston have used the power of computing to actually map out flavor profiles of different ingredients, showing how they connect and complement one another.
PRETTY FREAKING COOL, RIGHT?!?!
This map takes into account global food preparation, so its interesting to see flavors like cumin and turmeric earning larger dots than spices like rosemary or oregano. Some of the strong flavor similarities are even more surprising: white wine and Parmesan share 100 flavor compounds? Apparently western cuisine tends to build recipes using ingredients that share flavor compounds where eastern cuisines do not. This may also account for why some people prefer western over eastern cuisines (or vice versa). If you’re used to eating ingredients that share flavor profiles, a dish with non-connected profiles would stimulate your tastebuds in an unfamiliar manner.
I would love to see this research paired with nutritional information to determine if there are health implications to using flavor profile disparate ingredients in a recipe.
You gotta love when science and computer geeks meet cuisine!
