The Language of Flavor

A lot has been written on the difference between taste and flavor. Supposedly, humans have four or five different types of taste receptors and so taste is the combination of the intensity that you taste each of these tastes. Flavor, on the other hand, is a combination of taste, smell, appearance, how you're feeling, and any number of other things that go into a person's response to food at that moment. All of this may be well and good, but from a practical standpoint, we use the words taste and flavor interchangeably. When I talk about flavor or taste, I will mean the response to the sensations we get when we eat food. At the same time, we will start by trying to understand what I will refer to as the five fundamental flavors.

  • salty
  • sweet
  • sour
  • bitter
  • umami (or savory)
I cannot describe these flavors, just like I can't describe the color red to you. They are fundamental. Thus, to start to build a language of flavor, we need to experience these fundamental flavors. Following the advice from Mastering Sauces: The Home Cook's Guide to New Techniques for Fresh Flavors, I am going to propose the following demonstration:
  • Take 5 small cups. You will build a fundamental flavor in each cup.
  • Place ¼ cup warm water in four of them.
  • To each of these cups add one of the following:
    • 1 tsp sugar (for sweet)
    • ¼ tsp salt (for salty)
    • 1½ tsp distilled vinegar (for sour)
    • ¼ tsp MSG (for umami)
  • Brew black tea in the fifth. (for bitter)
  • Taste a sip of each.
  • Mix small amounts of the cups together to see how combinations taste.
  • See if you can make something that actually tastes good.

While you do this, I am going to as well.

Fundamental Flavors Demo
Tasting fundamental flavors while writing.
What did you find tasted good together to you? I found my favorite mix was sweet, salty, and bitter with just a hint of sour. I also liked sweet and umami with a hint of sour. A lot of people like the flavor they get when they add a hint of sour. This kind of modification is called brightening up a dish. It is worth coming back to this demonstration several times so that you get more comfortable with how these fundamental flavors interact with each other.

A lot of the fundamentals of flavoring a dish come down to balancing these flavors together. If you are not comfortable with how flavors change as you add, for instance, more salt to them, then you can't really balance out those flavors. This ability comes with practice and I still need to practice a lot.

I like to think of this process as counteracting flavors. If a dish is too sweet, add bitter or sour to counteract it. If a dish is too salty, add bitter or sweet to counteract it. If a dish is too bitter, add salt or sweet to counteract it. When a dish is in balance, when it tastes the best, is when no single flavor dominates your palate, but they are all hit to some extent. If you want to make a sweet dish for dessert, the strongest flavor should be sweet, but salt, sour, bitter, and even umami can and should all show up as well. Think about a good peanut butter cookie. It is sweet, but it also has crystals of salt that wake up your tongue, it has bitter from the caramelization of the sugars on the bottom, it has umami and a tiny bit of sour from the peanuts. Leave any of these out, and the cookie just won't be as good. On the other hand, you probably want your dessert to be slightly dominated by sweet taste to leave a pleasant memory and feeling in the mind of the eater.

Similarly, an appetizer should wake up the tastebuds and prepare them for what's to come. I like to get umami, salty, and bitter dominated appetizers like celery, cheese, or brussel sprouts because they leave me wanting more. Still if the other flavors aren't in the appetizer, it will feel unfinished.

While these are the four (without umami) or five flavors that most people consider the fundamental tastes, there are clearly others. Capsacin in peppers accounts for a burning sensation that can be pleasant or painful. Sichuan peppercorns contain hydroxy alpha sanshool which imparts a numbness to the mouth. I personally describe this flavor as tasting like you put a nine-volt battery to your tongue. M berries have a chemical that block sour receptors in your tongue so that you lose most of your sense of sour taste when you eat them. All of these, and countless others, cannot be accounted for simply as a combination of the fundamental flavors. Still they affect how we taste and experience food.

Even texture and appearance are part of the flavor of food as they set the stage for how we experience and remember the food we eat. With all this in mind, let's start with one of the most important ingredients and flavors in our food. Let's start with Chapter 4: Salt.

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The Language of Flavor

A lot has been written on the difference between taste and flavor. Supposedly, humans have four or five different types of taste receptors and so taste is the combination of the intensity that you taste each of these tastes. Flavor, on the other hand, is a combination of taste, smell, appearance, how you're feeling, and any number of other things that go into a person's response to food at that moment. All of this may be well and good, but from a practical standpoint, we use the words taste and flavor interchangeably. When I talk about flavor or taste, I will mean the response to the sensations we get when we eat food. At the same time, we will start by trying to understand what I will refer to as the five fundamental flavors.

  • salty
  • sweet
  • sour
  • bitter
  • umami (or savory)
I cannot describe these flavors, just like I can't describe the color red to you. They are fundamental. Thus, to start to build a language of flavor, we need to experience these fundamental flavors. Following the advice from Mastering Sauces: The Home Cook's Guide to New Techniques for Fresh Flavors, I am going to propose the following demonstration:
  • Take 5 small cups. You will build a fundamental flavor in each cup.
  • Place ¼ cup warm water in four of them.
  • To each of these cups add one of the following:
    • 1 tsp sugar (for sweet)
    • ¼ tsp salt (for salty)
    • 1½ tsp distilled vinegar (for sour)
    • ¼ tsp MSG (for umami)
  • Brew black tea in the fifth. (for bitter)
  • Taste a sip of each.
  • Mix small amounts of the cups together to see how combinations taste.
  • See if you can make something that actually tastes good.

While you do this, I am going to as well.

Fundamental Flavors Demo
Tasting fundamental flavors while writing.
What did you find tasted good together to you? I found my favorite mix was sweet, salty, and bitter with just a hint of sour. I also liked sweet and umami with a hint of sour. A lot of people like the flavor they get when they add a hint of sour. This kind of modification is called brightening up a dish. It is worth coming back to this demonstration several times so that you get more comfortable with how these fundamental flavors interact with each other.

A lot of the fundamentals of flavoring a dish come down to balancing these flavors together. If you are not comfortable with how flavors change as you add, for instance, more salt to them, then you can't really balance out those flavors. This ability comes with practice and I still need to practice a lot.

I like to think of this process as counteracting flavors. If a dish is too sweet, add bitter or sour to counteract it. If a dish is too salty, add bitter or sweet to counteract it. If a dish is too bitter, add salt or sweet to counteract it. When a dish is in balance, when it tastes the best, is when no single flavor dominates your palate, but they are all hit to some extent. If you want to make a sweet dish for dessert, the strongest flavor should be sweet, but salt, sour, bitter, and even umami can and should all show up as well. Think about a good peanut butter cookie. It is sweet, but it also has crystals of salt that wake up your tongue, it has bitter from the caramelization of the sugars on the bottom, it has umami and a tiny bit of sour from the peanuts. Leave any of these out, and the cookie just won't be as good. On the other hand, you probably want your dessert to be slightly dominated by sweet taste to leave a pleasant memory and feeling in the mind of the eater.

Similarly, an appetizer should wake up the tastebuds and prepare them for what's to come. I like to get umami, salty, and bitter dominated appetizers like celery, cheese, or brussel sprouts because they leave me wanting more. Still if the other flavors aren't in the appetizer, it will feel unfinished.

While these are the four (without umami) or five flavors that most people consider the fundamental tastes, there are clearly others. Capsacin in peppers accounts for a burning sensation that can be pleasant or painful. Sichuan peppercorns contain hydroxy alpha sanshool which imparts a numbness to the mouth. I personally describe this flavor as tasting like you put a nine-volt battery to your tongue. M berries have a chemical that block sour receptors in your tongue so that you lose most of your sense of sour taste when you eat them. All of these, and countless others, cannot be accounted for simply as a combination of the fundamental flavors. Still they affect how we taste and experience food.

Even texture and appearance are part of the flavor of food as they set the stage for how we experience and remember the food we eat. With all this in mind, let's start with one of the most important ingredients and flavors in our food. Let's start with Chapter 4: Salt.