The Flavor Game – Playing The Game

It was still dark, and I could only see the tiniest glint of morning light beyond the trees. I sensed the moisture in the air as I took a few deep breaths. I’ve always enjoyed these moments that only last for a short while before the brightness of dawn consumes and overwhelms the darkness.

The peaceful quietness was a refreshing change from the daily noise that was to come. All I could hear were my footsteps on the damp grass as I made my way to the first tee. It was a short par three hole, and I could mentally visualize the layout of the fairway and the green from my countless morning rounds at this course. Even in the semi-darkness, I could pick out the flag. I steadied myself and executed, which I must say, a flawless shot. I just knew I’d hit the green!

They say you should never try to hit a golf ball. The swing is the key to success: an unrushed, steady backswing, precise shifting of body weight, head behind the ball, and a swift follow through. Aah, the perfect swing. It is amazingly like creating the perfect dish: excellent technique, quality ingredients, and a balanced combination of taste, aroma, and other sensory functions. 

It’s been reported that basic tastes (saltiness, sweetness, etc.) constitute only 20% of what we perceive as flavor. The other 80% comes from aromas detected by our nose! These number in the thousands and we’ll refer to them as aroma compounds. Even when we chew food, more aroma compounds are released adding to the complex combinations already sensed. So, with thousands of aromas to deal with, how do we begin at finding the right combination of flavors to create a successful dish?

One way is through flavor pairing? The idea is simple – find common “aromatic” organic compounds in different foods, combine them, and hope they will taste better together. Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck used a database called VCF (Volatile Compounds In Food) to experiment with flavor pairings and learned why white chocolate paired excellently with caviar. They both had high levels of a group of proteins called amines. Big food companies and universities are now major customers of the VCF.

Another method of enhancing flavor used by Blumenthal is what he calls flavor encapsulation, which is the use of ingredients that deliver concentrated bursts of flavor. As an example, the tiny sacs of an orange called vesicles, gives us bursts of orangey delight as we bite into them. A bowl of plain rice porridge would be a dull tasting meal. Add some fried garlic, chopped fresh coriander and chili, anchovies and voila, you get a dish which provides contrasting textures, tastes, and aromas.

Ignore your other senses when preparing food at your own peril. Try eating a rib-eye steak cooked to perfection, smells heavenly but looks like dog food. I doubt you’d be able to finish the steak let alone start eating it. It’s true that we “eat with our eyes.” The sense of touch via our mouth, tongue and teeth when eating gives enjoyment of food textures such as the smoothness of cream, crunchiness of potato chips and the “meatiness” of meat.

The sense of sound creates the “right” environment: the sound of the sea as we are eating seafood, soft romantic music playing in the background during a romantic, candlelight dinner, or happy festive songs while having a reunion meal with friends and family. You get the picture.

I believe learning the intricacies of flavor will only make you a better cook. Combine that with better knowledge of cooking techniques and food science, and you will have the skills to let you eventually achieve the ultimate goal in cooking – to cook without a recipe! You only need to define the flavors, indulge in the wizardry of your culinary expertise, and voila, create a dish that is all yours. It’s like playing a game where you set the rules.

Bon appétit.  

The Flavor Game – Taste 5: Umami

“Buying bread from a man in Brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscle
I said, “Do you speak-a my language?”
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich.”

I was listening to a song titled “Down Under,” by Men At Work, an Australian band popular in the 80s. What caught my ear was the word, Vegemite. Vegemite, a yeast extract spread popular in Australia is made from leftover brewers’ yeast extract (a by-product of beer manufacture) and various vegetable and spice additives.  It is very dark reddish-brown, almost black in color, thick like peanut butter, very salty but is favored for its savory kick. The British have a similar item called Marmite. Amusingly, they have the same ending sound!

What is umami or savory taste, and its importance, so much so that God has given us specific taste buds for the purpose of identifying it? Compared to the more identifiable salty, sweet, and bitter tastes, umami is kind of intangible. More simply, it is just being delicious! Umami is Japanese (it was discovered in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda, a professor at the University of Tokyo) for “delicious.” Ikeda identified glutamic acid as the cause of deliciousness and developed a commercial version of it called monosodium glutamate or MSG.

Glutamic acid is naturally found in foods such as seaweed, Parmesan cheese, tomatoes, anchovies, soy sauce, and many others, including human breast milk! Culinary-wise, cooks have lots of opportunities to increase the savory taste of their dishes by incorporating foods naturally rich in glutamates.

MSG has attracted a lot of negative views especially the so-called “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.” Some of the symptoms are said to be headaches, numbness, chest pains, and drowsiness. Generally, MSG is not thought to be healthy to consume. However, the US Food And Drug Administration considers the addition of MSG to foods to be “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS). Many other controlled scientific studies have also found no evidence that MSG triggers the adverse reactions mentioned above.

Wouldn’t you want your food to be more delicious?

Hooray for glutamates! Hooray for Vegemite and Marmite lovers!

The Flavor Game – Taste 4: Bitterness

The smell of fried onions and curry leaves quickly filled the kitchen making one of the most delicious aromas you could dream of. Even my children were captivated by the smell escaping the hot pan. “What are you cooking Dad?” asked my eldest daughter. “It smells really nice,” she added. “Nice huh,” I replied. “I’m frying shallots and curry leaves for the bitter gourd.” “Bitter gourd?” asked my daughter. “Wait till you taste them,” I replied.

Bitter gourd

“Uurghh! It’s awful,” cried my daughter. Bitterness; it’s an acquired taste. It takes time to learn to like bitterness. But once you get the hang of it, it can be culinary-wise, very enjoyable. And it does help if you know how to temper the bitter taste with some sweetness or saltiness. Where do you think the expression, “bittersweet,” comes from? I added some brown sugar to the fried bitter gourd and persuaded my daughter to try them again. “Hey, it’s nice now Dad,” exclaimed my daughter.

Bitterness in the culinary world does have some well-known products such as orange marmalade, a wonderful bittersweet combination. Dark chocolate can be very bitter but extremely delicious at the same time. Black tea is another example of bitterness in a drink.

Dark chocolate

Ever wondered why medicine is predominantly bitter-tasting? Probably because in nature, bitterness is a sign of danger. Although not all bitter things in nature are poisonous, there’s strong enough association to warrant a cautious attitude towards bitter substances. And yes, our family has learned to love fried bitter gourds; sweetened, of course.

The Flavor Game – Taste 3: Sourness

Children have ingenious ways of creating games out of nothing. It’s scientifically true that we are at our most creative phase of our lives during our early years. Even a simple competition of who could consume the greatest number of sour candies would provide hours of entertainment for children. I can feel my mouth puckering and salivating even just thinking of it.

The taste of sourness is a huge participant of flavor and our lives. Think lemons, limes, vinegar, etc. You get the picture. Sourness adds excitement, fizz, and pizzaz, and gives a sense of juiciness to dishes. Chefs say that sourness is one of the most underrated tools in flavoring dishes. When you bite into a lemon, lime, or even a tomato, the first thing you encounter is the sourness or more scientifically, acidity.

What is acidity? The degree of sourness is directly related to the acid content of the food or drink you are consuming. A bit of basic chemistry – pH is a scale used to indicate the acidity or alkalinity of a water-based solution. It is a measure of the hydrogen+ ion activity in the solution. The greater the number of these ions the more acidic and sourer the taste is. On a scale of 0 to 14, acidic solutions have a lower pH, while basic solutions have a higher pH. At room temperature, pure water is neither acidic nor basic and has a pH of 7. 

Daniel Humm, well-known chef and co-owner of the renowned restaurant in Manhattan, New York, Eleven Madison Park, says that “in seasoning food, acidity is just as or even more important than salt.” His most common question to his cooking staff is “where is the acid?” He further states that “acid just makes food better.” What would famous Malaysian dishes such as Asam Laksa, Asam Pedas, and Thailand’s Tom Yam taste like without acid? Utterly boring and unexciting. Now you understand why God made sour taste buds for us!

The Flavor Game – Taste 2: Sweetness

The drive was taking an awfully long time. Traffic, although not too congested, was heavy enough to slow things down. Mom was getting irritated by the look on her face. The speed of her thumb thumping the steering wheel was getting faster and more vigorous. My mind was wandering, thinking about this visit to the dentist. It was probably the first visit I could remember. I kept feeling the tooth which was troubling me with my tongue. It felt painful but it kept me occupied for the duration of the trip. We finally arrived, and I was beginning to have second thoughts about agreeing to the visit. What’s going to happen? My mind was working overtime!

Sitting on the dentist’s cold chair, a chill went down my spine as I viewed the dreaded-looking dental instruments neatly laid out on a tray. Suddenly, the dentist was sitting next to me with gloves and mask. I felt like fainting. “Please open your mouth,” he said. I could barely move. I then felt the cold steel probing my teeth. As he located the bad tooth, I felt a sharp, searing pain. “Doc, you’ve got to fix this,” I said to myself. “It’s got to come out,” said the dentist. I just nodded and told myself to be brave. I was given an injection which was surprisingly not as painful as I had anticipated. A while later I heard the dentist say, “Done.” My bad tooth was gone. I didn’t feel anything. What an anti-climax!

We are born with a sweet tooth. It’s nature’s way of teaching us to seek out sweetness as sugars are necessary for the body as a source of energy. What our bodies are looking for is carbohydrates, and sugars are the simplest form of them.

Glucose, also called dextrose, is a simple sugar (monosaccharide), and the most common source of chemical energy that is directly used by our body cells. It is commonly found in fruits and honey and is the third sweetest sugar.

Fructose, or levulose, is the sweetest simple sugar. High fructose corn syrup is a common ingredient in processed foods used to sweeten things up. Our bodies use fructose more slowly than glucose and sucrose, causing a slower rise in blood sugar level, and making it a better choice for diabetics.  A word of caution: fructose needs to be converted to glucose by the liver before it can be consumed, and excessive consumption can lead to obesity and also type II diabetes.

Sucrose is the scientific name for table sugar, those wonderful white crystals that we adore, and is the most common source of sweetness. It is made up of two simple sugars (disaccharide), glucose, and fructose, and has the second sweetest taste after fructose.

Lactose is a compound sugar made up of glucose and galactose and is the sugar found in milk. Most adults (75% of the world’s population) are “lactose intolerant,” causing most of us to have digestive problems after consuming too many dairy products. As we grow older, we lack the enzyme, lactase, to digest lactose, thus the cause of our problems.

Apart from being a very pleasurable experience, the taste of sweetness helps mask or balance bitterness and sourness from other ingredients. Sweetness enhances the perception of food aromas telling us that the food is a good source of energy and has always been strongly associated with love or “l’amour,” (as the French call it). What would Valentine’s Day be without the gorgeously sweet taste of chocolates!