Most cooks can easily recite several classic flavor pairings: lamb and rosemary, tomatoes and basil, apples and cinnamon. But when we wish to be more adventurous in the kitchen, and possibly even develop our own recipes, what principles ought to guide us?
“It’s always got to be about balance,” said Jason Lear, executive chef at The Wine Market. “Try to hit all four of the flavor profiles: sour, bitter, sweet and salty. You want to adjust those four components to counter either too much sweetness or any other imbalance in the dish.”
As an example, Lear described The Wine Market’s sake-marinated cod. “We start with cod, marinating it in sake and miso. Miso is salty, and sake has a sour component to it,” he said. “To counter that, we pair it with a cream chanterelle sauce, which provides earthiness and a blanket of fat to offset the astringency. If you ate the cod without those two things, you’d taste the sourness a lot more.”
Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page, authors of the classic handbook on flavor pairing, “Culinary Artistry,” recently published a new book that builds on their earlier work. “The Flavor Bible” ($35, Little, Brown and Co.) decodes the language of food, explaining the roles of flavor, texture, aroma and mouth-feel in how we experience a dish.
The authors quote dozens of top chefs as they describe how they create recipes. The rest of the book is an amazingly thorough 337-page guide to modern flavor pairing, from achiote seeds to zucchini blossoms.
Spice giant McCormick & Co. recently released its 2009 Flavor Forecast, an annual list of flavor pairings the company believes indicate where American palates are headed. “We forecast on where we think flavors are going, and we use pairings as a way to do that,” said Laurie Harrsen, director of consumer communications at McCormick. Some of this year’s pairings are root beer and toasted sesame, Chinese five spice and artisan-cured pork, and smoked paprika and agave nectar.
Root beer has complex flavors that work well both in desserts and savory dishes like beef stew, Harrsen said. “When you really hit a sweet spot is when it works with sweet and savory,” she said.
“With smoked paprika, you’re getting the color and this wonderful smoky intense flavor,” she said. “We pair it with agave nectar, which is kind of the new honey. In California they’re starting to put it on tables as a sweetener.”
Chefs, cookbook authors and other culinary experts are surveyed to develop each year’s forecast. Since 2000, when forecasting began, McCormick has predicted the popularity of chipotle chile pepper, chai spice and sea salt. For more information and recipes for each pairing, plus a look at previous forecasts, visit www.flavorforecast.com.
