The Art & Science of Foodpairing: 10,000 flavour matches that will transform the way you eat

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The next time you’re in creative mode be sure to pull this book off the shelf and read it for inspiration. A revolutionary new guide to pairing ingredients, based on a famous chef's groundbreaking research into the chemical basis of flavor

Smell - Including how people smell and perceive aromas; why smell is essential to the eating experience. Beginning with an in-depth introduction and the story of Foodpairing®, the book contains:• Foodpairing® - What it is, how it works, methodology; the database; how to create a well-balanced recipe. Garlic was also important in ancient Greece, Rome and China; the Roman poet Horace described it as being so potent that it could send your lover to the other side of the bed, and the Greek philosopher Theophrastus noted that several types were grown in Greece. A little sweet, salty, and spicy can make for an ace taste-bud combination. Dhaya Eddine Bentaleb/Unsplash SHARE Garlic has been valued for culinary and medicinal purposes since ancient times. The pungent cloves are listed among the ingredients for Babylonian recipes such as wild fowl pie that were etched onto clay tablets in Akkadian cuneiform script around 1750 BC, forming part of what is believed to be the world’s oldest cookbook, while the ancient Egyptians fed their slaves porridge with garlic to increase their stamina and productivity. Evidence of the importance of the ‘stinking rose’ in ancient Egyptian culture can be found in the form of hieroglyphic inscriptions, illustrations and sculptures discovered in the tombs of pharaohs—along with traces of actual garlic.There are five - or six, depending on who you ask - basic tastes: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, umami, and fat. " What is foodpairing? It is not the familiar and mundane matching of wine and food or even food and food, but it is certainly all about creating the most delicious culinary results possible. I think this book has a lot of interesting information but as a professional Food Scientist who specializes in the sensory properties of food, I wish the author had gone about this differently. The Art and Science of Foodpairing® provides 10,000 flavor matches laid out in taste wheels and color keys. When cooks go to one ingredient, they will find 10 food pairings and a color wheel revealing the taste results. For example, boiled beets will taste less like the earth they grew in and more like cheese if they are paired with coffee, and cauliflower sprinkled with cocoa could turn the fussiest child into a veggie fiend. In Flavor Matrix, the team of authors, James Briscione and Brooke Parkhurst have fashioned a visually stunning book that suggests flavor pairings of fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, and other protein sources with other fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, etc., and also with herbs and spices, liquids, etc. Crafted for ambitious home cooks, chefs-in-training and food writers, a wealth of food data fits into a graphic image which I think of as a flavor wheel. The wheel displays at a glance the top choices for numerous variations or possibilities on a single ingredient.

When humans taste a food, they are processing its taste 80 percent through the nose — via the food's aromatic molecules — and only 20 percent on the tongue. We can conclude then that knowing the aromatic molecular properties of a food is critical to pairing foods successfully for ultimate taste. As an instructor at one of the world’s top culinary schools, James Briscione thought he knew how to mix and match ingredients. Then he met IBM Watson. Working with the supercomputer to turn big data into delicious recipes, Briscione realized that he (like most chefs) knew next to nothing about why different foods taste good together. That epiphany launched him on a quest to understand the molecular basis of flavor—and it led, in time, to The Flavor Matrix . Following that is the meat of the book that features 85 ingredients - from kiwi to oyster - and their suggested pairings using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyse and profile each aroma. For this book the authors select 85 ingredients ranging from brie and cassava to doenjang and tequila. They break down each ingredient’s aroma profile and then suggest other ingredients, based on their profiles, to pair with them. You discover why classic, familiar combinations work so well and why surprisingly bizarre ones will, too. White asparagus and vanilla anyone? Or perhaps Chef Heston Blumenthal’s winning combination of chocolate and caviar, now a standard on his restaurant menu. Every bite of food contains hundreds if not thousands of volatile compounds, which I will refer to as aromatic compounds. And as that name suggests, it is the smell of these compounds that dictates flavor."Nopales, or cactus leaves, are a common ingredient in Mexican cooking and can be eaten raw or cooked. Often prepared in a similar way to steak, cactus leaves have a mild, grassy flavor that is sometimes compared to asparagus, and their green and vegetable notes work well with those of roasted garlic puree. Potential pairing: garlic and sweet potato But say we add almonds and basil to our chocolate dessert: suddenly, Group B becomes more complex, as we now have five contrasting ingredients to balance in terms of taste and texture. One way to get around the issue of too many items overcrowding the plate is to limit yourself to just a few ingredients that offer a diverse range of contrasting profiles.