Flavor Science. Umami:
“When discussing "taste" here, we'll be referring only to the very small set of five sensations our tongues can detect: salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and umami. (There's increasing evidence that we may also have specific receptors on our tongues for fat, which would make it the sixth—and arguably most delicious—taste.) When we say "flavor," meanwhile, we're referring to the overall sensory experience, which includes not just those five or six tastes but also the incredibly complex and varied dimension of aroma.
Our sense of taste is fabricated right in our mouth," Crosby told me. "Smells are fabricated in our brain.”
Some of the ways in which the basic tastes can interfere with each other: Salt suppresses our perception of bitterness, and umami and acids enhance our perception of salt, while fat reduces our ability to taste salt. Then there's the extra layer of aroma on top of that, which can influence our perception of whatever we're eating in profound ways. "With soy sauce, it's much weaker than vinegar as an acid, and then you have all these other components to it, like high levels of salt and glutamates," he said. "There are so many powerful-tasting molecules in it, plus its aroma, they overwhelm any perception of sour taste."
“Some fats do more than just distribute flavor—they provide it. "Pure," unrefined or minimally refined oils like extra-virgin olive, sesame, coconut, and hazelnut oils, for example, have easily recognizable flavors; others, like canola or peanut oils, are neutral.”
“First of all, olive oil and extravirgin olive oil are two different animals.
Extravirgin olive oil is produced by cold pressing premium olives, it has a very low acidity and it is full of impurities that give it flavor and make it healthy, so they are a good thing, not a bad one. These impurities give it a relatively low smoke point (the impurities burn at 160–180°C), and make it a very poor frying oil. But it’s an excellent cooking fat.
Olive oil is a cheap refined fat made by pressing with the aid of heat and solvents the pomace left over from pressing the olives, or from cheap olives that get cold-pressed and then the oil is refined and deodorized. It’s a flavorless fat with a relatively high smoke point (it has no impurities, which make it a bad cooking oil (as it has no flavor) and a decent frying fat. Olive oil is a bad cooking oil. It has no flavor, it adds nothing to food, except a little grease.
For cooking purposes other than frying you want extravirgin cooking oil, which adds flavor to the food, not just grease.”
Salt. The Single Most Important Ingredient:
“Where would we be without salt?” I know the answer: adrift in a sea of blandness. Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient. Learn to use it well, and food will taste good.
Salt’s relationship to flavor is multidimensional: It has its own particular taste, and it both balances and enhances the flavor of other ingredients. Imagine taking a bite of a rich espresso brownie sprinkled with flaky sea salt. The salt minimizes the espresso’s bitterness, intensifies the flavor of the chocolate and offers a savory contrast to the sugar’s sweetness.
Does this mean you should simply use more salt? No. It means use salt better. Add it in the right amount, at the right time, in the right form. A smaller amount of salt applied while cooking will often do more to improve flavor than a larger amount added at the table.”
Salt and seasoning. Why do restaurant dishes taste better than home cooking:
“My perception is the overwhelming majority of home cooks don’t know how to season food. It’s like they’re terrified of their own salt shakers. Do you have a kitchen scale? Weigh out one portion of chicken breast, or one steak, or one portion of vegetables. Now calculate 1.5% of that weight.
Whatever that number is, weigh out that much salt. Hold it in your hand. Memorize how it feels and how it looks. That’s exactly how much you should be applying to each breast, each steak and each portion of vegetables.
My experience is you will be shocked at how much salt that is. Pro cooks know this already. Salt breaks down cell walls and releases delicate flavonoids in the food.”
“There’s one other feature of salt though and that is it unlocks flavor (known as flavonoids). Flavonoids are aromatics released when salt interacts with cell walls. It’s like the difference between a stock and a broth. Stocks are made mostly with bones and as such are loaded with gelatin but actually have little flavor.
When you add salt to a stock you’ve now created a broth. A broth is a salted stock. Your previously flavorless stock now tastes so much like chicken you think you’re gonna start growing feathers!
Eating involves two sensations, taste AND flavor. Taste is detected by taste buds (sweet, sour, bitter and salty) but flavor is registered by your nasal passages. That’s why food is usually flavorless when you have a head cold. Flavor sensors are activated by aromatics.
Salt neuters bitterness and releases aromatics. That’s why chefs salt everything… strawberry sauce, chocolate sauce, raspberry sauce… hell… the smart ones even salt caramels and chocolate chip cookies!
Commercial cakes better than your homemade cakes:
“My cakes have maybe 12 ingredients? If that? And I can pronounce each of them. There’s a dirty little secret we don’t want to talk about, acknowledge or own up to, but the FACT of the matter is that boxed cake mixes tend to taste MUCH better than cakes made from scratch. In fact, a friend told me she saw a video on television where a celebrated French pastry chef was asked to taste several cake slices and to grade which he thought were the best tasting. In every case, he chose the boxed mix over the scratch cake. He was shocked, appalled and embarrassed when his choices were revealed to him. Food scientists are pretty smart and they have access to ingredients you and I have never heard of. You gotta give the devil his due sometimes. Those sheetcakes you buy in grocery stores or big box stores? They were all made with boxed mixes. Sometimes the commercial processors do it better. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.”