Story
March 15, 2021
As part of Blackberry Mountain’s March Culinary Focus Week on Flavor, Foodways Educator Jeff Ross is sharing insight into the five basic tastes that make up how we experience flavor. You may have heard of these tastes, but have you ever thought about how they really interact to create the sensations you experience when eating? Next time you take a bite, focus on what you’re tasting and how the flavors come together in your meal. Get Jeff’s insight into this Focus Week conversation and see how it makes you think about your taste experience!
First, here are five basic tastes and examples of when you’re tasting them:
Sweet – sugar, honey, syrup, ripe fruit
Salty – ocean, oysters, celery, brine
Sour – vinegar, yogurt, buttermilk, citrus, unripe fruit
Bitter – arugula, coffee, citrus peel, hops
Umami – soy, mushrooms, grilled steak, oily fish, aged cheese
It's hard for me to choose a favorite taste, but I like a combination of salty and sweet –beginning with my childhood craving for a pairing of French fries and a chocolate shake! Now, a great margarita scratches that itch. I also love sour in the form of vinegars of all types, especially sherry or malt vinegar. A splash of good Jerez sherry vinegar is a chef's secret weapon.
When you’re cooking, combining flavors truly balances a dish. Even if the goal of the dish is not to be sweet, you may need an element of sweetness to add nuance to the flavor that gets you to your desired taste. Think about these examples:
- Rich butter with a bit of soy sauce makes a great sauce for grilled fish.
- An Umami-packed and salty anchovy begins a great marinara or Caesar dressing.
- Salting cooked mushrooms awakens the natural glutamate, which explodes with umami flavor.
You can also use these elements of flavor to “trick” your taste buds into a heightened experience. In the garden, bitter greens like collards, kale and radishes are sweetened by cooler weather, when the developing sugars soften the harsh flavor. So, when the weather is warmer and you’re not getting that natural sweetness softening the bitter flavor, you can do it yourself. In the kitchen, vinegar, a bit of honey or sorghum or even a bit of hot pepper will have the same effect – counteracting some of the bitterness so you have great flavor.
And one of my favorite examples is salt on fruit. In the South, we grew up salting our watermelon in the Summertime. A bit of salt on the tongue "tricks" the tastebuds in registering the sugar in the melon, making it seem sweeter than it actually is. The same goes for mango and papaya in Mexico and South America, where a bit of hot red pepper and salt is sprinkled to achieve the same. It may not sound like a natural solution to your brain, but it hits all the right notes on your taste buds!
– Jeff Ross, Foodways Educator
