Black and white. Hot and cold. Loud and quiet. Put them together and what do you get? Gray. Tepid. Subdued. But try the same thing with opposite flavors and watch out. When they unite, culinary sparks fly.
Take sweet and sour, for example. This is the pairing of opposite ingredients such as sugar and vinegar, but rather than meshing into a new and improved flavor - swour? - they refuse to combine. Instead, they vibrate along our taste buds: sweet/sour/sweet/sour/sweet/sour.
As soon as we try to commit our palates to one flavor, the other appears.
This phenomenon of taste perception, called layering, is both a treasure and a challenge to anyone who cooks. Because we perceive flavors sequentially, rather than all rolled up together, it is possible to concoct highly sophisticated flavor blends, in which hundreds of tastes blossom and fade across the palate.
A good curry does just that, often to the point of sensory overload. Starting with a floral fragrance of coriander and turmeric, it fast reveals subtle tastes of butter and lentils along with the sweetness of onion and a musky pinch of clove.
Often we undermine exciting flavor possibilities in our diets by thinking about flavor too simply. We describe potato chips as salty or beef stew as meaty, without considering the other flavors in these foods that make eating them more than one-dimensional.
Sure potato chips are salty, but what makes them great is how the salt punctuates the glaze of oil on their gritty skins. It's how the tinge of brownness brings the natural sweetness of the potato forward, and how that sweetness rebounds against the initial taste of salt.
Even a simple food, like a potato chip, relies on layers of flavors to give it pizazz. Consider, then, the flavor possibilities if you add to this salty- rich potato chip an opposite sort of flavor. Something bittersweet and creamy, like chocolate.
Chocolate-Covered Potato Chips? Don't laugh before you've tried them. They're wonderful. But more than that, they point to a flavor truism for any food:
By combining contrasting flavors, such as sweet and sour, bitter and sweet, or sweet, sour and salty, we increase the vibrancy of the total flavor package.
Contrary to some kitchen tales, you cannot really erase an off-flavor by adding its opposite. For instance, many cooks believe that you can reverse a slip of the salt shaker with a bit of sugar. Take a taste and you'll find that
