Learning about flavours

Faith

Recently I was having a meal in a restaurant and my mum commented that there was a lovely flavour of something, but she wasn't sure what. I couldn't identify it at all and I realised I'm absolutely useless at identifying flavours in a dish. It limits me massively as a cook because I'm not very good at thinking "You know what would be lovely with this?". I try new flavour combinations occasionally, but I'd really like to be better at pairing flavours and identifying tastes.

I'm getting The Flavour Thesaurus soon, but how else can I improve my ability to identify flavours? They had a challenge on Top Chef once where the chefs had to pick out as many flavours as they could recognise from a dish, and I'd love to be good at something like that. Any tips?


(Gosh, I seem to be on a thread-starting run today!)

neuro-praxis

I've realised I'm good at what you're describing (although not expert in any way). So what did I do to get good?

1. I started ordering adventurously, paying attention to what was in the food
2. I started cooking adventurously, trying a new dish every couple of weeks

On both counts sometimes the result was a delicious treasure - sometimes really manky. But broadening your palette is the trick I think!

Faith

And by doing that, you learned how to pick out flavours?

I do try to order adventurously, but I suppose I should pay more attention to what's in it. I mean, I could identify that I'm eating a herb, but I'd have trouble saying what herb it was in most cases (apart from really obvious ones like mint and basil).

neuro-praxis

I would ask questions too. When people are feeding me I try to get the recipes off them. I have asked in restaurants too what was in something if I couldn't place it. That's it really.

Growing up I ate the same 7 meals over and over and didn't have a clue. However in the last 5 years I have made a real effort to learn about different cuts of meat and different types of fish and adventurous ways to eat and cook them, and I think my cooking has improved dramatically as a result.

The Sweeper

Use your sense of smell.

Smell is a huge part of taste - which is why everything is tasteless when you have a cold. Stick your nose into everything - spice jars, vegetables, pastes, meats, fruit, oils, herbs. It's as simple as that. Read the label, stick your nose into it, inhale, make the connection in your brain - that's X and is smells like THIS.

After a while you'll find you can tell a lot of what's in a dish just by inhaling. In fact, smell can be more pure - when you taste something, and then move to taste something else, the flavour of the second thing can often be strongly influenced by the first because you still have that taste in your mouth. With your sense of smell, there's no need to drink a glass of water between sniffs. There is a point where your smell sense will be overloaded and you can't tell the difference between anything any more, but it's still a good place to start.

Also use your eyes - sounds bizarre, but you can identify things.

Turmeric, for instance. Turmeric has a distinct smell, a sort of sweet earthy chalkiness. It also has a distinct look in a dish - that strong golden colour really shows up in oil - if you take a spoon of curry where turmeric has been used, and you push that spoonful over a plate, you'll see the strong golden colour in the oil that's left behind. Finally there's the flavour, but turmeric is something I can spot without having to taste it.

That's just one example - everything else follows similarly.

Once you've smelled and studied everything closely, taste as you cook. If you taste as you prep, you'll quickly learn the difference that adding different ingredients makes to your dish.

...and on that note, shite I forgot to add the palm sugar to the chili I put in the slow cooker this morning before I left for work. /facepalm