In her new book, Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking the Art and Science of Flavor (Harvest Publications) flavor scientist Arielle Johnson takes readers on a captivating journey into the world of flavor. With a Ph.D. in the subject and a passion for helping chefs create delicious new foods, Johnson brings her expertise to home cooks everywhere in this accessible and irreverent guide.
Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking the Art and Science of Flavor demystifies the science behind flavor, explaining how chemistry, sensation, and craft come together to create the tastes we love. Johnson breaks down complex concepts into easy-to-understand principles, empowering readers to finesse flavor in their own kitchens without the need for a professional setup or a background in science.
Packed with invaluable insights and more than 75 recipes, Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking the Art and Science of Flavor teaches readers how to spot flavor patterns, break rules, and improvise with confidence. From swapping ingredients within the same flavor family to enhancing dishes with simple hacks, Johnson’s book is a treasure trove of knowledge for anyone looking to elevate their cooking.
With a foreword by renowned chef René Redzepi of Noma, who praises Johnson for changing the way he thinks about flavor, Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking the Art and Science of Flavor is poised to become an indispensable resource for home cooks and food enthusiasts alike.
What inspired you to write Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking the Art and Science of Flavor?
The development of Flavorama draws on a combination of deep scientific expertise in flavor, the subject of my PhD. I immersed myself in this area for several years, delving extensively into the academic literature. Concurrently, I spent significant time in research and development at renowned restaurants, including Noma in Copenhagen. During this period, I engaged with chefs who were constantly innovating and exploring new culinary techniques, possessing a practical, working knowledge of flavor that perfectly complemented the scientific theories I studied. Despite the richness of this knowledge, it seemed isolated from the mainstream public outside of academia. I often found myself repeatedly explaining these concepts to people without a background in science, typically without relying on undergraduate chemistry. I frequently expressed a wish for a comprehensive book to share this knowledge. Eventually, after repeating this sentiment numerous times, I decided to write that very book. Thus, Flavorama was born.
Can you explain the concept of flavor beyond the notion of taste?
Many people equate taste with flavor, often using the term “taste” to describe all aspects of flavor. When someone asks, “How does it taste?” they’re usually inquiring about the overall flavor. However, flavor encompasses both taste and smell, with smell contributing a significantly larger number of sensations to our perception of flavor than taste does.
This concept involves two nuanced and somewhat secretive elements. First, the smell experienced while eating primarily comes not from sniffing the air, but from the aroma of the food inside your mouth. As you eat, odor molecules rise from the mouth, travel up the back of your throat, and enter the nasal passages. Thus, you’re actually smelling the food as you chew and swallow.
The second aspect involves a well-known sensory illusion: while these smells originate in your mouth, your brain relocates the sensation, making it feel as though it’s occurring in your nose. This illusion tricks you into perceiving these aromas as tastes. Consequently, it’s not immediately apparent that what you’re experiencing is actually the sense of smell. This complexity makes the relationship between taste and smell in flavor perception both fascinating and elusive.
Covid kind of brought that home, didn’t it? When people lost their smell suddenly things were tasting a bit off.
The taste is so flat because what you are actually experiencing is taste without smell.
What are the 4 laws of flavor? What are some fundamental flavor principles that cooks should know or can use?
I begin with the premise that flavor is fundamentally about molecules—something we often overlook when thinking about taste and aroma. Commonly, we consider flavors as inherent qualities of ingredients, like the isolated taste of salt. However, both taste and smell are derived from molecular structures, involving aspects of gustation (taste), olfaction (smell), and a bit of chemistry.
Flavor follows predictable patterns; for instance, when you taste a slice of lemon, you’re not directly sensing the lemon but its components—sour acidity, sweetness, and distinct citrusy, floral, and juicy aromas. These components are also present in other ingredients, which chefs expertly identify and catalog mentally. This ability allows them to innovate with unfamiliar ingredients, not through magic but through attentive taste analysis and connections to past experiences.
In exploring the concept of flavor, I delve into various tastes and smells, laying the groundwork for understanding the elements we work with and how to manipulate them. Flavor can be concentrated, infused, or extracted because molecules can move. Techniques that involve moving molecules from one place to another might sound esoteric, but they’re part of everyday processes like brewing coffee. Instead of chewing coffee beans, we use hot water to extract their flavors, transforming them into a more enjoyable format.
Such phenomena extend beyond coffee to include making flavored oils or reductions like pomegranate molasses, where boiling selectively removes water to concentrate flavors. Moreover, flavor can be created and transformed. Molecular interactions, such as caramelizing sugar or the Maillard reaction seen when onions are caramelized or bread is toasted, fundamentally change molecules to create new flavors.
Aside from heat-driven reactions, fermentation is another significant method for creating flavors, increasingly utilized by both chefs and home cooks. This process leverages bacteria, yeast, and other microbes to transform ingredients and enhance their flavors, showcasing the profound impact of chemistry in culinary practices.
You mentioned the notion of patterns of flavor. Can you sort of elaborate on that?
Lemons and limes, while distinct, share overlapping flavors such as acidity and a hint of sweetness, differentiated primarily by their citrusy aromas—lemony versus limey. However, they both fit within the same general flavor profile.
Exploring the pattern of sourness in ingredients reveals a broad spectrum. Beyond citrus fruits like limes and sour oranges, you can find sourness paired with various flavor profiles—fruity, pungent, pickly, or creamy. For example, vinegars, sumac, and dried black limes offer sourness with a dark, fruity undertone. Alternatively, sourness can be found in pickled or creamy contexts, like in pickled brines or certain dairy products.
If a recipe calls for lemon and you’re out, are you out of options? Not necessarily. Understanding that you’re seeking sourness allows you to explore alternatives that provide this flavor. You might choose pickle brine for its salty, pickly taste, kimchi juice for spiciness, or a vinegar for a sharp, tangy punch.
Viewing the ingredients in your kitchen as representatives of major flavor categories like sourness, fruitiness, or herbaceousness enables you to substitute more intuitively and flexibly. Recognizing these flavors in various ingredients enhances your comfort and creativity in cooking, allowing you to adapt recipes to what’s available without compromising on taste.
I have a somewhat jumbled question in mind, so it might come across even more unclear as I try to express it.
You work extensively with chefs and delve deep into food science, often collaborating with Jeff to harness science for culinary creativity. For example, you co-founded the fermentation lab and have engaged in many similar projects beyond just food science.
Do you also explore historical recipes or ancient ingredients and techniques that have been obsolete for millennia? If so, do you ever revive these methods in a modern variation or use them as inspiration for your current work?
Absolutely, it’s not all about the latest scientific data or cutting-edge research, though those aspects often receive significant attention. Personally, I’ve incorporated insights from a variety of historical sources, such as translated writings on fermented products from ancient China and discussions of herb uses from medieval Italy and ancient Rome.
I consider myself an omnivore in terms of knowledge and information. While peer-reviewed scientific literature is incredibly valuable, people have been making intelligent observations about food for thousands of years. I find it enriching to draw inspiration from these diverse sources. This historical perspective not only enriches our understanding but also connects us to a long tradition of culinary exploration and innovation.
The notion of flavor is really complex. There’s a lot going on. Does a person’s emotional state play any role in how they perceive, perceive flavor.
The emotional context in which you’re eating significantly influences your experience of the food. For example, whether you’re extremely happy or unhappy can profoundly affect how you perceive flavors. We primarily use flavor to discern what we’re eating, but as an evolutionary strategy, it makes sense that we would use all available contextual information to assess whether a situation is safe for eating.
When you taste something, the initial processing of this sensory information occurs in brain regions closely associated with emotion and memory, such as the olfactory cortex, which overlaps with the limbic system—including areas like the amygdala. This integration means that we store emotional and contextual memories alongside flavor perceptions.
Therefore, the next time you eat the same food, your emotional associations from previous experiences will influence your perception before you consciously recognize the flavor. This effect compounds over time; each subsequent experience with a particular flavor carries emotional memories and associations from past occurrences, which color your ongoing perception and experience of that flavor.
In your chapter about umami, you also discuss various enhancers. In your opinion, what is the most underrated spice or ingredient for enhancing flavor?
Certainly! Exploring and comparing ingredients to enhance flavors in your cooking can be quite an enlightening process. One exceptional ingredient for adding acidity without overpowering a dish is yogurt whey. It imparts a sour note but also carries smooth, creamy undertones that blend seamlessly into various flavor profiles, subtly enhancing brightness and sourness without the aggressive punch of lemon citrus or sharp vinegar.
Another group of ingredients I find invaluable for flavor enhancement involves aged and fermented elements, which are rich in umami. Nutritional yeast, anchovies, or even the ends of prosciutto saved in your freezer can significantly deepen a dish’s flavor. These ingredients not only contribute umami but also bring rich aromas and additional flavors that make the umami sensation pervasive throughout the dish.
This approach—combining specific smells with flavors, and aligning congruent aromatic and taste elements—is a sophisticated method to enhance culinary creations. It’s about manipulating both aromas and tastes to achieve a more complex and satisfying flavor profile, a technique often overlooked but incredibly effective in elevating the overall dining experience.
Salt is considered such a basic ingredient and element of cooking. But is it considered an enhancer?
Absolutely, salt is quite remarkable in its ability to enhance and transform flavors. Delving into the psychophysics of taste, salt not only intensifies flavors but also specifically alters our perception of them. For instance, salt can significantly reduce the bitterness of foods. It achieves this by interfering with the bitter taste receptors, impairing their ability to bind with bitter compounds. Adding salt to a grapefruit or in a Negroni cocktail, for example, will enhance the sweetness and other flavors by reducing the overall bitterness.
Moreover, salt also increases the perception of umami and helps make aromas more pronounced. Its role goes beyond merely adding a salty taste; it serves as a multifaceted enhancer that can elevate the sensory experience of a dish by affecting different aspects of flavor perception. This makes salt an indispensable tool in the culinary world for manipulating and enhancing the flavors within a dish.
When cooking bitter melons, you start by cutting them and then dousing them with salt before letting them sit for a while. Afterward, you rinse off the salt and proceed with cooking. I’ve always wondered whether the salt changes any compounds in the bitter melon. However, after reading your book, I’m thinking differently. You discuss how salt can act as a “chaperone,” making the bitter taste more palatable. This makes me curious about another aspect: when salting like this, it’s easy to inadvertently oversalt the dish because even after rinsing, the melon has absorbed a lot of salt. So, my question is: does the salt not only change the melon’s compounds but also significantly alter how it tastes once it hits my taste buds?
You’re spot on with your observations about the effects of salt on bitterness. It’s true that salt doesn’t chemically alter the bitter compounds themselves; instead, it influences how we perceive these flavors.
Firstly, as you noted, salt interacts at the receptor level to suppress bitterness. This modulation occurs because salt can affect the way bitter taste receptors on the tongue function, essentially ‘turning down’ the bitterness as you described.
Secondly, the physical process you mentioned involving osmosis is also crucial. When salt is applied to foods like melon, it draws out water through osmosis. This not only concentrates flavors but can also reduce perceived bitterness. The bitter compounds, which are soluble, may be drawn out with the juices that the salt extracts from the food. This dual action—both the sensory modulation at the receptor level and the physical removal of some bitter compounds—helps to enhance other flavors like sweetness and umami, making the food overall more palatable.
These interactions showcase salt’s complex role in culinary science, where it serves not only as a flavor enhancer but also as a modifier of flavor perception through both physiological and physical means.
Do you have any favorite recipes in your book that you’d recommend someone trying?
It’s great to hear that despite the scientific and fine dining angles of your book, you’ve aimed to keep the recipes approachable for everyone, even those who consider themselves lazy cooks. Your approach demystifies the complexities of culinary science and makes it accessible to a wider audience.
The herb sauces you mentioned, like the seared maitake mushroom with cilantro and tarragon salsa verde, sound like fantastic ways to expand one’s herb palate beyond the usual suspects like parsley and basil. This kind of recipe not only introduces new flavors but also encourages experimentation with different combinations of herbs.
Your smoked tea lapsang souchong oil is a clever solution for infusing smoky flavors without the need for a smoker, especially suitable for small living spaces. This technique of using smoked tea infused into oil to poach fish or enhance other dishes is an innovative method that captures deep, nostalgic flavors in a practical way.
Lastly, your exploration of unrefined sugars in sweet recipes opens up a whole new world of flavors. Using sugars like kokuto from Japan or jaggery offers a richer, more complex sweetness than white sugar. Your black sugar pudding and syrup recipes are excellent examples of how these ingredients can transform simple desserts into something extraordinary with deeper flavor profiles.
These recipes showcase your commitment to making sophisticated culinary techniques and ingredients more relatable and manageable, allowing more people to explore new dimensions in their cooking.
In Flavorama, you touch on the concept of flavor and its evolutionary aspects, particularly in the flavor sections. I find the idea of how our taste perceptions have evolved to signal certain qualities in our food fascinating. For example, sweetness often indicates a high caloric content, which is beneficial for energy, while bitterness can be a warning of potential danger. Could you briefly discuss how these flavor perceptions have played a role in our evolutionary history?
It’s fascinating how our perceptions of flavor, particularly taste and smell, are so deeply ingrained in our evolutionary biology. As you’ve outlined, each taste has a distinct evolutionary purpose that helps guide our dietary choices.
Bitterness, as you mentioned, serves as a warning mechanism, helping us avoid potentially toxic or poisonous substances. This response is a crucial survival tool, hard-coded into our sensory system to protect us from harmful foods.
Sweetness signals an easily accessible source of energy. It appeals to our basic need for calories, which would have been vital for survival in environments where food sources were not always reliable.
Saltiness is also essential, not just for its flavor but because sodium and other ions are critical for bodily functions. In modern times, while we often hear about the dangers of too much salt, our ability to taste saltiness reflects its importance in maintaining our health.
Umami, which indicates the presence of proteins through specific amino acids, is another taste that supports survival by guiding us toward nutrient-rich foods.
Sourness is particularly intriguing because it not only helps us identify ripe fruits and their vitamin C content but also, as recent research suggests, may have encouraged our ancestors to consume fermented foods. These foods, altered by beneficial microbes, offered a safer alternative to those spoiled by harmful bacteria. The development of a taste for sourness likely provided a dietary advantage, promoting the consumption of fermented items like kimchi and sauerkraut that are not only nutritious but also beneficial for digestive health.
This integrated view of taste and evolutionary biology not only helps us understand our own eating behaviors and preferences but also underscores the importance of these flavors in shaping human history and health. It’s a compelling reminder of how deeply interconnected our biology is with the foods we consume.
Do taste buds actually change? Or do you just psychologically adjust to flavors when it comes to acquired tastes?
Absolutely, the concept of acquired tastes and how our taste buds adapt over time is quite fascinating. As you noted, we begin life with a high density of taste buds, which gradually diminishes as we age. This physiological change contributes to the evolution of our taste preferences over our lifetimes.
Moreover, the adaptation to bitterness is particularly interesting. While bitterness originally serves as an evolutionary warning against potential toxins, not all bitter substances are harmful. In fact, many bitter compounds, such as those found in olives, offer significant health benefits, including anti-inflammatory properties. This recognition has led to a fascinating adaptation in how we perceive bitterness.
When it comes to acquired tastes, the brain plays a crucial role in moderating our sensory responses. As you’ve described with the example of olives, repeated exposure to a bitter flavor in a non-harmful context teaches our brain to adjust the intensity of the bitter signal. Over time, as we repeatedly consume a food and experience no adverse effects, our brain begins to downplay the initial aversive response to bitterness. This process involves integrating all the flavor signals together, recognizing the familiarity of the overall flavor profile, and reassessing the risk associated with the bitterness.
This adjustment allows us to enjoy and even crave foods that are initially perceived as bitter. Foods like Campari, Guinness, bitter melon, coffee, burnt toast, and dark chocolate are classic examples where repeated exposure can transform our initial perception into appreciation. This phenomenon of developing a liking for certain flavors through repeated exposure is indeed what we refer to as an “acquired taste.” This capability not only demonstrates our adaptability but also enriches our culinary experiences, allowing us to appreciate a broader spectrum of flavors.
What’s next for you in the world of flavor exploration?
It sounds like your book tour has been a fantastic success, sparking a lot of interest and engagement with audiences and media alike. The strong appetite for knowledge about flavor you’ve encountered highlights how much people are intrigued by the science and art of taste, which is a wonderful affirmation of your work.
Expanding into video, podcasts, or radio is a natural progression that can help you reach even broader audiences with your insights on flavor exploration. Each medium offers unique ways to engage and educate people, enhancing their appreciation and understanding of culinary science.
Your consulting work and product development also play a crucial role in translating theoretical knowledge into practical applications that people can enjoy in everyday products. It’s exciting to hear about your ongoing involvement with Noma’s fermentation lab as a senior advisor. Given Noma’s reputation for innovation in gastronomy, your contributions there are likely to lead to groundbreaking developments in both fermentation and broader food chemistry. These innovations not only enrich Noma’s menu but also contribute to the culinary field at large, potentially setting new trends and standards in flavor creation and experimentation.
It’s clear you have a lot on your plate, both literally and metaphorically, and it’s inspiring to see your passion for flavor science driving such diverse and impactful projects.
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