Food For Thought: Playing By Ear

What do we really know about flavour?

Last week I, like many other people, was feeling a bit sick.  It was a few upper-respiratory symptoms and a general feeling of crapiness, but several COVID RAT tests left me not one bit more enlightened.  At this point I blamed the weather.

The up and down temperatures and changes in the barometer have always left me and my sinuses feeling a little, as they say, “under the weather”.  But it is spring and that’s just how it is.  In fact, there are some things that actually benefit from the ups and downs of this time of year and without which it really wouldn’t feel much like spring.

I’m talking about maple syrup.

Nearly all maple syrup is produced in Canada with nearly 75 percent of the world’s supply coming from the province of Quebec alone.  The production process is familiar to every school child in my part of the world as a visit to the local sugar bush/sugar shack are a pretty standard school field trip. Sugar maple trees are tapped, sap is collected, and the thin sweet liquid is boiled down to the golden amber syrup we pour on pancakes.  The technology has evolved a bit but the process is much as it was centuries ago.

With my malaise leaving me flattened in bed for a solid day last week I chose to do a bit of reading.  I’m a dedicated reader on most days, but often don’t have the time or attention-span to dig into more complex topics.  One of the books I grabbed was Taste Buds and Molecules:  The Art and Science of Food and Wine by Francois Chartier.

Chartier, a Montreal-based sommelier and researcher, is an expert in pairing wine with food, and in particular the molecular compounds that account for the aromas/flavours that make pairings possible.  His knowledge has been sought by chefs like Ferran Adrià of the maximally-starred Spanish restaurant El Bulli, among a distinguished list of others.

The book is more than a decade old and not exactly a casual read despite its most excellent graphics and photography. Its science-y detail requires some concentration, which is why I’ve only skimmed and dabbled in its contents until that lazy afternoon last week.

I started at the very beginning, including the credits and acknowledgements, which are significant. I got partway though one of the introductions by Martin Loignon, a molecular biologist, and came to this:

In contrast to symphonies, food pairing has always depended more on the chef’s instincts than on her knowledge of foods’ aromatic molecules. Like a musician who ignores a score’s notes and plays by ear, the chef harmonizes by “nose”. This is because even though we have a relatively wide understanding of the aromatic molecules (the notes) that make up foods and beverages, this knowledge is in fact virtually unknown, unexploited, and even inaccessible to all but a few. This leads to uncertainty about which pairings are possible and fosters fear of innovation. It’s not for lack of creativity but rather a lack of knowledge that today’s chefs, even the greatest, succumb to the temptation of repeatedly pairing the same ingredients.

Harrumph…. now there’s a thought that’s been festering a wee bit.

I think this has been bugging me because it’s true. Chefs (and all of us, really) frequently fall back on the same classic pairings because they work - basil and tomato, apple and cinnamon, mustard and tarragon, cucumber and dill, etc. We don’t give a ton of thought as to why they work, but rather rely on the fact that they do. As we explore new cuisines we add new songs (flavours and pairings) to our repertoire, but the notes themselves elude us.

So I delved further into the book while I stewed on this, reading about the compounds like anethole, eugenol, and S-carvone that characterize anise-flavours like basil, caraway. and celery. I delved in the aldehydes in walnuts and ketones and terpenes in beef. I studied a chart with wine pairings for foods with cloves. But it was when I came to the chapter about maple syrup that I had another pause.

It is fitting that Chartier, as a Quebecer, would dedicate significant study to the aromas and flavours in maple. It’s an incredibly complex set of flavours that seem to run in the Canadian bloodstream. But I have a confession to make that might get my citizenship stripped: I don’t really like maple. Once in a while it’s fine, but I don’t get the flag-waving obsession about all things maple any more than I understand the annual rapture about pumpkin-spiced anything.

That said, a recent visit to a sugar bush (and a pending delivery of the household syrup supply) got me thinking, and I decided to test an unlikely pairing. While I don’t love maple, I am easily drawn into unusual combinations in a “that looks gross, I think I’ll order it” kind of way. When I see something that seems wrong or out of place I get curious and assume it must be there for a good reason.

Chartier explains that sotolon, one of the important compounds in maple, is also present in things like soy sauce, cotton candy, dark beer, coffee and, rather interestingly, curry powder. So I decided to try my own little flavour pairing experiment that, on paper at least, seemed a bit on the wild side - maple and curry.

I grabbed some dark maple syrup, a jar of mild and fairly generic curry powder, and a chunk of butter biscuit (a recipe I strongly recommend!) The aroma made me rather skeptical but I put on my grown-up girl chef panties and took a bite.

Well now.

It was good. In fact, it was more than a bit good. The flavours of the maple and the curry complemented each other in way I can’t quite explain. In fact, I went back and added more curry powder! The curry-maple mix was a bit harsh on its own, but together with the toastiness of the biscuit it worked - really!

A little further reading revealed that the likely link between maple syrup and curry is fenugreek (a common spice in curry powder) via ethyl fenugreek lactone. And even more interesting is that one of the main flavourings in artificial maple syrup is fenugreek. Combine that with methyl cyclopentalone (a compound found in grilled and roasted foods that contain sugars) from the biscuits that also appears in maple we have not just some interesting notes, but rather a whole tune.

Socrates observed that “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing”, but having it pointed out is a bit unsettling. It’s not that I didn’t know that there are complex compounds that create aroma and flavours, I had just never thought of how that lack of that understanding was a limitation on innovation, or more bluntly, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. If I want to become a better cook I need more understanding of why flavours work, not just which ones seem to get along.

Perhaps it’s because we all eat and are thus all experts about food (to some extent) that we fail to realize the routine things we do are in fact governed by science - the kitchen chemistry we take for granted when we grill a steak, bake a cake, or shake a salad dressing. But for those that are curious there is a whole world of flavour out there if you’re ready to learn to read music and not just play by ear. Some food for thought indeed.