Certain ingredients have common molecules, which allows them to be combined in cooking – even if they are very distant – to obtain new flavors.
Would you like to combine chocolate with cucumber, apricot with parmesan, carrot with goat cheese, or sorrel with rhubarb for one of your next dishes? However, these are combinations that work very well in the mouth, and create unexpected flavors. We obtain them thanks to foodpairing.
“Food pairingcomments Thierry Marx, it is the study of associations, based on chemistry, to bring together ingredients with as many common molecules as possible. Perceived taste is explained by the chemical activation of taste receptors. Two foods, whose molecular composition is similar, will therefore produce actions similar to our receptors.”
Science is just another tool
For generations, we have matched elements by empiricism, or by following the tradition of those who preceded us, and who themselves learned by trial and error. We all know, for example, that chocolate likes pear or banana, and that strawberries like mint. But a preparation between sake and Fourme d’Ambert is completely improbable, even though it gives an astonishing result.
Thierry Marx joined forces with Raphaël Haumont, the director of the French Center for Culinary Innovation, at the University of Paris-Saclay, to develop this theory in The Flavor Atlasa book published by Dunot.
“This opens up more widely the field of possibilities for culinary creationconfides the starred chef. Chemistry is an additional tool. Science is here to help us, but only to help. You have to keep it sensitive, and sometimes a bit of mystery.”