As a late (but just in time for the deadline) response to TGRWT #8 which was announced by Chadzilla in December last year - here is finally my write up on a recipe and a little on the background of this flavor combination which has become a classic in molecular gastronomy.

Heston Blumenthal introduced it around 2002 at The Fat Duck. It’s well worth reading what Heston wrote about this combination back then. He describes how salt can help bring out the flavor of many desserts. At one point he tried caviar and white chocolate - the effect was stunning. He then wanted to find out why this combination was so successful:

I gave some caviar and chocolate to François Benzi, who works for Firmenich, the flavourings and perfumes company based in Geneva. He was so surprised at the way that the caviar and chocolate melded together that he excused himself for half an hour while he tried to discover the reason behind the success of this union.

When he returned, the response was that both the chocolate and caviar contain high levels of amines. These are a group of proteins that have broken down from their amino acid state but not so far as to become ammonia. Amines contribute to the desirable flavours that we find in cooked meats and cheeses, among other things.

Some might object to using caviar but remember that there is no need to turn to sturgeon caviar as this species is endangered. I used caviar from Capelin which costs less than $4/€3 for a box of 50 g. As I have never tasted the “real” stuff I’m not the right person to judge about similarity or difference in aroma. And in case you also wondered about the terminology - roe is the fully ripe egg masses of fish whereas caviar refers to processed, salted roe. I decided to make a soufflé and based the recipe loosely on one of the soufflé recipes in my Larousse Gastronomique.

White chocolate soufflé with caviar
40 g white chocolate
30 g flour
1 dL milk
35 g caviar
3 eggs, separated
nutmeg

Melt chocolate on very low heat. Add 1/3 of the flour and stir, heating gently. Add a 1/3 of the milk and mix thoroughly. Add another 1/3 of the flour, then more milk and so on. Add finely ground nutmeg. Add 3 egg yolks and heat until right before the mixture sets (yeah - I admit - this is not very precise…). Then add the caviar. Beat egg whites stiff and fold them in. Pour into greased soufflé dish and bake at 220 °C for about 15 min.

Verdict: Aromas blend well together, but when eaten alone it’s perhaps a little bland. But I’m quite sure that it could be succesfully incorporated into a menu together with something acidic. The texture was nice, but the soufflé quickly falls together once it’s removed from the oven (I’ll have to post more on the chemistry of soufflés some other time - Hervé This has written a lot about this).

If you try to make this - note that white chocolate doesn’t behave excately like butter when you add the flour. It all got very thick, very fast - that’s why I started adding milk early. I also guess you have to be really careful when heating the whtie chocolate, but I didn’t do any stress tests here.

This is what the mix looks like before I folded in the egg whites.

For my first attempt at this recipe I used 20 g flour and 15 g caviar. The result was that the caviar sedimented before the soufflé had set, besides the fact that one could hardly taste the caviar at all. On my second attempt however, there was enough flour to keep the caviar suspended until the soufflé set. And one could actually also taste the caviar.

And now on to the chemistry behind:
I promised that I would come back with more information about the chemistry behind this pairing, but there isn’t very much information out there. There is one paper on aroma development in block-milk which used in the production of white chocolate. This paper lists a couple of volatiles, but only with their relative peak areas. Turning to caviar (or roe), there is a recent paper on flavor characterization of ripened cod roe, and this paper includes qualitative information about odor intensity.

Comparing the list of volatiles, the following volatiles which contribute substantially to the odor of ripened cod roe are also found in block milk (followed by odor thresholds in water, given in ppb, taken from this page):

2-butanone (50000 ppb)
2-methylbutanal (1 ppb)
3-methylbutanal (0.2-2 ppb)
pentanal (na)

Of these, the first has a high odor threshold, so it’s not likely to be an impact odorant in block-milk (and white chocolate). The methylbutanals however probably contribute to the overlapping aroma of roe and white chocolate. I didn’t find any threshold value for pentanal.

One group of compounds which was not mentioned in the paper on cod roe odor from 2004, but which was mentioned in a Russian paper from 1967 are amines (Golovnya: “Gas-chromatographic analysis of amines in volatile substances of salmon caviar”). Considering the fact that trimethylamine has a threshold in the range of 0.37-1.06 ppb, and that trimethylamine is found in block-milk suggests that it might contribute significantly to the odor of both white chocolate and roe. I guess the reason trimethylamine (and the whole range of other, closely related amines) is not found in the odor analysis in the 2004 paper has to do with the analytical method used.

The fact that amines are crucial is further supported by the Guardian article I quoted from in the beginning where Heston Blumenthal describes how he turned to François Benzi, a flavor chemist at Firmenich, to find out why white chocolate and caviar is such a good match. Benzi concludes that it is due to the presence of similar amines in white chocolate and caviar.

For this round, Chad of Chadzilla chose one of the “classic” examples of pairings based on impact odorants - white chocolate and caviar. As pointed out by my fellow bloggers, this pairing has appeared in a number of MG inspired restaurants and was also featured in one of the episodes of the TV series “Kitchen chemistry” with Heston Blumenthal. The best thing of all is that you have all the time until January 1st to cook and blog about it! And don’t forget to check out the round-up of what to do with caramelized cauliflower and cocoa.

When time allows, I hope to post more on the chemistry of this pairing

Amrita of Le Petite Boulanger has announced the foods to pair for the fifth round: chocolate and meat! And in case you didn’t notice, Dennis has written an excellent summary of the mustard-mint recipes of round four.

I was not able to figure out which odorants actually formed the basis for the mustard-mint pairing (and perhaps there is none… as I’ve touched upon before, some of the data is hard to come at so it’s difficult to check all the entries of my compiled list). At M’s blog however you can find more info on the cold receptors which are triggered by both mint and mustard.

Fortunately data for chocolate and meat is available: odor activity values for cocoa and flavour dilution values for boiled beef and roasted beef. All flavour compounds were ranked and compounds given the same color coding as before. As you can see, there is considerable overlap between chocolate and meat.

(click to enlarge)

And here’s what the molecules that are found both in cocoa and beef look like. Notice that this pairing is dominated by furanones and pyrazines. The molecules are ranked according the the odor activity values in cocoa.

6. Learn how our senses work

Prolonged exposure to a flavor causes adaption and habituation, meaning that your brain thinks the food smells less even though it’s still present in the same amount. Back in 1953 Lloyd M. Beidler isolated nerves from the tongue of rats to study these phenomena. The nerves were situated in a flow-chamber through which aquous solutions with salty, sweet, acidic and bitter compounds could be flushed. The electric signal produced by the nerve was then recorded and fed to an amplifier and a plotter. Very simplified, the perceived intensity of the stimulus looked something like this (the curve is not to scale in any dimension and it’s my own qualitative interpretation of the data presented in the article):

After a short initial latency period a transient is followed by a slower prolonged decrement. There is even some nerve activity after the stimulus has been removed. What is interesting from a molecular gastronomy perspective is that the initial burst of taste quickly fades away - some call it fatigue or adaption. If the same stimulus is applied repeatedly, the maximum intensity of the initial taste burst decreases for each time it is applied. This is known as habituation and is illustrated in the figure below. As the time between stimulation of the receptor increases, the receptor recovers from the habituation and the intensity of the second stimulus increases to match the intensity of the first.

Adaption and habituation are also observed with odor. If you have used eau de cologne or perfume you might have noticed that you can smell it very well once applied, but after some minutes or hours you hardly notice it unless you sniff intentionally for it. The same applies for food.

Variation is the spice of life, and variation helps our senses to overcome adaption and habituation. More technically this has been referred to as “increased sensing by contrast amplification” which I think is a good way putting it. An illustrative example is Heston Blumenthal’s potato purée with small pieces of lime jelly (made with agar agar which is heat stable once it has set). The idea was that to avoid the adaption to the flavour and texture of the potatoe purée, small pieces of lime jelly would help “reset” the taste buds and thereby lead to an increased overall perception of the purée. I’m personally very fond of the variation provided by multiple component dishes. A curry sauce for instance is normally not served alone but alongside many other dishes: rice, dal, chicken/meat/fish, chutney, raita, nan, chapati, pakora, lime juice, salt etc. The different components contrast each other and help bring out the most of the meal.

Contrasts also help us smell better. When we sniff there is an abrupt change in the amount of air passing through our nose. More molecules pass the receptors and the sudden change in their concentration makes it easier to sense them. It has been shown that sniffing in fact gives an optimal odor perception.

Our senses are not unrelated, and there are many interesting articles illustrating this. For instance, adding color to make white wine darker or even red influences the perception of the wine aroma. Along the same lines, consider crystal pepsi which wasn’t a great success after all, probably due to the lack of color. With juice and soups it has been demonstrated that odors smelled through the mouth are perceived differently than those smelled through the nose. Similarily colors can either enhance of suppress the intensity of odors depending on whether they are smelled through the nose or through the mouth.

There are a number of odor-taste interactions. For example, through repeated pairing with sugar, odors become “sweeter”. We become better at detecting sugar solutions if strawberry aroma is added to them, but worse if ham aroma is added. And you shouldn’t be to surprised that both perceived and imagined odors influence taste (that’s right - think of strawberries, and sucrose will taste sweeter!). Heston Blumenthal uses this in the savory ice creams he makes. We associate the cold and rich mouthfeel of ice cream with something sweet, and this influences our perception of the flavour, making it sweeter. In general, the “sweeter” an odor is perceived, the more it enhances tasted sweetness and the more it suppresses sourness. Preliminary experiments suggest that even pure tastants have a smell.

A thing to consider when eating is that our body position influences olfactory sensitivity. And don’t forget that your emotional state also has an effect on the olfactory perception. Emotionally labile people are more sensitive to certain smells and less sensitive to others.

The examples of how our senses are not independant has some practical implications for cooking and eating:

Presentation is paramount, and it is worthwile to consider the art of food presentation. There is a lot to learn from food photography blogs and food blogs with good photos: still life with…, matt bites, 101 cookbooks, la tartine gourmande too mention but a few. Also check out the pictures submitted to the monthly food photography blogging event does my blog look good in this (google DMBLGiT to find out which blog hosts this month’s event).

Taste, smell, texture, mouth feel, temperature and appearance will all contribute to the overall experience when eating and drinking. But also the room, the atmosphere and the people present have an influence. I have previously mentioned the five aspects meal model which has been developed for restaurant settings and takes all of this into account.

Many of the ideas found in this blog post can be expressed in appetizers. With small, well prepared amuses bouche there is variation with every bite, creating excitement and anticipation.

And remember that average food eaten in the company of good friends while you’re sitting on a terrace with the sun setting in the ocean will taste superior to excellent food served on plastic plates and eaten alone in a room with mess all over the place.

Update: I submitted the picture of the cherries in the heading to the monthly “Does my blog look good in this” (or DMBLGIT for short) photo competition for food blogs - and guess what - the picture was the winner of the August 2007 round. This is a great honour, because there are so many good photographers out there with food blogs. Click to view the complete gallery of the August 2007 round.

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Check out my previous blogpost for an overview of the 10 tips for practical molecular gastronomy series. The collection of books (favorite, molecular gastronomy, aroma/taste, reference/technique, food chemistry, presentation/photography) and links (webresources, people/chefs/blogs, institutions, articles, audio/video) at khymos.org might also be of interest.

For TGRWT #2 I made banana marshmallows with parsley. The texture came out nice, but the initially fresh parsley flavour had become grassy/hay-like over night. The litterature I referred to last time suggested that the off-flavour is produced by oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids or polyenes. There are several strategies to avoid this. The first would be not to mince the parsley as finely as I did last time to avoid exposure to the air’s oxygen. If the oxidation is enzymatic, blanching would be helpful. And it would also be worthwhile to see if addition of lemon juice (vitamin C and citric acid, are both antioxidants) would have any effect (however, on second thought this would be strange since parsley already has a lot of vitamin C!). Mirko Junge commented last time that freeze dried parsley would possibly retain more of the freshness and he most generously provided me with several samples of freeze dried parsley. I decided to proceed with the following six types of parsley for my marshmallows:

1. fresh parsley leaves, chopped to pieces of about 2-3 mm (picture above, left)
2. parsley leaves, blanched for 30 sec, chopped to pieces of about 2-3 mm
3. parsley leaves, sprinkled with lemon jucie, chopped to pieces of about 2-3 mm
4. parsley leaves, blached for 30 sec, sprinkled with lemon juice, chopped to pieces of about 2-3 mm
5. freeze dried parsley from Goutess (picture above, right)
6. plain, dried parsley from my local store (picture above, front)

I used the same recipe as last time, but split the whipped sugar-gelatin-banana mixture into six different bowls before mixing with the parsley. I used approximately 0.6-0.8 g of fresh parsley for each of the entries 1-4. I tried to estimate the amount of dried parsley to use by eye, comparing with the amount of fresh leaves. The amount of dried parsley used was less than 0.1 g, so my balance was not of much help. The picture below might give you an idea.

Six different types of parsley were prepared immediately prior to mixing with the marshmallow base to minimize oxidation.

If the term ‘parallel cooking’ has not been invented yet, this might be good time to introduce it.

I let the marhsmallows set between two sheets of greased parchment paper.

Blind tasting of banana parsley marshmallows.

My wife helped me do a blind tasting to avoid any bias. The six marshmallow samples were each associated with a three digit code and presented on a plate to the taster. We both did two rounds each (A1/A2 and B1/B2) and the results are summarised in the table below. The scoring only describes the parsley flavour unless otherwise noted.

Legend:
5 fresh parsley, strong
4 fresh parsley, weak
2 grassy/hay-like parsley, weak
1 grassy/hay-like parsley, strong
0 neither fresh nor grassy, weak overall
- disagreeable
* banana dominates

I was quite surprised once I had decoded the score sheets. Fresh parsley cut into relatively large pieces gave a parsley flavour without any hints of grassy or hay-like off flavours! Blanching or treatment with lemon juice were both detrimental to the parsley flavour, and even more so when combined. The variation observed for could be a result of an uneven distribution of the parsley in the marshmallow (increased parsley flavour if you happen to chew a leaf). The freeze dried parsley didn’t do very well compared with fresh parsley, but outperformed the dried parsley from my local store which didn’t have much flavour at all. Both samples of dried parsley however were dominated by a grassy/hay-like flavour. I should add that the grassy/hay-like flavour in itself is not especially disagreeable, but it does not go very well together with the banana.

The result is interesting and perhaps a little counter intuitive. Generally one would say that a larger surface area (= finely chopped) would enhance the flavour release. This experiment however shows that this is not universally true, especially if the flavours can be oxidized. So next time you make banana parsley marshmallows remember that less chopping gives better parsley flavour.

Previously I had only tasted sliced strawberries with a fresh coriander leaf, just as a very basic illustration of this pairing. I must say I liked the combination, even though it’s dominated by coriander (or cilantro as it’s called in North America). But I figured that once the strawberries are processed into a dish, one would probably have to reduced the amount of coriander, so I did quite a lot of tasting as I proceeded with this combination for the third round of “They go really well together” (previous rounds: TGRWT #1, TGRWT #2). And I was surprised how well the coriander came through, even when using as little as 0.5 g! So start with a small amount of coriander if you decide to try this. Several have commented that they’re not to fond of coriander or the strawberry/coriander combo, and I wonder if this could be because they used too much coriander?

Anyway, I decided to go for a warm strawberry foam and be carefull with the amount of coriander. I started out without sugar, but found that sugar was essential for the strawberry coriander pairing (unless I would have taken it all in a savory direction like M did). Balsamico vinegar emphasizes the strawberry aroma and adds acid which I find important. If you plan to prepare this dish, I would suggest to add coriander, sugar and vinegar a little at a time, just to make sure it fits your taste.

Foamy strawberries with coriander and balsamic vinegar
200 g strawberries
0.5 g fresh coriander leaves
30 g sugar
14 g balsamic vinegar
150 g water
1 g xanthan

Make a purée of strawberries, coriander, sugar and balsamic vinegar with an immersion blender. In a separate container, mix water and xanthan using the same blender and add to the strawberry mix. Xanthan gives a viscous solution and helps retain the bubbles. The nice thing with xanthan is that it dissolves in cold liquid and requires no heating, but is stable at higher temperatures if you should want to heat the mixture. The immersion blender can be used to whip in some air, but for an even more airy texture, use an ISI whipper (many models available: cream, easy, gourmet, dessert, thermo) and charge with a cream charge (N₂O). Important: you must filter out ALL the small stones from the strawberries using a cheese cloth or a towel, before transfering the mixture to the whipper, as these will clog the nozzle of the wipper (mine got clogged!). For a warm foam, heat the whipper in a water bath at 60-70 °C, but only do this if you have the ISI gourmet or thermo whippers which are designed for higher temperatures.

Verdict: I was very satisfied and my wife liked it too! There’s a good balance between the strawberry and coriander aroma. Sugar rounds of the taste and the balsamic vinegar balances the sugar with it’s tangyness. I served the foam warm together with plain vanilla ice cream - delicious! At room temperature the sugar/acid balance was perfect according to my taste, but when served warm the foam was perhaps a little on the sweet side (which comes as no surprise as sweetness decreases when lowering the temperature).

Closeup of a larger air bubble below the surface! Who can resist to taste this?

It’s time for the third round of the They go really well together food blogging event (TGRWT #3). Ingredients to pair this time are strawberry and coriander (coriander sativum, also known as cilantro in North America). You can use fresh leaves, whole seeds or ground seeds - it’s all your choice. Deadline is July 1st, so there’s still a couple of weekends left for you to do some experimental cooking. This round is hosted by Evelin at Bounteous bites, so check out her post with instructions on how to participate! She will also post a round-up in due time. And in case you’ve missed it, Tara has posted the round-up of TGRWT #2 featuring banana and parsley.

The first place I saw this combination mentioned at eGullet in a post by Heston Blumenthal. Six impact odorants have been identified for strawberry juice:

(Z)-3-hexenal (green)
2,5-dimethyl-4-hydroxy-3(2H)-furanone (caramel-like, sweet)
methyl butanoate (fruity)
ethyl butanoate (fruity)
methyl 2-methylpropanoate (fruity)
2,3-butanedione (buttery)

The paper “Character-impact aroma components of coriander (Coriandrum sativum) herb” by Cadwallader et al. (couldn’t find any link for this) presented at the 5th Chemical Congress of North America lists (Z)-3-hexenal (green/cut-grass) as an impact odorants based on AEDA (aroma extraction dilution analysis), so there is at least one overlap between the impact odorants of strawberry and coriander (shown below). Please let me know if you should find odor activity values (OAV) for the volatile compounds in coriander. A search at The Good Scents Company also gives many hits for strawberry and coriander.

If you have a hard time finding inspiration for this round, how about Mousses de fraises à la coriandre, Cupcake, Strawberry grapefruit dressing, Strawberry salsa or Strawberry spring rolls?

Good luck!

Among dedicated whisky/whiskey drinkers it is customary to add a little water as this “helps to unlock and release the esters, or flavours, from the fats”. Another site claims that dilution helps “breaking down the ester chains and freeing the volatile aromatics”. Does this make sense from a chemical perspective?

When Erik posted me a question some months ago about why we add water to whisky and the chemistry that is involved, I started to speculate about possible mechanisms and discussed them with Erik. Perhaps the most obvious effect is that the alcohol concentration is lowered. High alcohol concentrations anaesthetises the nose and sears the tongue (as the site metioned above correctly states). This is especially true for cask strength whisky which can exceed 60% ethanol. We considered the possibility of a temperature effect. The obvious effect could be achieved by adding water with a different temperature to either cool or warm the whisky. The less obvious effect could be due to a possible release of heat when adding water to a concentrated ethanol solution. Having thought about the different possibilities I did a search and found a very fascinating article: “Release of distillate flavour compounds in Scotch malt whisky”. It was published in 1999, but was new to me and gave me some totally new perspectives on whisky and water. When reading the article, it seems to me that the motivation for adding water to whisky is in fact to mask some aromas and release others!

Malt whisky contains high concentrations of esters and alcohols with long hydrocarbon chains. When water is added, the solubility of these esters and alcohols decreases, and a supersaturated solution results. In extreme cases, the decreased solubility of fat-soluble, volatile organic compounds can lead to clouding due to precipitation of small droplets as seen with anise/liquorise liqours such as Pastis, Pernod, Arak, Raki, Sambuca, Ouzo… (I think I’ll post about that later some time). This can also occur with whiskys that haven’t been chill-filtered. But even in whisky that has been filtered at low temperature a form of “invisible” clouding will occur. The excess of esters and alcohols in the diluted whisky form aggregates (or micelles) which can incorporate esters, alcohols and aldehydes with shorter hydrocarbon chains. Once these compounds are trapped in the aggregates, surrounded by longer chain esters and alcohols, they smell much less since they have a harder time escaping from the liquid! Fortunately, some of the compounds that are trapped have less desireable aromas described as oily, soapy and grassy.

The presence of wood extracts originating from the aging in oak barrels also influences aroma release. One effect is that wood extracts displace hydrophobic (fat soluble) compounds from the surface layer of the whisky (this effect is significant at room temperature when smelling the whisky, less so at 37 °C in your mouth). Furthermore the presence of wood extracts increases the incorporation of hydrophobic compounds into the agglomerates mentioned above.

So far I’ve only discussed the aggregates formed by long chain esters. But studies have shown that when an aqueous solution contains more than 20% ethanol, the ethanol molecules aggregate to form micelles, just like the long chain esters do. These micelles can also trap flavour compounds. Unlike the micelles formed by the long chain esters however, the ethanol micelles break up when diluting the whisky, thus releaseing the entrapped flavour compounds. It is interesting to note that ethanol is less “soluble” in water at high temperatures (ie. the solution is no longer monodisperse). As a consequence, serving whisky “on the rocks” will actually promote the release of flavour compounds from the ethanol micelles. As Mirko Junge commented below, this is one of the very few cases where cooling actually enhances flavour! But the wood extracts found in whisky matured in oak casks supports the formation of ethanol micelles, so as Mirko Junge points out, matured whisky needs more dilution and/or cooling since there are more ethanol micelles.

The over-all effect is a fractionation of volatile compounds upon dilution with water: water insoluble compounds are concentrated in the aggregates (or micelles) of long chain esters, water soluble compounds remain in solution and compounds (probably those which are slightly soluble in water) that were originally trapped in ethanol micelles are liberated.

So after all, the popular notion that addition of water “opens up” the aroma of a whisky is true, but who would have thought that the effect is a combination of “masking” (inclusion of some arome compounds in long chain ester micelles) and “demasking” (opening up of ethanol micelles) and that there even is a temperature effect?

Serving whisky “on the rocks” helps break down ethanol micelles due to the combined effect of cooling and dilution. (Photo by Generation X-Ray at flickr.com)

Feel free to share your experiences with whisky dilution in the comments section below!

(Note: The text has been revised and expanded on June 3rd following the discussion below. Special thanks to Mirko Junge for his valuable comments and for pointing out the importance of the ethanol micelles.)

A while back I saw Evelin’s post on how to make marshmallows for Valentine’s day, and I knew immediately that I would like to give it a try. With TGRWT #2 coming up (that’s the second round of the food blogging event “they go really well together”), I thought I’d make marshmallows with a banana parsley twist. I figured that the banana flavour should fit very well with the soft and airy, yet elastic texture of marshmallows. And I was very curious to find out how the parsley would fit in!

Marshmallows were originally made using egg whites and the sap of the root of the marshmallow plant which were cooked with sugar and whipped into a foam. Today the marshmallow sap and egg white have been replaced by gelatin which is a protein produced from collagen in the connective tissue of animals. Proteins are good at stabilising foams (see previous post on how to make a Vauqelin). Addition of sugar increases the viscosity which stabilizes the foam even more. In marshmallows this is taken to an extreme. A large amount of gelatin is added to a concentrated solution of sugar (and corn syrup). This mixture is whipped for about 10 minutes to incorporate air and to break up larger air bubbles into smaller ones.

The first challenge was to find a suitable recipe. There are recipes that call for sugar only whereas others call for sugar and corn syrup (this recipe also gives a hint on how to substitute fruit purree for water). Corn syrup is added to prevent crystallization. Also some recipes use egg whites which are said to give a lighter texture. I decided to go for a simple recipe and used only sugar. I would also need to substitute mashed bananas for some of the water. Addition of parsley shouldn’t need any special adjustments of the recipe. I ended up with a recipe which is more or less a mixture of all these.

If you’re unsure about the process of how to make marshmallows, Cooking for Engineers has a detailed step-by-step description with pictures. The pictures at the end of this post should also give you an idea of what the texture is like. If you’re still lost, check out this video (the first in a series of six) on how to make mango marshmallows.

Banana marshmallows with parsley
65 g water
200 g sugar
10 g gelatin, bloomed in plenty of water
65 g banana, mashed
parsley (see comment below on why it shouldn’t be finely chopped)

Bring water and sugar to boil while stirring. Remove from heat when temperature reaches 110-115 °C (230-240 F). Add bloomed gelatin sheets and mashed bananas. Whip for 10 minutes (much longer than you think!). Add parsley to taste. Grease a pan, sprinkle with powdered sugar and spread mixture in pan. When set, invert pan on a surface dusted with plenty of powdered sugar and starch. Cut up in desired pieces and coat every cut surface with powdered sugar and starch.

What about the taste? I tasted the mixture before it set and was surprised by how well the banana and parsley blended together. To be honest, it tasted really nice! The next day however, after I had cut the marshmallows into squares, they tasted quite different. The parsley aroma had changed significantly and was more reminiscent of hay, so I was quite disappointed. The banana flavour was still intact, but I felt it was somewhat weaker than in the fresh mixture. Nevertheless, some guests I served it to reached out for both a second and a third piece of my banana marshmallows with parsley, so they couldn’t have been that bad after all. Perhaps it had to do with the texture which was really, really nice!

It turns out that the hay like off flavour of parsley is well known and described in the litterature! See for instance “Hay-like off-flavour of dry parsley” or “Evaluation of the effect of drying on aroma of parsley by free choice profiling”. The molecule responsible for the hay-like off flavour is 3-methyl-2,4-nonanedione. And apparently vacuum-microwave drying of parsley gives less hay flavour.

It is suggested that the hay like off flavour is formed by oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids or polyenes. As a consequence, I would suggest not to chop the parsley (or at least leave large pieces intact) to limit the exposure to oxygen. After parsley has been added, the mixture should be mixed carefully to keep the leaves intact. I used finely chopped parsley when I made the marshmallows in order to increase the release of volatile compounds from the parsley, and I think this is the main reason why I got the hay like off flavour.

Whip until you get a thick, creamy texture.

Spread in a pan greased with butter/fat and sprinkled with powdered sugar.

It’s time for the second round of the They go really well together food blogging event (hereafter referred to as TGRWT #2). Ingredients to pair this time are banana and parsley, which should be an easy match compared to last round with coffee, chocolate and garlic. Deadline is June 1st, so there’s still a couple of weekends left for you to do some experimental cooking. The event and round-up is hosted by Tara over at Should you eat that, so check out her post with instructions on how to participate!

I’ve tried to track down the origin of this pairing. First place I saw it mentioned was by Heston Blumenthal at eGullet, and in an interview with The Independent Heston explains how he discovered it:

He gives an example of this creative process in action. “I was cooking rabbit stew for the kids last summer in France, lifted the lid and threw in chopped parsley and got a smell of banana.” Which prompted him to pair banana with parsley, and banana with tarragon. “It worked really well.”

I have found odour activity values (OAV) for parsley, but not for banana. A search at The good scents company reavels that (Z)-3-hexen-1-yl formate and linalool are present in both banana and parsley. When comparing the OAV data of parsley with a search for banana only at The good scents company oct-1-en-3-one and (Z)-hex-3-enyl acetate were also found. Please post a comment if you have more data on the volatile compounds of this pairing and their OAV values.

In previous posts and comments I have suggested that flavour pairings based on key odorants could be explored by looking at odor activity values (= ratio of volatile compound to it’s threshold). If two foods share one or more key odorants, chances are that they will go well together. It is also reasonable to assume that the more key odorants are shared, the more similar the flavours will be and the more likely it is that the foods will blend well and match each other.

Having initiated the TGRWT event I figured I should try to see if there was any OAV data available for coffee, chocolate and garlic. I was lucky to find OAVs for coffee (both arabica and robusta beans) and cocoa. To compare coffee and cocoa I sorted the flavour compounds in a descending order based on the OAV, keeping only the 20 first compounds. I turned out that 7 out of 20 key odorants in coffee and cocoa are shared, corresponding to 28/25% and 39% respectively of the total “odor activity” (= sum of OAV of top 20 odorants). Here’s the whole list:

(I hope the authors stuck to the IUPAC naming conventions as I did not take the time to check if synonyms were present in the compounds lists)

To compare this with a random pairing I search for more OAVs and found data for parmigiano reggiano and mango, so I repeated the excercise. Among the 20 odorants with the highest OAVs respectively for coffee and mango there was no overlap. A neglibile overlap was found between cocoa and mango: one odorant (linalool) was present in both with OAVs corresponding to 0.03% and 0.05% of the “odor activity” respectively. The fact that there is no overlap between coffee or cocoa and mango does not imply that they don’t go well together, only that their key odorants don’t match. Parmigiano reggiano and cocoa however had a lot in common, as seen from the table below. In fact 6 out of 20 key odorants, representing 36% and 89% of the “odor activity” for parmigiano reggiano and cocoa respectively.

The degree of overlap between parmesan and cocoa is in fact better than for coffee and chocolate when judging by the percentages (albeit with one less odorant), so this pairing will certainly be included in a future TGRWT event! A quick google search revealed that chef Masaharu Morimoto has come up with a recipe combining cocoa and parmesan:

Chocolate Carbonara with Parmigiano Reggiano Cream

Chocolate Pasta:
1 pound all-purpose flour
4 eggs
½ cup cocoa powder
1 Tablespoon olive oil

Pasta Sauce:
2 cups cream
4 egg yolks
½ cup sugar
½ cup Parmigiano Reggiano

For the Chocolate Pasta:
Sift flour and cocoa powder together and knead in the eggs and olive oil for 15 minutes. Rest for another fifteen minutes then roll and cut in a pasta machine. Heat up a pot of lightly salted water and boil pasta until al dente.

For the Pasta Sauce:
In a medium sauce pot scald the cream. In a separate bowl, whisk together egg yolks, Parmigiano Reggiano, and sugar. Temper this mixture into the hot cream and bring to a light simmer, whisking constantly to prevent curdling.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any OAVs for garlic, so I haven’t been able to verify the triple pairing forming the basis for TGRWT #1. The claim was that coffee has dimethyl sulfide in common with garlic, and methyl pyrazine in common with chocolate. The table above confirms that coffee and chocolate have several methyl pyrazines in common, but dimethylsulfide is not among the 20 key odorants in coffee. This puzzles me, but there could of course be other volatile compounds that garlic shares with coffee. There should also be quite a difference between raw garlic (not to mention between whole, crushed and possibly even minced) and roasted garlic. If I overlooked something (or perhaps a paper with OAVs for garlic), please drop me an email about this. The OAVs of garlic could easily be calculated if data on volatile compounds in garlic and threshold concentrations are available.

I did a search on coffee, cocoa and garlic on The Good Scents Company website as described previously and found the following compounds either naturally occuring or used for recreating the aroma of coffee, cocoa and garlic:

So there are obviously similarities similarities between coffee, chocolate and garlic, but the question is whether these compounds are key odorants or not.

It’s only fair enough to add that the concept of odor activity values has it’s limitations. Some are related to matrix effects, because thresholds are not necessarily recorded in a matrix mimicking the food product. Possible synergies between flavour compounds are disregarded (examples are known where sub-threshold concentrations are detected in the presence of other volatile compounds). Also, the underlying assumption that the odor intensity increases linearily is not quite correct. The typical intensity vs. concentration curve is more ‘S’ shaped with an expansive, linear and compressive region as shown below. At low concentrations (expansive region) synergism (also known as hyperadditivity or mutual enhancement) is observed. At high concentrations (compressive region) antagonism (or subadditivity or mutual suppresion) is observed. This means that a high OAV overestimates and a low OAV underestimates the impact of the individual compounds. This also means that the odor activity percentages calculated for the pairings above should be take with a pinch of salt. In between these extremes normal additivities are observed.

Even though OAVs are not phsychophysical measures of the perceived odor intensity, they compare quite well with models that take different aspects of sensing into accout. The validity of the found OAV can also be tested by a recombination of the flavour compounds to see how good it imitates the original product studied. I can recommend the freely downloadable article “Evaluation of the Key Odorants of Foods by Dilution Experiments, Aroma Models and Omission” (DOI: 10.1093/chemse/26.5.533) for those interested in reading more about the science.

Despite the drawbacks and limitations I think OAVs can and will be helpful when studying the flavour pairing hypothesis.

Tips: You can read more about OAVs in books which are (partly) available through Google books.

It’s time to sum up the contributions to the food blogging event They go really well together (TGRWT). There were five seven contributions plus a number of suggestions in the comments to the announcement post and I would like to thank you all very much indeed for taking time to experiment in your kitchens! Here are the results (in no particular order):

Lamiacucina: Candied, chocolate coated Garlic. Garlic cloves were heated in a strong sugar-coffee solution. Cloves were then dried and coated with chocolate. Succession of taste and aroma: strong, unpleasant character of garlic. Bloggers verdict: disappointing!

Blog & White: Chocolate-Coffee Mayonnaise with Garlic. Adapted from Hervé This’ chocolate mayonnaise with added coffee and garlic. Succession of taste and aroma: chocolate aroma is followed by taste of garlic and sweetness of chocolate, coffee aftertaste. Bloggers verdict: Interesting (but wife hates it!).

Should you eat that: Mocha Tofu Mousse with Garlic. Roasted garlic cloves were added to an adapted version of Scharfenberger’s mocha tofu mousse. Succession of taste and aroma: coffee followed by chocolate, then a subtle, sweet, roasted garlic aftertaste. Bloggers verdict: I would definately make it again!

M’s blog: Mocca garlic creme brulee. As the name suggests a creme brulee with espresso, chocolate and a garlic clove. Bloggers verdict: Tasted like mocca creme brulee.

Khymos: Coffee espuma with garlic and chocolate. Coffee and cream espuma with added chocolate and roasted garlic. Succession of taste and aroma: coffee with sweet taste, then a faint chocolate aroma followed by a garlicky aftertaste. My verdict: Aromas blend well together. Would use less garlic for dessert version.

Entries added after first posting:

GrapeThinking: Roasted garlic dipped in melted chocolate with coffee beans. Succession of taste and aroma: Roast garlic doesn’t have much of a smell. Chocolate and coffee always smell good. Bloggers verdict: Good aroma. Taste was good in the beginning; slightly funky aftertaste. Texture of garlic was good.

Kompottsurfer: Espresso-risotto with bitter chocolate, tomatoe and mozzarella (posting in German). Bloggers verdict: Color was a disaster, and difficult to get relative proportions right. But aroma worked out prette nice.

From the different comments it seems that garlic is a difficult beast to tame, especially when used raw. A major challenge is finding the right balance between the aromas. Garlic was either too strong or almost absent. Chocolate and coffee however seem to go very well together (and my preliminary search for odor activity values confirm this - more on this soon!).

I also find it interesting that ratios of chocolate, coffee and garlic used influence the succession of aroma and taste (”>” meaning “followed by”):

Is it a coincidence that coffee is the first aroma noticed in the two “foamy” preparations or is this simply a result of the different ratios used?

I should mention that I also tried to make a chicken mole using the three ingredients. Based on a couple of recipes from the net and some tinkering I ended up with a chicken mole that had a little too much chocolate… It tasted … eh … strange, so I decided to add balsamic vinegar which helped a lot! The coffee blended in very well however, so this is how I would make it the next time using less chocolate:

Chocolate coffee chicken mole
800 g canned, crushed tomatoes
750 g chicken breast,
1 red chili, chopped
2 t chili paste
2 onions, chopped
6 cloves of garlic, chopped
3 dL coffee
150 g pistacchio nuts, chopped
1 t ground cumin
30-50 g dark chocolate
2 T sugar
1-2 T balsamico vinegar

Brown onions. Add the rest and simmer. Season to taste with chocolate, balsamico vinegar and sugar. Serve with rice. Sprinkle with coriander/cilantro or ruccola/rocket salad.

There were also a number of recipe suggestions in the comments to the three posts on the coffee/chocolate/garlic theme.

5. Learn how to control taste and flavor.

When invited over to friends for dinner, even before eating, you judge the food by it’s aroma, handing out compliments such as “It really smells nice”! Thankfully, nature is on the cook’s side, because when we prepare food and heat it, volatile aroma compounds are released which trigger very sensitive receptors in our noses. It is generally said that 80% of “taste” is perceived by our nose (what we refer to as aroma), whereas only 20% is perceived by our tongue. How important smell is becomes clear if you catch a cold - suddenly all food tastes the same. Too illustrate the importance of smell, prepare equally sized pieces of apple and pear. Close your eyes, hold your nose and let a friend give you the pieces without telling which is which. Notice how difficult it is to tell them apart. In fact, with a good nose clip you wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference between an apple and an onion! Then, with a piece of either in your mouth, let go of your nose. Within a second you can tell whether it’s apple or pear!

Taste
Our tongue has approximately 10.000 taste buds and they are replaced every 1 to 3 weeks. Their sensitivity increases roughly in the following order: sweet < salt < sour < bitter. In addition to the four basic tastes there is umami, the savory, fifth taste. This taste is produced by monosodium glutamate (MSG), disodium 5’-inosine monophosphate (IMP) and disodium 5’-guanosine monophosphate (GMP). Pure MSG doesn’t taste of much, but can enhance the taste of other foods. There are also some claims of a sixth taste.

A number of taste synergies/enhancements exist. I’ve also included three examples of how flavours can influence taste:

The only general, over-all trend which can be found is that binary tastes enhance each other at low concentrations and suppress each other at higher concentrations (but there are several exceptions!). Do check out “An overview of binary taste–taste interactions” (DOI:10.1016/S0950-3293(02)00110-6) if you’re interested in more details on binary taste interactions. I’ve tried to visualize taste enhancements (green) and suppresions (red) in the following figure using arrows to indicate the direction. For example, salt suppresses sweetnes at high concentrations.

In addition to taste, our tongue also percieves texture, temperature and astringency. An interesting thing about the temperature receptors is that they can be triggered not only by temperature, but also by certain foods. The cold receptor is triggered by mint, spearmint, menthol and camphor. There is even a patented compound, monomenthyl succinate, that triggers the cold receptor, but without the taste of menthol. It’s marketed under the name Physcool by the flavour company Mane.

Substances such as ethanol and capsaicin trigger the trigeminal nerve, causing a burning sensation. Capsaicin also triggers the high temperature receptors of the tongue, hence the term “hot food” which can refer both to spicy food and food which is very warm. For a general article about taste, check out “Taste Perception: Cracking the Code” (DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020064, free download).

Flavour
Our nose has about 5-10 million receptors capable of detecting volatile compounds. There are about 1000 different smell receptors and they allow us to distinguish more than 10.000 different smells - perhaps as many as 100.000! In order for us to smell something, the molecule needs to enter our nose at a concentration sufficient for us to detect. Aroma compounds are typically small, non-polar molecules. The fact that they are small means they will have low boiling points - they are volatile and spread rapidly throughout a room. They are often referred to as essential oils and are very soluble in fat, oil and alcohol. These aroma compounds generally not soluble in water, but there are also water soluble aroma compounds; just think of a well prepared stock - no fat but lots of taste and aroma!

A challenge with aroma molecules is that they should remain intact during storage and not be released until cooking (or even better, until consumption). A example would be to install a Liebieg condenser over your pot. Dylan Stiles has explored this in his column Bench Monkey by placing a bag of ice on top of the lid. He claims that his roommates prefereed the curry which has been cooked under “reflux conditions”. The study was performed in a double blind manner (which I will come back to in part 8 of this series).

Because aroma compounds are volatile, spices should be obtained whole and stored in tight containers away from light. If possible, fresh herbs should be used. The flavour of herbs and spices can be extracted by chopping or grinding to increase the surface area. To speed up grinding in a mortar you can add a pinch of salt or sugar.

Heat can help extract flavour (just think of how we brew tea or coffee), but will also evaporate volatile compounds, so a general advice would be to add spices at the start and herbs towards the end of the cooking time. Some herbs can even be sprinkeled over the food just before serving. In Southeast Asia (and especially India) it is quite common heat spices in a dry pan or in oil. This matures flavours and allows reactions to occur (possibly Maillard reactions). Coarse spices should be added earlier than finely ground spices.

In addition to adding flavour using spices, herbs and other foods, we can also use heat to create new flavours. When sugar is heated, caramel is formed. And if a reducing sugar is heated in the presence of an amino acid, they react and form a host of new flavour compounds in what is known as the Maillard reaction. Caramelisation and the Maillard reaction are known as non-enzymatic browning. Enzymatic browning on the other hand is detrimental to many fruits (such as apples and bananas), but there are a few exceptions. Enzymatic browning is essential in the production of tea (black, green, oolong), coffe, cocoa and vanilla, although this is rarely attempted in kitchen.

Another source of flavour is fermentation. It refers to a process were sugar is converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide by the action of a yeast. In the process a number of flavour compounds are formed as well which is why this is of great interest also from a molecular gastronomy viewpoint. Some examples of fermented products include wine, beer, cider and bread. Fermentation also refers to the process where some bacteria produce lactic acid. Some examples of foods resulting from lactic acid fermentation are yoghurt, kimchi and pickled cucumbers.

Flavour pairing
Cookbooks and recipes throughout the world are the result of billions of experiments. As a result, some very good combinations of herbs and spices have been discovered. Some of these mixtures have even been given names of their own and it is fascinating how easily one can forget that curry for instance is a mixture of spices. Wikipedia has a wonderful overview of herb and spice mixtures from all over the world. I must admit I only new a fraction of these:

Adjika | Advieh | Berbere | Bouquet garni | Buknu | Cajun King | Chaat masala | Chaunk | Chermoula | Chili powder | Curry powder | Djahe | Fines herbes | Five-spice powder | Garam masala | Garlic salt | Harissa | Herbes de Provence | Khmeli suneli | Lawry’s and Adolph’s | Masala | Masuman | Mixed spice | Niter kibbeh | Old Bay Seasoning | Panch phoron | Quatre épices | Ras el hanout | Recado rojo | Shake ‘N’ Bake | Sharena sol | Shichimi | Spice mix | Tajín | Tandoori masala | Tony Chachere’s | Za’atar

A book which I’ve found to be very useful when combining flavours is “Culinary artistry” by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. It is the most comprehensive book about flavour pairing that I’m aware of, and I would say it is indispensible for someone who likes to cook without a cookbook. It has lists of basic flavors contributed by various foods. For example a sweet taste is contributed by foods such as bananas, beets, carrots, coriander, corn, dates, figs, fruits, grapes, onions, poppy seeds, sesame and vanilla (plus sugars and syrups of course). It has lists of “flavor pals”, a term attributed to Jean-Georges Vongerichten. For example, the flavour pals of ginger are allspice, chiles, chives, cinnamon, cloves ,coriander, cumin, curry, fennel, garlic, mace, nutmeg, black pepper and saffron. By far the most extensive part of the book are listings of food matchings. An illustrative example is pork which combines well with (classic/widely used combinations in bold):

apples, apricots, bay leaves, black beans, beer, brandy, cabbage, Calvados, dried sour cherries, clams, Cognac, coriander, cream, cumin, fennel, fruit, garlic, ginger, hoisin sauce, honey, juniper berries, lemon, lime, marsala, molasses, mustard, onions, orange, parsley, black pepper, pineapple, Chinese plum sauce, plums, prunes, quinces, rosemary, sage, sauerkraut, soy sauce, star anise, tarragon, thyme, vinegar, walnuts, whiskey, white wine

Despite the abundance of combinations, I dare say that little is understood about the science behind these flavour pairings. Why do these combinations of herbs and spices go particularily well together? Is it all about getting used to the combinations, so that we learn to like them? What influence does the complexity of the flavour play? These are easy questions that probably have rather complex answers.

Very recently a different approach to flavour pairing has emerged. If two foods share one or more key odorants, chances are that they will go well together. The first step towards finding new pairings would be to identify key odorants. More info on key odorants can be found in the article “Evaluation of the Key Odorants of Foods by Dilution Experiments, Aroma Models and Omission” (DOI: 10.1093/chemse/26.5.533, free download). I’ve initiated the food blogging event “They go really well together” (TGRWT) to explore new flavour pairings and develop new recipes. There are also several blogposts with interesting comments on about flavour pairing.

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Check out my previous blogpost for an overview of the tips for practical molecular gastronomy. The collection of books (favorite, molecular gastronomy, aroma/taste, reference/technique, food chemistry) and links (webresources, people/chefs/blogs, institutions, articles, audio/video) at khymos.org might also be of interest.

For the food blogging event They Go Really Well Together (TGRWT #1) I decided to used baked garlic. Baking gives garlic a slightly sweet, mellow taste and I figured this might work well with the soft texture of an espuma. Just make sure you get fresh garlic without green sprouts - they will give a bitter taste.

4 cloves of baked garlic (baked whole, 30 min @ 150 °C)
3.5 dL strong coffee
30 g sugar
40 g chocolate (70% cocoa)
ground cardamom
3.4 g gelatin (= 2 sheets)
1.5 dL heavy cream (38% fat)
1 iSi cream charger

Mix garlic cloves and coffee with blender or hand-held mixer. Add chocolate, a pinch of cardamom and heat while dissolving sugar. Stir in pre-soaked gelatin. Cool, add heavy cream, sift through fine mesh to remove remaining pieces of garlic and fill 0.5 L iSi gourmet whipper. Charge with 1 cream charger and leave in fridge over night. Serve with a drizzle of instant coffee.

How it tastes? In the finished espuma served cold, the first aroma noticed is coffee accompanied by a sweet taste on the tongue. This is followed by a faint chocolate aroma which then gives way for an aftertaste dominated by garlic. It’s quite surprising and the aromas blend well together. I used 30 g of chocolate, but I’ve increased it to 40 g in the recipe since the cocolate aroma was a little weak. As for uses, I think it would go well with a steak for instance. If used as a dessert I would perhaps reduce the amount of garlic to 2 or 3 cloves so as not to overwhelm the guests (unless they frequent the restaurant Garlic & shots in Soho, London where even the beer is served with garlic!).

Preparing for a presentation on flavour pairing, Bernard Lahousse at Food for design visited François Benzi at Firmenich, a large supplier of aroma chemicals and perfume ingredients. Bernard plans to launch a website dedicated to flavour pairing soon, and in the mean time he posts about it on his blog, including this interesting expansion of the flavour pairing concept:

…you can also use foodpairing to pair food that doesn’t match. Like chocolate and garlic. The trick then is to search for a third food product that has something in common with chocolate and with garlic. An example is coffee. Coffee has flavour components in common with garlic: Dimethyl disulfide and with chocolate: Methyl pyrazine.

My challenge to you all is to come up with recipes that include garlic, chocolate and coffee. Any suggestions?