In my everday cooking sage is really underutilized. The only dish I can think of with sage that I’ve prepared during the last couple of years is potato gnocchi. So this was indeed the most likely candidate for experimentation in this month’s TGRWT #21. Potato gnocchi are one of those dishes that I suddenly feel a craving for, and I make it every now and then. When I get things right the gnocchi have a very light texture which fits nice with the melted butter and cheese. This time I decided to incorporate the peanuts into the gnocchi and apart from that stick to the original recipe.

While cooking I tried to chew some peanuts with a sage leaf, and this was a quite remarkable experience. The roasted peanut flavors blended into the sage, and the sensation was stronger than what is usually the case from the previous TGRWT rounds. When tasting sage by itself it will actually remind me of peanuts and vice versa. The last time I had a similar strong sensation was when combining roasted cauliflower with a cocoa agar gel.


I used a mini-food processor to grind the peanutes to a coarse powder.

Gnocchi with peanuts and sage
1 kg mealy/floury potatoes
100 g roasted peanuts
50 g butter
1 egg
250-300 g flour
1 t salt

For serving:
melted butter
chopped sage
grated parmesan
black pepper

Grind peanuts to coarse powder. Boil (or bake) potatoes (preferably unpeeled) until soft. Drain. While the potatoes are still hot, peel them and mash them. Add peanuts, butter, salt, egg and about half of the flour. Mix. Slowly add more flour until you get a soft and slightly sticky dough. Use as little flour as possible, but remember that with less flour the gnocchi are more prone to fall apoart (the added egg helps bind the gnocchi together by the way). Make a roll, approximately 2.5 cm in diameter and cut 1.5 cm pieces. Press against the back of a fork for the characteristic pattern, and place the gnocchi on a towel sprinkled with flour or semolina. Bring a large pot of salted water to a slow boil (is the salt really necessary here?) and cook the gnocchi for 2-3 minutes, or until they float to the surface. Remove from the water and drain. Serve with melted butter, chopped sage and plenty of grated parmesan and ground black pepper.

Gnocchi ready to be cooked. Use too much flour in the dough and you get boiled lumps of flour. Use too little flour and your gnocchi will fall apart.

Verdict: The amount of peanuts used gave a noticeable, yet mild nutty flavor which actually fitted the gnocchi quite nice (for future gnocchi attempts I can imagine even trying other nuts as well, such as hazelnuts or walnuts). The sage works very well as an aromatic and fresh component together with the more “heavy” flavors of potato, butter and parmesan. And frankly, I must say that the gnocchi were a success! I’ll make a note in the cook book that adding 100 g of peanuts works nice so I won’t forget the next time I make potato gnocchi.

A quick search over at The good scents company reveals that the butyraldehyde occurs naturally in both sage and roasted peanuts. But as I’ve pointed out several times previously – as long as we don’t know the impact odorants it’s impossible to tell whether this is the compound that ties sage and roasted peanuts together or not. If you’ve done litterature searches for impact odorants of roasted peanuts and sage, please tell me about it in the comments

It’s been a couple of months since the last round of “They go really well together” where food bloggers around the world explore food pairings based on similarities in their aroma profiles. The similarity is not based on the concentrations of the aroma components, but rather the odor impact of the components to the overall aroma (and in case you wondered: impact does vary with concentration, but it varies even more with the detection threshold). In other words, what this food pairing does is to point at two foods (which often may seem quite different) and say that these actually have something in common. And because of that it could be worthwhile to try and use them together when cooking. The 21st round of TGRWT is hosted by Greg over at Humbling attemts at creativity, and the foods to pair are sage and roasted peanuts. Head over to his announcement post for more details on how to participate. The deadline is June 1, so there is plenty of time for some creative cooking the next couple of weeks! If you’re not yet familiar with TGRWT you may want to have a look at some of the previous TGRWT rounds.

I prefer my coffee black, and politely decline when offered milk and sugar. However, if offered salt I would probably smile and say “Yes, please!” Salt???! It turns out that adding salt to coffee is not as weird as it may sound at first. There is a tradition for adding a pinch of salt to coffee in Northern Scandinavia, Sibir, Turkey and Hungary. And when available, such as in coastal areas where fresh water from rivers mixes with the salt sea, one would simply use brackish water when preparing coffee. This water typically has a salt content of 0.5-3%, which is lower than the average 3.5% in seawater. This results in a more intense taste and more foaming. And if living far from the sea, the Swedish food blogger Lisa Förare Winbladh let me know that in Northern Sweden one would deliberately add salt if using melt water from glaciers for making coffee. But tradition aside, is there a scientific explanation of this widespread tradition of preparing coffee with addition of salt?

The first thing that comes to mind is that salt reduces bitterness. And to be more precise it is the sodium ion (Na⁺) that interferes with the transduction mechanism of bitter taste. But interestingly the mechanism behind this is not fully understood! One of my very first blog posts was about tonic water and how one by adding salt can suppress the bitter taste and make tonic water more or less sweet. It’s a fascinating experiment that you should try at home. Expect to use about 1,5-2 g salt for a glass with roughly 1,5 dL (150 g) of tonic water. It’s a good idea to start with a little salt and taste it as you go.

Try adding a little salt to tonic water – the effect is quite surprising: The characteristic bitterness from the added quinine disappears!

Bitterness is an important flavor in coffee, but under less-than-optimal extraction conditions it can be too dominant. Generally bitter tasting compounds are less water soluble than other coffee flavors, hence the bitter compounds are extracted towards the end of the brewing. High temperatures (close to boiling) and long extraction times also favor bitterness. In that respect the coffee percolator is known to produce rather bitter, over-extracted coffee due to near boiling temperatures, and such coffee would most likely benefit from a little salt! And before the percolator came the ground coffee was just put into the boiling water and then left to settle. I can really imagine how brackish water could actually benefit

But the salt need not be reserved for over-extracted coffee. I’ve tried using salt both in a drip coffee maker and in the filter basked when pulling an espresso. The tests were very un-scientific, but the tiny amount of salt does dampen bitterness and change the coffee taste (but the coffee does not have a salty taste). Since I lack cupping experience, I certainly lack the language to describe how salt influences the taste, so I leave it up to you to try it out! And maybe some baristas with cupping experience can fill me out on this and do some tests?

In stead of just using plain salt with coffee, cured ham would signal rafinesse if served in central Europe, whereas in Northern Sweden there is a tradition for serving dried meat with coffee. The Swedish author Mikael Niemi describes this in his novel Popular music from Vittula:

“… and then the pièce de résistance among all the sweetmeats: a hard, brown lump of dried reindeer meat. Salty slices were cut and placed in the coffee, chunks of coffee-cheese stirred in, and white sugar lumps were held between the lips. And then, fingers trembling, we all poured the coffee mixture into our saucers, and slurped our way to heaven.”

With cured ham, apart from the salt-coffee interaction, one also has the combination of meat and coffee. From previous flavor pairing rounds TGRWT #1 and #5 (chocolate/coffee and coffee/meat respectively) we have seen that coffee and meat in some ways approach each other and are actually a good combination. A secret tip BTW is to add a little coffee to your beef stocks for extra depth and richness – this works because coffee shares many impact flavors with browned meats due to the Maillard reaction.

Now I’m curious – are you aware of coffee-salt combinations in your own country? Please tell me about it! And if you try a pinch of salt in your coffee – how did it taste?

Update: Read about my tests of coffee with salt at Tim Wendelboe’s coffe shop

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Some articles that discuss the role of sodium ions (Na⁺) in suppression of bitter receptors:

Breslin, P. A. S; Beauchamp, G.K. “Suppression of Bitterness by Sodium: Variation Among Bitter Taste Stimuli” Chemical Senses 1995, 20, 609-623.

Breslin, P. A. S; Beauchamp, G.K. “Salt enhances flavour by suppressing bitterness” Nature 1997 (387), 563.

Bresling, P. A. S “Interactions among salty, sour and bitter compounds” Trends in Food Science & Technology 1996 (7), 390. (free download)

Keast, R. S. J.; Breslin, P. A. S. “An overview of binary taste–taste interactions” Food Quality and Preference 2003, 14(2), 111.

In addition to suppression of bitterness, salt can enhance sweetness at low concentrations and umami flavors at higher concentrations (more about this in part 5 of “Practical tips for molecular gastronomy”).

If I were to name a topic for this year’s Flemish Primitives event I guess gadgets would be it. I’ve already covered the high pressure processing in a previous post. Regrettably we were only shown pictures and movies of this machine (it is to large/complex to be brought on stage) but there was much more that would qualify for a post focusing on some of the gadgets presented.

Crycotuv
The most obscure machine in my opinion was the Crycotuv – a vacuum chamber which could be cooled to any desired temperature between -150 and 0 °C in seconds/minutes. The rapid cooling was achieved by evaporation of liquid nitrogen (so in order to run a Crycotuv you’ll need a steady supply of LN2). The major benefit of rapid vacuum freezing is significantly less cell damage. In conventional freezing the damaged cells cause leaks when the food is thawed. When the desired vacuum was reached, a spray nozzle also allowed flavors to be sprayed onto foods inside the vacuum chamber, resulting in a “vacuum impregnation”. This was demonstrated with oranges slices which were submerged in coffee. Using the Crycotuv the airpockets were replaced by coffee.

(skip the long intro with overly dramatic music and view from 0:53 – that’s were the demo starts)

The most interesting demonstration was how one could use the vacuum to expand foods and then freeze them to obtain sponges. This was done with foie gras and I sure wish I could have tasted one of those! The Crycotuv is based on a ideas from Kristof Coppens and produced by Messer, and during the sessions the Jean-Claude Claeys and Harold Demoen (from Messer and Cretel respectively) were also on stage.

During the presentation is occured to me that the vacuum impregnation (without cooling) is identical to what you can do with the Gastrovac, and that you could even make a DIY version with a pressure cooker and a water suction pump. Or if you have a food saver with the possibility of attaching jars you can use them as well for vacuum impregnation.

Chef Roger van Damme with the EmulsionFire. Photo by Piet De Kersgieter.

EmulsionFire
An immersion blender will bring you quite far when making emulsions such as mayonnaise, but if you want to make emulsions at a larger scale the EmulsionFire could be your choice. The machine was demonstrated by chef Roger van Damme and 3 emulsion samples were handed out to every participant – they were indeed thick and very rich. In fact, it’s possible to make emulsions as thick as Nutella with EmulsionFire. It was mentioned that the machine uses magnets, but no details were given on this. My guess is that the machine uses a contact less, magnet based drive train in the emulsifier unit as would probably be qutie favorable from a cleaning viewpoint – but this is only a guess.

Samples prepared by the EmulsionFire: dark chocolate, milk chocolate and coconut creams.

Laboratory equipment
The large laboratory supplier VWR was a sponsor of the event and had a range of equipment on display at the back of the scene. I talked to the VWR sales representative Dominique Mauroy and he let me know that they soon will launch a brochure with laboratory equipment of particular relevance for use in the kitchen. I’ll update once I know more about this. There is also a launching event planned on April 19 in Belgium. Anyway – here are some of the gadgets VWR had on display. This is equipment that we use daily in my daytime job, and it’s really fun to see how it has found it’s way into kitchens.

To the left a conventional rotary evaporator, but check out the wide mouthed flask on the right! This is perfect glassware for food stuffs which are sticky and may require more extensive cleaning.

In chemistry labs UltraTurrax stirrers are a common sight. They are high shear stirres but without “external” moving parts (like the knives of an immersion blender) and are excellent for dispersion of hydrocolloids.

Freeze driers (left) are well known in the food industry, but chefs are also beginning to see the potential that lies in this low temperature flavor concentration technique. Of course there were also water baths for sous vide on display.

To the left a standard laboratory heating plate with magnetic stirring. To the right magnetic stirring bars of different sizes.

SOSA aroma library
SOSA should be well known to many with their extensive product range for professional kitchens. At The Flemish Primitives this year they displayed their aroma library. With a total of 192 flavors grouped into categories such as sweets, nuts, herbs, flowers, vegetables, roots, fiction, lactis etc you basically have “an alphabet of flavors” at your hands. It’s a great way of learning flavors and a perfect toolbox when investigating flavor pairings. I’d sure like to have a library like this in my kitchen! Interestingly Sense for taste (who formally run the foodpairing website) and SOSA had co-published a small booklet on flavorpairing with two recipes using some of the flavors from the “flavor alphabet”.

“Alphabet of flavors” from SOSA: 192 flavors at your finger tips!

Wine table
And finally a gadget for the more tech savy people: a Microsoft Surface table running a wine application (from the company Metanous). As you can see from the pictures and the video a coaster with an identifying chip is attached to each wine bottle. When the bottle is put down on the table it is immediately recognized and a circular menu appears around the bottle. If you move or rotate the bottle, the menu follows the movements. The menu gives access to text, pictures and videos about the wine, the grape variety, the growing region, interviews with the wine producers etc. The table allows plenty of simultaneous user interaction with different gestures and touches.

Due to the outbreak sessions I regrettably missed the presentation of Sergio Herman’s sophisticated dinner plates.
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I also visited The Flemish Primitives in 2009. You can read more about that in my four posts from last year: The Flemish Primitives: A travel report (part 1), Chocolate surprise (part 2), Heston Blumenthal (part 3) and Glowing lollipops (part 4). Final note to readers: This year my travel expenses were covered by TFP and the tourism bureau of Brugge.

Again I was lukcy that all the practical details worked out so I could attend this year’s Flemish Primitives in Brugge. For some one who’s not attended, it’s not so easy to grasp the concept and ideas behind The Flemish Primitives (TFP). And I admit, even though I’ve been there twice it’s not so easy to convey it in a short way. First of all the name is rather cryptic (unless you’re into art) as it refers to early Netherlandish painting. The link to food is described as follows by the organizers of the event (my highlights):

In the 15th and 16th century, ’The Flemish Primitives’ were masters in combining their talent with new techniques. Techniques they developed by interacting with other disciplines like manuscripting, sculpting, etc. This way of working changed the painting techniques in all of Western Europe forever. The event ‘The Flemish Primitives’ wants to continue in the same spirit. Respect for food products and beverages, the knowledge of the classic cooking techniques combined with a stimulation of new techniques and creativity. By promoting interaction between scientists, the world’s most famous chefs and artists, the event wants to deliver a creative boost for the food industry and gastronomy in Belgium and the world.

Considering last year’s sucess it was no big surprise that this year’s event was sold out (and the foyer of the Concertgebouw was equally full in the coffee breaks). And with the memories from last year I arrived in Brugge with great expectations. One main difference from previous years was that the scientific parts were much better integrated throughout the day. Scientists were on stage alongside the chefs, explaining their work. Also, contrary to last year’s back stage kitchen, they had now moved the kitchen onto the stage, flanked by a bar, some sofas and laboratory mezzanine. A good decision!

Flavor pairing (or food pairing as they call it) was the main topic of last year, but even this year flavor pairing was mentioned throughout the day by several people. It’s also obvious that Bernard Lahousse and his team have worked hard to get some of the sponsors of the event to incorporate the idea into their printed material (Belcolade and SOSA).

Flavor pairing diagrams like this one were incorporated into the Belcolade (= Belgian chocolate company) handouts. Similar diagrams for a great number of food items can be found at the food pairing website.

As I see it, one of the main objects of TFP is to find (or even create) new sources of creativity for chefs. And art, science and cooking can indeed be a fruitfull mix for creative exchange and development. Working as a chef is all about constantly finding new sources of creativity. Even among the very best, one can find signs of creative fatigue – it suffices to mention Ferran Adria who recently announced that el Bulli would close down for two years (2012 and 2013). He gives several reasons, but The Times Online reports that according to Spanish culinary insiders the “effort needed to keep dreaming up mouthwatering wonders, has worn him down” (more in a recent Q&A from WSJ). Ferran does however promise to be back in 2014!

TFP 2010 included presentations of five novel technologies and concepts. These included the use of very high pressure for processing of seafood and fruit. This is commonly done in the food industry for preservation purposes, but now it was used mainly for the textural and flavor changes induced. A second device shown was a combined vacuum and freezing chamber were the freezing was effected by liquid nitrogen, allowing virtually any temperature between 0 and -150 °C to be reached within minutes. Regrettably I missed part of the presentation of the third device (due to break out sessions that were running alongside the main program – more on those later). But from the pictures it seemed to be a microfluidic device for precise delivery of flavor essences (feel free to fill me out on this one in the comments!). The last machine presented was a kitchen emulsifier for preparation of emulsions as viscous as Nutella. I’ll post pictures and more info on the gadgets in a separate post.

In the preparations to this years event surveys with chefs and consumers had led to the forumlation of 10 statements on the identity of Belgian gastronomy, which in essence are not too different from the Statement on the ‘new cookery’ which was formulated by Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and Harold McGee back in 2006. I think they are well formulated and it’s hard to disagree with any of the statements. I also belive that most of them could be adopted by many chefs world wide by substituting their own country into the statements. I bring the statements here in extenso for your convenience:

1. Local ingredients. Work with regional products.
2. High-quality ingredients. Work with products of the best quality available preferably in Belgium. Work with seasonal products in the right season.
3. Producer orientation. Chefs have the power to control the quality of the ingredients by making specific choices and demands. Belgian chefs are partly responsible for the motivation of producers to supply the highest quality.
4. Consumer orientation. Chefs have the power to broaden the palate and to revalue or upgrade specific products by paying attention to forgotten, seasonal and local products, or products with low intrinsic value.
5. Inventiveness and openness. Be open to new techniques and products. Strive for innovation and improvement.
6. Inventiveness and cooperation. Strive for intensive cooperation between chefs, the industry and the scientific community. Information exchange is particularily important, also between chefs.
7. Innovation and tradition. Innovation and tradition are not opposites. Have respect for traditional Belgian cuisine by including this respect or tradition as such in dishes.
8. Tastiness and well-being. Strive for food which is tasty above all, but also keep in mind to provide a state of well-being during and after the meal.
9. Moral responsibility. Strive for the use of products that have been produced in an ethical, ecological and sustainable manner.
10. Multisensorial tastiness. Strive for an optimum and ample stimulation of all senses of the consumer. Create a socially agreeable and exclusive experience.

Apart from all the journalists present this year there were also a couple of food bloggers present. You may already know the blogs which mainly focus on restaurant reviews: Very good food (Denmark), Food snob blog (UK), High end food (Germany), Food intelligence (France), Cuisiner en ligne (France) and Gastros on tour. I had a chat with some of them and they all have non-food day time jobs, just like myself. Like last year I plan to write several posts on various topics from TFP – and I will publish this as soon as time allows. But in the mean time, check out the blogs mentioned for a perspective and covering of TFP 2010 that will probably be different from mine

Update: There were more food bloggers present: Coolinary (Belgium), Der Kompottsurfer (Germany).

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I also visited The Flemish Primitives in 2009. You can read more about that in my four posts from last year: The Flemish Primitives: A travel report (part 1), Chocolate surprise (part 2), Heston Blumenthal (part 3) and Glowing lollipops (part 4). Final note to readers: This year my travel expenses were covered by TFP and the tourism bureau of Brugge.

This month’s round of TGRWT is hosted by John Sconzo over at Docsconz, and the foods to pair this time are pumpkin and cooked chicken.* As always you can find instructions on how to participate in the announcement post. If you are new to TGRWT (which stands for They Go Really Well Together), check out the round-ups of the previous 19 rounds!

* In case you wondered why the link to the announcement posts includes lemon grass: There was some confusion regarding how to read the charts at the foodpairing website. The initial suggestion was to use pumpkin and lemon grass, but his has now been changed to pumpkin and cooked chicken.

This month’s round of TGRWT is hosted by Pablo over at Medellitin, and the foods to pair this time are tomato and black tea. As always you can find instructions on how to participate in the announcement post. If you are new to TGRWT (which stands for They Go Really Well Together), check out the round-ups of the previous 18 rounds! And if you are chemically inclined, you may want to read on to learn more about the compounds behind this months pairing.

With a little help from Douglas Baldwin (whom I interviewed about sous vide recently) I’ve been able to pinpoint the compounds which occur naturally in both tomato and black tea, according to The Good Scents Company website:

(E)-2-hexen-1-al, (E)-2-hexen-1-ol, (E)-2-hexen-1-yl acetate, (E)-2-nonen-1-al, (E)-geranyl acetone, (Z)-2-hexen-1-ol, (Z)-3-hexen-1-al, (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol, (Z)-3-hexen-1-yl acetate, 1-octen-3-ol, 1-penten-3-ol, 2,4-decadien-1-al, 2-hexen-1-ol, 2-methyl furan, 5-methyl furfural, ammonia, butyl alcohol, butyraldehyde, butyric acid, citronellol, dihydroactinidolide, dimethyl sulfoxide, dimethyl trisulfide, ethyl hexanoate, gamma-hexalactone, gamma-valerolactone, geranic acid, hexanal, hydrogen sulfide, isoamyl alcohol, isovaleraldehyde, isovaleric acid, linalool oxide, methyl ethyl ketone, ortho-guaiacol, propionaldehyde, valeraldehyde

Now this might seem impressive, but as I’ve touched upon previously it is highly uncertain that all of these compounds actually contribute to the flavors of tomato and black tea. Many are probably present at concentrations well below the individual odor thresholds. To alleviate this one preferably needs odor activity values. The closest I came for tomatoes was the mention (free pdf) of a “model” tomato paste with the following compounds:

(E)-beta-damascenone, 2-phenylethanol, 3-methylbutanal, 3-methylbutyric acid, 4-hydroxy-2,5-dimethyl-3(2H)-furanone, 4-hydroxy-4,5-dimethyl-2(5H)-furanone, 4-vinylguaiacol, 5-ethyl-4-hydroxy-2-methyl-3(2H)-furanone, acetic acid, butyric acid, dimethyl sulphide, eugenol, linalool, methional, methylpropanal, vanillin

And for tea (both black and green) there is a complete PhD thesis available for download (in German). The following compounds in black teas had high FD (flavor dilution) values:

(E)-2-nonenal, (E)-beta-damascenone, (E,E)-2,4-decadienal, (E,E,Z)-2,4,6-nonatrienal, 2-phenylethanol, 3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethyl-2(5H)-furanone, 3-methyl-2,4-nonandion, 4-hydroxy-2,5-dimethyl-3(2H)-furanone, beta-ionone, geraniol, linalool, phenylacetaldehyde, phenylacetic acid, vanillin

Comparing the two latter lists, we get the following shortlist for odorants present in tomato (paste) and black tea which contribute significantly to their aromas:
(E)-beta-damascenone, 2-phenylethanol, 4-hydroxy-2,5-dimethyl-3(2H)-furanone, linalool, vanillin (shown below). The fact that none of these are included in the data from The Good Scents Database illustrates my point about using OAVs to evaluate flavor pairing.

References:
Werner Grosch “Evaluation of the Key Odorants of Foods by Dilution Experiments, Aroma Models and Omission” Chem. Sens. 2001, 531.
Schuh, Christian “Wichtige Aromastoffe in schwarzem und grünem Tee (Camellia sinensis)”, PhD disseratation, TU München, 2004.

For TGRWT #18 hosted by Aidan Brooks I decided to use puff pastry dough and laminate some Norwegian blue cheese, “Norzola” (made to mimic Gorgonzola) between two layers and roll them out. To accompany this I made a plum reduction with my two favorite spices, star anis and ginger. I should also mention that I tried the very simplest combination of plum and gorgonzola as well: a simple slice of bread with some Gorgonzola and a thick slice of a blue plum. This was very delicious – and takes absolutely no time to prepare.

Norzola puffs
Spread room tempered blue cheese on puff pastry dough and cover with a second sheet. Roll out until doubled in size (at least). Bake at 200 °C until golden brown.

Plum reduction
200 g plums (I used red and green), stoned
100 g orange juice
35 g sugar
1/3 star anis (whole)
ginger to taste

Simmer for about 1 hour. Remove the star anis and purrée. Reduce further until desired consistency.

Serving: apply a generous spoon of plum reduction, sprinkle with finely chopped walnuts and place Norzola puff on top.

The few blue/purple plums take the final color a long way!

Verdict: This one was yummy! My wife (who’s not very fond of blue cheese) approved and helped herself with a second serving It’s both sweet, sour, creamy, airy, crunchy – and it’s even got tannins (plum skins + walnuts).

Finally it’s time for a new round of TGRWT. It’s the 18th round and the host this time is Aidan Brooks, a trainee chef who works in Spain. In his blog he’s touched upon flavor pairing several times and also wrote a blog post on the same topic for “Word of mouth”, the food blog of The Guardian. The foods to pair this time are plum and blue cheese, and as usual you can read more about how to participate in the announcement post. The deadline for submissions is September 1st.

TGRWT is not a competition, but Aidan wanted to add a little competitive element to round of the meal. So his challenge to you (in addition to the normal TGRWT contributions) is to make a dessert using plum and blue cheese which additionally incorporates any two of the following flavors: salty, sour, bitter, umami, pungent, astringent. He will pick a winner and the prize is quite cool: he’ll make a restaurant level version of it, with the name of the winner incorporated in the title of the dish and try to get this on the menu at Restaurante Ferrero where he works as a Pastry Chef on the team of Paco Morales, Spain’s “Chef of the Year 2009″.

Photo by mykrar from flickr.com (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Regarding the chemistry behind this pairing there is (for once) actually some informartion available. From a paper on gorgonzola I’ve learnt that 2-nonanone, 1-octen-3-ol, 2-heptanol, ethyl hexanoate, methylanisole and 2-heptanone are the most important impact odorants of natural and creamy Gorgonzola cheese [1]. For plums I haven’t found anything on impact odorants in fresh plums, but there is a paper on impact odorants in candied plums [2], and comparing the two papers I find that phenyl acetaldehyde, ethyl benzoate and ethyl octanoate are present in both Gorgonzola cheese and candied plums and have odor activity values greater than 1. There’s another paper as well comparing two plum varieties were the abstract mentions odor unit values, but alas – I don’t have access to the full text (maybe someone with access could check it and give me a hint about the impact odorants?) [3]. There are probably some differences between fresh and candied plums, but at least this shows that you’re safe if you want to use candied plums when cooking up something with blue cheese.

[1] Moio, L.; Piombiono, P.; Addeo F. J. Dairy Research 2000, 67, 273 “Odour-impact compounds of Gorgonzola cheese”. DOI: 10.1017/S0022029900004106
[2] Nunes, C.; Coimbra, M. A.; Saraiva, J.; Rocha, S. M. Food Chemistry 2008, 111, 897 “Study of the volatile components of a candied plum and estimation of their contribution to the aroma”. DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2008.05.003
[3] Gómez, E.; Ledbetter, C. A. J. of the Science of Food and Agriculture 2006, 65 (1), 111. “Comparative study of the aromatic profiles of two different plum species: Prunus salicina Lindl and Prunus simonii L”. DOI: 10.1002/jsfa.2740650116