Flavor pairing is a controversial* topic which I’ve blogged about many times in the past. In my last post I suggested that predicted aroma similarity may be a more precise term, and below is an attempt to illustrate predicted aroma similarity (of type 2d according to this classification) by using a color analogy. Let me explain a little first: The letters describe different foods and colors are used to illustrate the sum of the key odorants. The normal situation is that foods A and K (which are perceived as different because they are far apart in the alphabet) also have different colors meaning that they share few or no key odorants. A and B however are close in the alphabet and have similar colors, hence they share key odorants. In some cases foods that we think are very different (A and Z) may turn out to share several key odorants (i.e. have similar colors). The “flavor pairing hypothesis” is a way of finding the “Z” based on predict aroma similarity. I think one reason why we cannot always find the “Z” is that our sense of smell is not very analytical (compared to a gas chromatograph). One thing which I hope becomes clearer with the color analogy is that for a successful pairing one will need contrasting elements as well. This was also a general experience from the TGRWT experiments. I’m very curious whether this communicates well or just makes things even more confusing, so feel free to leave a comment below!

Let us assume that the two foods A and K with no key odorants in common taste marvelous together. Many (or possibly even most?) food pairings are of this kind.

Two similar foods A and C share a number of key odorants. This is no big surprise and most people will say that A and C are quite similar.

Aroma similarity prediction (the “flavor pairing hypothesis”) is a tool to identify Z which (surprisingly) turns out to be quite similar to A because they share key odorants. As mentioned above, finding Z is what is difficult.

Let us imagine a dish where A is a prominent ingredient. It’s combined with classic or empirical pairings (indicated with the different colors – the color tones are chose to match each other).

Based on aroma similarity prediction one can then introduce Z which (surprisingly) is similar to A because of overlapping key odorants.

One can even imagine the case where A is replaced by Z. If the process is repeated a dish can slowly morph into a new dish by exchanging one ingredient at a time.

*Controversial: See for instance the latest issue of Gastronomica where Maurits de Klepper criticizes flavor pairing under the title “Food Pairing Theory – A European Food Fad”. It’s an interesting piece and I recommend that you buy access to read it. But I should quickly add that there are a couple of things that I disagree with. What I’ve previously formulated as a flavor pairing hypothesis is turned into a theory, and I also disagree with the formulation that “the more aromatic compounds two foods have in common, the better they taste together”. In my previous blog post on the topic I have reformulated my viewpoint as follows: For foods with a predicted aroma similarity based on the analysis of it’s volatiles there is a good chance that they can be used together in a dish. It’s also a pity that de Klepper doesn’t cover the topic of key odorants (or odor activity values) properly, but mixes up the different categories (2a, 2b, 2c and 2d) of aroma similarity prediction that I’ve outlined previously. Despite this de Klepper summarizes the experiences from TGRWT very well when he says that flavor pairing “is not a guaranteed recipe for success – balancing flavors is what does the trick”. I couldn’t agree more.

Again I was lucky 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.

The Canadian sommerlier François Chartier (he has an extensive website featuring several blogs, including a section named Sommellerie moléculaire) is out with a new book on food and wine pairing. It’s not just another (superfluous) book on the subject. As the title Papilles et molécules (= Tastebuds and Molecules, unfortunately not available in English) suggests there is some science involved. It turns out in fact that he has applied the principles of flavor pairing to food and wine. With help from Richard Béliveau from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Martin Loignon from PerkinElmer he has analyzed wines and food and comes up with the following suggestions for lamb, as described in the article “Chemistry-set wine pairing”:

Having roast lamb? Don’t waste it on an ill-advised red Bordeaux, the old standby trotted out by generations of sommeliers. Lamb’s characteristic flavour comes from thymol, an aromatic compound found in the oil of, yes, thyme. It’s also a flavour note associated with red wines from the southern Languedoc region of France, such as Minervois, Corbières or St. Chinian.

Other combinations mentioned in the article include:

rosemary – white wines from northern Alsace
pork – oaked red wines
curries – viognier
cinnamon – pinot noir, grenache, ice cider, oloroso sherry

François Chartier also introduces “bridge ingredients”. Mint, which goes well with sauvignon blanc, shares aroma compounds with parsley, fennel and tarragon. Based on this he theorizes that sauvignon blanc should also pair well with dishes based on these ingredients.

As far as I can see (with my very limited high school French) there are no links or references to all the other activities in the field: Heston Blumenthal’s pioneering of the concept together with François Benzi from Firmenich, the Food pairing website – not even to the TGRWT food blogging event Nevertheless it’s nice to see that the concept has now been applied to food and wine as well. As I don’t own the book yet I can’t tell whether François Chartier includes odor activity values in his discussion or not (but I certainly hope he does!).

Update: The book is now available in English as Taste Buds and Molecules: The Art and Science of Food With Wine.

I had a wonderful trip to Brugge/Bruges to attend the foodpairing seminar The Flemish Primitives. I got to meet many interesting people including Heston Blumenthal, Peter Barham, Andrew Dornenburg, Karen Page, Ben Roche and Tony Conigliaro to mention a few. I also finally had the opportunity to talk to my fellow Swedish food bloggers Lisa Förare Winbladh (Matälskaren, Swedish only but Google can translate) and Malin Sandström (Matmolekyler, Swedish only but Google can translate) who’ve recently been awarded money to write a Swedish book about molecular gastronomy for home cooks. I even talked to several people who read Khymos! It’s always nice when I can attach some faces to the crowd out there in the big, unpersonal blogosphere.

As you see from this long post the day was packed and believe it or not – there will be a couple more posts in the next few days. One on the surprise “chocolate box” (for me this was the highlight), a summary of the interview with Heston Blumenthal and some info on the chemistry behind the glowing lollipops! I’ll also try do dig up the recipe for the chocolate dip that came with our lunch fries.


In case you wondered: Peter always wears penguins!

Peter Barham (physicist, author of The science of cooking) started the day by giving an introduction to the scientific approach to cooking. Cooking started a lot of science, and chemistry (and alchemy) has origins that can be traced back to the observation of how food changed when cooked. And as a side note: even the word chemistry is linked to food through the greek word Khymos Until about 100 years ago there was a clear link between cooking and chemistry, but then came a period where scientists mostly did not bother much about food. Until Nicholas Kurti entered the scene: that’s the guy who said that “I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés”. Four examples were used to illustrate how science can help chefs.

1) Conflicting reasons are given for why salt should be added to blanching water to retain the green color of vegetables. Contrary to popular belief salt does not raise the boling temperature of the water with more than a fraction of a degree. Science tells us that there really isn’t any good reason for adding salt to the water when blanching vegetables.

2) Science also provides insight to what happens when we heat up meat. When heated the meat first gets tougher. At around 40-45 °C the meat proteins start to denature, and at 55 °C the meat goes from tender to tough. Prolonged heating above 55 °C however will cause the collagen to dissolve into soft gelatin.

3) Thanks to science we now have a vide range of gelling agents (or hydrocolloids if you like) available for use in the kitchen. They can be used to create gels that are hard, soft, tough, elastic, brittle, hot and so on. We can also explain the crunchy and crispy texture of caramel which technically is classified as a “glass”. And we can also understand why ice cream has such a soft texture. This has to do with the very small size of the solid particles in ice cream (they’re typically < 1/10 mm). And a very nice way of achieving this is by making the ice cream with liquid nitrogen so it freezes very fast.

4) Science helps us understand what flavor is and how we perceive flavor using all our senses. For instance our memory plays an important role when our brain interprets a flavor. Your history of eating will influence how your next meal tastes! Sight is also extremely important. This can easily be demonstrated with some white wine and blue/red food coloring. If an unsuspecting subject is asked to describe “white” white wine and white wine colored with blue and red food coloring the descriptions will probably be typical of a white and red wine. Even if you know your are drinking a red colored white wine it is hard to believe that it is the same wine. The color of plates also influences our perception of flavor, so most people find eating from a blue plate unpleasant. Sound influences how we chew and a crunchy sound actually stops our jaws from closing to fast. If the chewing sound is played back with a 0.5 second delay it is almost impossible to eat! It has also been shown that the beat of music influences how fast guests chew, and apparently there is a restaurant in Australia that utilizes this. It has also long been known that touching sand paper or smooth skin can affect the texture of what we eat.

Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page

Next up were Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg who presented several of their bestselling books on cooking and flavor, including Culinary Artistry, What to Drink With What you Eat and The Flavor Bible. They made an important point that cooking is the sum of ingredients and technique/preparation. Food science and molecular gastronomy has provided a lot of information on technique, and the example par excellence is Harold McGee’s On food and cooking. However, for ingredients and flavor pairing in particular there hasn’t been any authoritative source available, forcing chefs to cross read a number of cookbooks when looking for new flavors and pairings. It was this realization that motivated them to write Culinary Artistry which is really a thesaurus of classic pairings. I can testify to it’s usefulness – and one example I’ve presented here on the blog are the cherry jams I made with pepper and other spices. Their most recent book, The Flavor Bible, is an updated and expanded edition of Culinary Artistry which includes and reflects the changes in consumer preference in the last decade.

I have emailed a litte with Karen and Andrew previously and got the opportunity to chat with them in the break. – We’re excited to learn about new approaches to flavor pairing, Karen let me know. Andrew added that they hadn’t had the opportunity yet to sample molecularily based food pairings before so they we’re looking forward to try this.

Lorenzo Cerretoni gave a presentation about flavor compounds in olive oil and how they can be paired with Mantis shrimp. After this informative, yet slightly less inspiring talk the Belgian chef Bart de Pooter presented his 4 taste model and how he uses this as a creative approach to create dishes and menus. One concept he promoted was to use ingredients from the same environment. A pheasant for instance walks on grass and eats maize and carrot, so naturally it could also be served together with flavors such as grass, maize and carrot. He also talked about physical and psychic needs and gave a slightly wrong explanation of the flavor pairing hypothesis.

In fact during the whole day there was no proper scientific explanation and discussion of the hypothesis, but Bernard Lahousse – project leader of The Flemish Primitives – did give a popularized version of the hypothesis and an account of how it all started. He explained how the Firmenich scientist François Benzi first stubled across a new way of pairing foods. At one of the Erice meetings he smelled jasmin in a garden and being a flavor scientist knew that this smell was mainly due to indole. Knowing that pork liver also smells of indole he got the idea that jasmine and pork liver might taste nice together – and they did! Bernard did show a picture of a GC-MS and explained how the University of Leuven has been doing food analyses and that only odors with concentrations above the odor thresholds were taken into account. Since he didn’t mention odor activity values (OAV) specifically I asked Bernard about that later and he confirmed that all the data in the food pairing website are now based on odor activity values. Since the first version of the food pairing web site was based on concentration and number of odorants I would expect that this would change some of the pairing charts and Bernard confirmed that this had been the case.

For the event 10 chefs where each given a food product from one of the sponsors. These products were then analyzed and a list of suggested pairings was provided to all the chefs. It should be mentioned that these were top class chefs, but I have to admit that watching chefs cook in real time actually became quite boring after a while, especially since some of the dishes needed seemingly endless steps of preparation. For most of the preparations presented it was also very unclear which of the ingredients used were picked based on the flavor pairing and which were picked by the chef to complete the dish. But the dishes looked absolutely wonderful! Too bad we couldn’t sample them I found two of the dishes particularily interesting (and I think the recipes will be made available on the web). Sang Hoon Degeimbre, chef at L’Air du temps had chosen Leffe beer, but instead of doing a flavor pairing he did a flavor substitution. To achieve this he used several ingredients (shown in the figure below) which when combined would resemble Leffe. In fact he made a dish completely without Leffe that was intented to taste like Leffe – it’s hard to say whether he succeeded or not, but the concept is very interesting! And what warmed the heart of an organic chemist was that Sang Hoon had equipped his kitchen with an erlenmeyer flask and used a glass syringe (looked like a luer lock Hamilton type syringe to me).

Figure from food pairing website. (C) Creax 2008.

The food pairing I found most interesting was the one with Oud Brugge (a cheese), coffee and vanilla. To bind these flavors together chef Gert de Mangeleer from Hertog Jan used potatoes. The surprising element of the dish was the coffee – he sprinkled his dish with freshly ground coffee. The vanilla was applied as a grape seed oil extract of natural vanilla – a nice example of how oil can be used for flavor extraction.

Ben sitting on the stage watching his own video.

- If Einstein had been a chef, he’d probably be like Ben Roche, said presenter Gene Bervoets. Ben is the pastry chef at Homaro Cantu’s Moto restaurant in Chicago – it’s the restaurant where you can chose between a 10 and 20 course menu and then start your meal by eating the menu. Ben’s topic was the Chicago style hot dog and he started off by presenting a mind map of this, resembling the food pairing charts at the food pairing website. Most of his presentation was in fact prerecorded video clips which were really entertaining! His deconstruction/construction of the Chicago style hot dog resulted in a chips & salsa. Evolution of flavor turned the hot dog into pop corn (“less calories than when eating the hot dog”) sprayed with hot dog infused oil and sprinkled with freeze dried garnish. Translation of culture resulted in a Mexican version of “encased meat” using chorizo and a soft taco shell. This dish was also made into a dessert version. Lastly the hot dog was transmogrified into a cartoon dessert version with strawberry sorbet, mint and pistacchios. Hopefully the videos will be made available, but in the mean time you can check out the video of Ben at Taste3.

Although we couldn’t sample the chef’s preparations there a number of tasting samples of different food pairings available in the breaks:

Of these my favorites were the almond thins with mozzarella, fig and ham, and the cooked beef with peanut, chocolate vinagrette and peas. The potato cream was nice, but was a litle overpowered by to much cheese.

Baked beef, cream of peas, peanuts and vinagrette with 70% chocolate

The program session was closed by Albert Adria, younger brother of Ferran Adria. He showed stunning pictures from his coming book natura, accompanied by videos showing how the different elements of the dishes are created. He also showed a short teaser documentary for A day at el Bulli.

Next year’s meeting will be devoted to tools, including one which was presented at the very end of the day with music, ballet dancers and fire works: a reinvention of Ford’s assembly line for mass production of haute cuisine.

I’ve blogged about the upcoming food pairing seminar in Belgium on January 5th previously, but there are a couple of important additions to the programme: Albert Adrià (El Bulli, Spain) and Ben Roche (Moto, USA) will also participate. Given the extensive list of other chefs and notabilities within the realms of molecular gastronomy and science inspired cooking that will be present, this is definitely the place to be on January 5th. Registering is online, and the early bid registration fee is €245 (rises to €295 from November 16th). More information is available from the website (also in html format).

The Good Scents company has en extensive range of aroma components, and the nice thing is that they list natural occurences and uses. The latter I guess, is based on the organoleptic properties of the aroma compounds. Using google, it’s possible to check if two or more foods have anything in common. Just type in the foods of interest and add site:http://www.thegoodscentscompany.com at the end. The triple combination in my last post for instance gives the following search string (click to perform the google search) and the top 5 hits are:

furfuryl mercaptan * 98-02-2
benzothiazole * 95-16-9
isovaleraldehyde * 590-86-3
bis(2-methyl-3-furyl) disulfide * 28588-75-2
5-methyl furfural * 620-02-0

The numbers following the name of the aroma compound are CAS registry numbers and indentify each compound uniquely. They are often more useful than the chemical name when searching the internet and databases.

Unfortunately there is no way to distinguish whether the foods listed for each aroma compound occur under the “Natural occurences” or “Used in” labels.