How To Taste

This engaging and approachable (and humorous!) guide to taste and flavor will make you a more skilled and confident home cook. How to Taste outlines the underlying principles of taste, and then takes a deep dive into salt, acid, bitter, sweet, fat, umami, bite (heat), aromatics, and texture. You'll find out how temperature impacts your enjoyment of the dishes you make as does color, alcohol, and more. The handbook goes beyond telling home cooks what ingredients go well together or explaining cooking ratios. You'll learn how to adjust a dish that's too salty or too acidic and how to determine when something might be lacking. It also includes recipes and simple kitchen experiments that illustrate the importance of salt in a dish, or identifies whether you're a "supertaster" or not. Each recipe and experiment highlights the chapter's main lesson. How to Taste will ultimately help you feel confident about why and how various components of a dish are used to create balance, harmony, and deliciousness.

Offers a guide to vintages, grape varieties, and wine appreciation.

Master of Wine Jancis Robinson has created this wine tasting course based around practical exercises that will guide you from your first sips to confident, well-informed gulps. Clearly divided into theory and practise, this workbook first provides all the information you need before you put it into practise. Learn the correct way to taste wine and enjoy the tasting exercises specially devised by Jancis based on readily available and inexpensive bottle. Learn how to recognise the most popular grape varieties from Chardonnay to Riesling, Pinot Noir to Cabernet Sauvignon, and why you should choose a good sparkling wine over cheap Champagne. There is advice on choosing from a wine list and how to match food with wine. How to Taste will awaken the wine connoisseur in us all.

Whether it's a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup or a salted caramel coated in dark chocolate, you know when food tastes good. Now here's the amazing story behind why you love some foods and can't tolerate others. Whether it's a salted caramel or pizza topped with tomatoes and cheese, you know when food tastes good. Now, Barb Stuckey, a seasoned food developer to whom food companies turn for help in creating delicious new products, reveals the amazing story behind why you love some foods and not others. Through fascinating stories, you'll learn how our five senses work together to form flavor perception and how the experience of food changes for people who have lost their sense of smell or taste. You'll learn why kids (and some adults) turn up their noses at Brussels sprouts, how salt makes grapefruit sweet, and why you drink your coffee black while your spouse loads it with cream and sugar. Eye-opening experiments allow you to discover your unique "taster type" and to learn why you react instinctively to certain foods. You'll improve your ability to discern flavors and devise taste combinations in your own kitchen for delectable results. What Harold McGee did for the science of cooking Barb Stuckey does for the science of eating in Taste--a calorie-free way to get more pleasure from every bite.

"The science of taste and how to improve your sense of taste so that you get the most out of every bite"--

Taste is a lyric meditation on one of our five senses, which we often take for granted. Structured as a series of “small bites,” the book considers the ways that we ingest the world, how we come to know ourselves and others through the daily act of tasting. Through flavorful explorations of the sweet, the sour, the salty, the bitter, and umami, Jehanne Dubrow reflects on the nature of taste. In a series of short, interdisciplinary essays, she blends personal experience with analysis of poetry, fiction, music, and the visual arts, as well as religious and philosophical texts. Dubrow considers the science of taste and how taste transforms from a physical sensation into a metaphor for discernment. Taste is organized not so much as a linear dinner served in courses but as a meal consisting of meze, small plates of intensely flavored discourse.

“A rich, engrossing, and deeply intelligent story….This is a book I won’t soon forget.” —Molly Wizenberg, bestselling author of A Homemade Life “Fresh, smart, and consistently surprising. If this beautifully written book were a smell, it would be a crisp green apple.” —Claire Dederer, bestselling author of Poser Season to Taste is an aspiring chef’s moving account of finding her way—in the kitchen and beyond—after a tragic accident destroys her sense of smell. Molly Birnbaum’s remarkable story—written with the good cheer and great charm of popular food writers Laurie Colwin and Ruth Reichl—is destined to stand alongside Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia as a classic tale of a cooking life. Season to Taste is sad, funny, joyous, and inspiring.

Named one of the Best Fall Cookbooks 2020 by The New York Times, Eater, Epicurious, Food & Wine, Forbes, Saveur, Serious Eats, The Smithsonian, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, CNN Travel, The Kitchn, Chowhound, NPR, The Art of Eating Longlist 2021 and many more; plus international media attention including The Financial times, The Globe and Mail, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, The Times (U.K.), Delicious Magazine (U.K.), The Times (Ireland), and Vogue India and winner of The Guild of U.K. Food Writers (General Cookbook). Finalist for the 2021 IACP Cookbook Award. "The Flavor Equation" deserves space on the shelf right next to "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" as a titan of the how-and-why brigade."– The New Yorker "Deep and illuminating, fresh and highly informative... a most brilliant achievement." – Yotam Ottolenghi "[A] beautiful and intelligent book." – J. Kenji López-Alt, author The Food Lab and Chief Consultant for Serious Eats.com Aroma, texture, sound, emotion—these are just a few of the elements that play into our perceptions of flavor. The Flavor Equation demonstrates how to convert approachable spices, herbs, and commonplace pantry items into tasty, simple dishes. In this groundbreaking book, Nik Sharma, scientist, food blogger, and author of the buzz-generating cookbook Season, guides home cooks on an exploration of flavor in more than 100 recipes. • Provides inspiration and knowledge to both home cooks and seasoned chefs • An in-depth exploration into the science of taste • Features Nik Sharma's evocative, trademark photography style The Flavor Equation is an accessible guide to elevating elemental ingredients to make delicious dishes that hit all the right notes, every time. Recipes include Brightness: Lemon-Lime Mintade, Saltiness: Roasted Tomato and Tamarind Soup, Sweetness: Honey Turmeric Chicken Kebabs with Pineapple, Savoriness: Blistered Shishito Peppers with Bonito Flakes, and Richness: Coconut Milk Cake. • A global, scientific approach to cooking from bestselling cookbook author Nik Sharma • Dives deep into the most basic of our pantry items—salts, oils, sugars, vinegars, citrus, peppers, and more • Perfect gift for home cooks who want to learn more beyond recipes, those interested in the science of food and flavor, and readers of Lucky Peach, Serious Eats, Indian-Ish, and Koreatown • Add it to the shelf with cookbooks like The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji López-Alt; Ottolenghi Flavor: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi; and Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat.