Ingredients That Lead To Bigger, Better Flavours

The best cooks know that flavour isn’t just about what ingredients bring to the table, but what they bring out in everything else. Once you start thinking that way, a whole new world opens up.

Every home cook worth their salt will know that it forms an iconic duo with pepper, but if you want to ascend to the realms of true gourmet artistry, or at least elevate your cooking beyond the levels of bog-standard fare, you’ll do well to start learning about a different category of ingredients altogether: invisible flavour boosters.

These additions don’t introduce flavours of their own, but rather operate in the background as catalysts to amp up the volume of your main ingredients. Here are some neat kitchen chemistry combinations you can try out the next time you get behind the stove to bring your flavours up from tasting like 720p to 4K UHD.

Fish sauce in beef stew

“I don’t want to add fish sauce to my beef stew, what’s wrong with you?” you might say. Well, quite a lot, to answer your question, but in this instance, I know exactly what I’m talking about. You see, adding fish sauce to your beef stew won’t make it taste fishy, as you might expect. Instead, what it does is make the dish you’re cooking even more profoundly and intensely beefy.

The reason it can do this is that fish sauce is packed with natural glutamates (the compounds responsible for umami). When these glutamates meet the natural savoury compounds already present in red meat, they lock onto your taste receptors simultaneously. This creates a synergistic effect, which serves to multiply the savoury signal sent to your brain up to eight times over.

Ground coriander in blueberries

If you didn’t already bristle at my previous suggestion, you might just have done at this one. Why, pray tell, would you ruin perfectly good (and expensive) blueberries with coriander? You don’t even like coriander. But guess what? You don’t have to. Not as long as you use a light enough hand when you sprinkle it in of course.

I know it sounds gross, but the next time you make a blueberry pie, crisp, or jam of some sort, try adding about half a teaspoon of coriander. Far from tasting like you were reaching for the cinnamon and accidentally grabbed the wrong spice, the coriander will work its magic to make the blueberries in your dessert taste incredibly bright, wild, and complex.

But just how does it pull off that trick? At risk of upsetting the coriander magician by giving its secrets away, it’s because blueberries and coriander seeds share a dominant aromatic compound called linalool. When blueberries are cultivated and shipped, they often lose this floral, citrusy note in the process. Adding a pinch of coriander replaces these lost molecules, fooling your brain into thinking you’re eating hyper-flavorful wild berries that you picked right there on the spot.

Vodka in tomato sauce

Vodka sauce is a staple in Italian-American cooking, but adding a splash of unflavoured vodka to a standard marinara you’re cooking up in the comfort of your own kitchen can make quite the difference, too. You won’t have to worry about it adulterating the taste of your dish as the vodka itself is obviously unflavoured, and the alcohol won’t be a concern either because it burns off rather quickly.

So what exactly does it do? Well, try it yourself and you’ll find your sauce has become twice as rich. And why is that? It’s simply because the alcohol in this particular case functions as a kind of chemical bridge. 

The thing about tomatoes is that most of the aromatic flavour compounds in it are alcohol-soluble, meaning they won’t dissolve in water or oil. The alcohol then helps to dissolve these stubborn, hidden flavour compounds and carry them via its evaporating vapours directly to your olfactory receptors as you eat. Once you give it a shot (see what I did there?), you’ll never go back to looking at tomatoes the same way. 

When using these ingredients in your cooking, it’s important to remember that restraint is the order of the day. These additions are there to be felt and not heard, to cede the stage to the star players and help them shine all that much brighter. So if these threw you for a loop, it’s time to start thinking of ingredients in terms of not just how they taste, but how they interact as well. It’s an approach that, once mastered, will elevate your ordinary meals to extraordinary delicacies.

Opening image: Tatana | Pexels