Flavour and flavourings

 
During the final of the last note to note cooking contest, I saw the confusion between flavour and flavouring.

They are not at all the same thing, because the first word refers to taste, while the second applies to preparations used to give taste.
When we eat a banana, we taste a banana, but when we add to a yogurt a product that gives a strawberry taste, it is a flavouring agent that is used, and that formulates sapid, odorous compounds, with trigeminal action, etc. In short, preparations that give taste to what is added.

In English, the word flavouring is quite different from the word flavour. And our English-speaking friends have an advantage over the French... when they do not confuse everything. Because in French, there is still too often a confusion between an aroma and a flavour, so to speak.

From time immemorial, the aroma is the smell of an aromatic plant, of an aromatic plant.

And this is the reason why there is no aroma for a meat, or for a wine, because neither a meat nor a wine are aromatic plants.

There is a smell, when you smell the meat, or a retronasal smell when you chew it. But most of the time the eaters are not analytical, and they only perceive a "taste", a synthetic sensation that includes the smell, the retronasal odor, the consistency, etc.

And we call flavourings the preparations, sometimes wonderful, that we use to give taste to a dish.
For example, there are vanilla flavourings in every supermarket, strawberry flavourings added to yoghurts, for example.

And we must add that, for these products that are flavourings, there are good and bad ones: it is often a question of money, because the talent of the "formulators" is paid for, and the more complicated reproductions are often better judged. If you don't put a lot of money into it, then you often get a poor quality product.

With a siphon, do we make an emulsion or a mousse?

 
With a siphon, do we make an emulsion or a foam? The question is wrong, obviously, because it all depends on what we put in the siphon.

If we put water or an aqueous solution, then we will have a very different result than if we had first made a mayonnaise, which is already an emulsion, with droplets of fat dispersed in an aqueous solution.

Moreover, it also depends on the gas used to pre-fill the siphone. If a carbon dioxide cartridge is used, this gas will dissolve in an aqueous phase and will allow to obtain an effervescence, when the liquid in which it is dissolved will be put back to the atmospheric pressure, when the siphon is activated.

But if we used nitrous oxide, which will dissolve less, we can obtain -or not- an overflow.

Let's imagine the siphon turned upside down, with the liquid in the lower part. If we slowly open the valve, then a liquid will simply be pushed out of the siphon. But if we open the siphon more quickly, then gas can disperse in the form of bubbles, which will produce an expansion.

And if the liquid is an emulsion, with droplets of fat dispersed in the liquid, then bubbles will be added, and we will get an overflow emulsion.

In short, we can do what we want with a siphon: it is up to us to understand and act accordingly.

Iberian Ham

In a recent cooking competition note to note, some candidates included in their dish a preparation that they named "Iberian ham".

I will not go back to the question of the reproduction of traditional, classic ingredients or dishes, but I propose that we be astonished to see so named... what was not Iberian ham, but a kind of copy, a reproduction of such a product: the name was usurped, and I do not believe that it is "fair", in the sense of the regulation of the food trade.

And then, why make something new by naming it like something old? The innovation is hidden, instead of being highlighted.

But, in reality, this post is more about sharing an astonishment: the composition of the preparations that were proposed by the candidates who made these "copies of Iberian ham" were actually so different... that it was very difficult to recognize Iberian ham.

For me, and for many people with whom I discussed the question, Iberian ham is served in very thin slices: there is even this Spanish ceremony which consists in putting the ham horizontally, on a support, and using a long knife, to make well-sliced strips.

But, above all, this ham is a beautiful, alternating red and white areas. In the red areas, my friends who have studied this product know that the proteins have been partially hydrolyzed and have released amino acids and peptides, among other things, so that these parts have a lot of flavor. In the white areas, it is fat, and here again, the long evolution of the ham, its maturation have led to the formation of odorant compounds.
Finally, the Iberian ham is characterized by this alternation of areas of different consistencies and different tastes, and in any case powerful.

But we must not forget that there is a lot of fat in total and that this marbling is essential for the quality of Iberian ham.

But in the realisations that were submitted to me, there was no fat!
I must admit that I was a bit shocked and disappointed. Am I old-fashioned? Biased? I know that some members of the jury spontaneously made the same analysis as I did, so it is not idiosyncratic.

And here I am expressing my incomprehension/why did the competitors claim to be making a reproduction of Iberian ham when their preparation did not contain the fat that is almost the hallmark of this ham?

Close to my heart

In the last note-to-note cooking competition, one of the contestants who was shortlisted and presented his work said he wanted to make a dish that was "close to his heart".

Why not.... but is it a good strategy?

Because in the end, the jury doesn't care what is dear to its heart, and it is the preparations dear to the jury's heart that are important.

All this obviously reminds me of the paradox of the actor of this wonderful Denis Diderot, who explains well that if one dies on stage to represent a character who dies, then one is a bad actor; what one must do to be a good actor, is to give the impression that one dies on stage.

Yes, you have to remain frozen inside to perfectly control the appearance you give, the message you transmit.

In the same way, making a dish that we like is quite secondary. What counts in a contest is that you please the jury!

Of course, if we work on a subject we are passionate about, we will put more energy, more enthusiasm and more time into it than if we do something that bores us.

But we should not confuse the objectives: when we do a competition it is to win it over other competitors, right? However, knowing that everyone is marked by the same jury, the question is above all to know what the criteria of the competition are, what the personal criteria of the jurors are.

These are the real questions!

Note to note: the question of reproduction of the old

I think it is useful to discuss, for note-to-note cooking, the question of reproduction.

Note-to-note cooking, to begin with, is that form of synthetic cooking that uses pure compounds rather than fruits, vegetables, meat or fish. These compounds that are used can be pure or simple mixtures as in oil, or starch. But let's keep the idea of pure compounds.

With our compounds, what to do?

Many people are tempted to reproduce old ingredients or dishes: coq au vin, sauerkraut, applesauce, etc. Their argument is that the guests will not feel the same way.

Their argument is that the guests will find it easier to find their way around, with preparations they know. That "the public does not want anything new". And other similar arguments. But... is all this true?

On the other hand, there is the essential pitfall that a copy is generally compared unfavorably to the original.

For example, let's imagine that we produce a system that reproduces an apple: we will almost systematically be told that this "apple" is not crunchy enough, or not juicy enough, etc. But this is pure bad faith.

But this is pure bad faith, because to which particular apple is our particular production compared? Not all apples are crisp like green apples, juicy and sweet like golden apples, etc.

Moreover, real apples, even of a particular variety, do not all have the same acidity, the same sweetness, the same fiber... More generally, all apples are different, not only in terms of variety but also in terms of maturity within the same variety and on the same tree.

In other words, if it is intellectually interesting to make such a reproduction of an apple, one should be aware of the limits of the exercise.

Yes, it is interesting to make a reproduction, because the particular consistency of a Granny Smith apple, for example, has virtues that are easy to identify, this noise that the teeth make when they bite into the apple, this particular juiciness that is released when one bites, etc. And then, do we really need to do what already exists?

There are many answers to this question, starting with the fact that, perhaps, our synthetic productions will one day become more durable than natural ones.

On the other hand, our reproduction work leads us to explore particular characteristics of traditional products, which imposes specific work, and therefore specific, unexpected results.

Beauty is certainly in the way.

Before the internet site of the International Centre of Molecular and Physical Gastronomy

 

10th International Contest of Note by Note Cooking


Organized by the Inrae-AgroParisTech International Centre for Molecular and Physical Gastronomy (https://icmpg.hub.inrae.fr)
 Roisin Burke (TU Dublin), Yolanda Rigault (Paris), Heinz Wuth (Chile)Hervé This vo Kientza  (Inrae-AgroParisTech)

With the support of the compagnies Pour la Science, Belin, Louis François, Iqemusu.com.





The theme of the 10th International Note-to-Note Cooking Competition (of "synthesis cooking") was "Salty dice with fibre (no Rubik's cube).
The competitors worked for a year and a jury made a pre-selection of 10 entries.
This international jury was composed of :

    Jean-Pierre Lepeltier, International Club Toques Blanches
    Philippe Clergue, Le Cordon bleu, Paris
    Yolanda Rigault, Paris
    Heinz Wuth, Chili
    Sandrine Kault-Perrin,  Louis François Inc.





The 9 September 2022, the jury met both on the new AgroParisTech-Inrae campus and by videoconference, and after the presentations of the shortlisted candidates, the jury met and announced the prizes for this 10th International Note to Note Cooking Competition:



First Prize  ex aequo :
Dao Nguyen and Pasquale Altomonte  (Kitchen Lab), Switzerland  : Duck Dice à l’Orange








First Prize ex aequo :
Douglas Yokomi Fornari, Brazil : Over the edges


Second Prize
Maria Grazia Pena-Niebuhr, Peru :  3D Savory Present



Third Prize :
Eléonore Boisseau, France : An ocean breeze






Prizes were offered by the companies  Louis François, Iqemusu, Belin/Pour la Science, BPI.

Dois-je donner des références ?

 Dois-je donner des références ?

J'observe que, chez certains auteurs dont je doute de la compétence parfaite, je déplore l'absence de références... mais, me souvenant de la paille dans l'oeil du voisin et la poutre dans le mien, je me dis que je ne donne pas moi-même les références de tout ce que j'avance. Bien sûr, souvent (notamment pour mes conférences), je signale à mes amis que j'ai ces références absentes, que je les tiens à leur disposition, et je leur donne mon adresse email afin qu'ils puissent m'interroger, recevoir ces références et engager un dialogue, mais... au fond, pourquoi ne pas donner immédiament les références que j'ai, que j'utilise pour asseoir mes dires ?

Et la réponse est celle de la vulgarisation tout entière : parce que cela gène la lecture. Pendant 20 ans, à la revue Pour la Science, nous avons tout faire pour faciliter le confort de lecture : pas de notes en marge, pas de notes de bas de page qui interrompent la lecture (on est toujours tenté d'aller voir le renvoi)...
Mais est-ce exact ? Ne pouvons nous pas être discret, comme l'est d'ailleurs Wikipedia ? Et ne pouvons pas, comme cela est fait, avoir des références qui nous conduisent directement aux références, en préparant la remontée ?

Bien sûr, derrière toute cette question, il y a d'abord -toujours d'abord- celle des objectifs. Et puis on pourrait objecter que le jeu des références est facilement détourné : certains donnent des références, mais ce sont de mauvaises références (de sorte qu'il y a là négligence ou malhonnêteté selon les cas).
Et puis, à quoi bon donner des références si personne ne les consulte ?

Inversement, ne pouvons-nous pas espérer conduire nos amis à dépasser nos propos, à aller à la découverte de champs que nous leur ouvrons ?

Finalement, je conclus que je vais donner mes références :
1. c'est une bonne pratique
2. cela conduit à s'interroger soi-même, à chaque phrase
3. cela conduit à s'interroger sur la qualité des références que l'on donne
4. si l'on fait bien, on ne gêne pas la lecture
5. et des amis pourront découvrir de nouveaux champs.

Et c'est ainsi que je change mon billet d'hier : https://scilogs.fr/vivelaconnaissance/cuisinier-technicien-ou-technologue-ou-artiste/