June 14, 2019 • 30 mins
This episode tackles the mysterious phenomenon we call flavor—which is different from taste, by the way. Marc digs into the technical side of things during a chat with Bob Holmes, author of Flavor: The Science of Our Most Neglected Sense, then gets personal with Gail Simmons of Top Chef. They discuss what it’s like to recreate flavors from memory, why a cherished meal is like an ex, and how she stays objective while judging food on TV.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Food through sixty with Mark Murphy is a production of
I Heart Radio. Because my pasta tastes different when I'm
speaking Italian. It might well because it frames your expectations,
and expectations make a difference to flavor. And you heard
of super tasters, Yes, you have? Yes? Do you know
if you're a supertaster? You don't know. I don't believe
(00:23):
in super tasters. You don't, I don't know. Let's see,
let's see. Welcome to Food three sixty, the podcast that
serves up some serious of food for thought. I'm your host,
Mark Murphy. I've been troking for thirty years, everywhere from
Paris to Italy to Monte Carlo and here in New
(00:45):
York City. I've worked at and owned a number of restaurants.
Some of you might know, some of you might not
well Cirque, Seller in the Sky, Lumis, Ravine, Layla, Ditch Planes, Landmark.
But my experience is a judge on food networks Chopped
for the past ten years has really pique my curiosity
and food culture. I love everything about food. I watched
a lot of documentaries, I read plenty of books, and
(01:07):
now on my day off, I'm spending it with you
guys in the student talking about food. But there's a
story behind every meal, a story behind the person who
makes it, a story behind each ingredient, and I want
to know everything. So pull up a seat, let's dig
in today. We're going to discuss flavor. It's a subject
(01:27):
I'm very interested in. After all, I tabled my first
cookbook season with authority, so I asked Bob Holmes and
Gail Simmons to join me. You just heard them at
the beginning of the show. First, I sat down with Bob.
He's a science writer who spent years researching and interviewing
experts for his book, Flavor, The Science of Our Most
Neglected Sense. Bob, thank you so much for coming on
(01:50):
the show. Here, you bet my pleasure. Let's start talking
about your book. Why do you think flavor is the
most neglected sense? I think one of the big reasons
that flavor doesn't get the attention that it probably deserves
is the it's so hard to talk about. We don't
have the vocabulary. Most of the flavor of a food
comes not from taste itself, which is sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami,
which we actually have words for, but most of it
(02:11):
is is to do with with a sense of smell,
and we don't have words for smell. If you're describing
what something smells like, it's all by analogy. Well it
smells like lemon, smells like mint, and we just don't
have the objective words. If you're talking about colors, you
can say, well, you know, the Swedish flag is blue
and yellow. You don't have to say that it's skylike
(02:32):
and lemon like. And that makes it so much easier.
That's really interesting. And I can just hear my little
kids if they taste something and I like yuck, they
don't give you a description that would it tastes like.
It's actually very very true. So understanding flavor, flavor and
taste are not the same thing. Can you explain how
that works. Flavor is really the whole experience that happens
when you have food in your mouth. It's about taste,
(02:54):
you know those five sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami, And
it's about the smell of the food, which is like
and carries most of the characteristics. But it's also about texture.
It's about feelings of hot and cold. You know, sound
figures in expectation, figures in you if I serve you
two glasses of the same wine, and I tell you
one's expensive and one's cheap. You're gonna like the glass
(03:15):
that I told you was expensive better, even though it's
the very same wine. And that's because of expectation. And
the same sort of thing happens for strawberry moose. I
think tastes sweeter on a white plate than it does
on a black plate, probably because you can see the
redness stands out better against the white plate. That makes
you expect it to taste sweeter and strawberry or wow.
(03:36):
One of my personal experiences is I grew up in Italy,
you know, and I would be sitting in the countryside
in Italy. As a kid, I always ate new Tela
on a toasted country bread. I would bring that exact
same new talent back to America and find a very
good country bread in America and have the same breakfast
in an apartment in New York City. And I didn't
like it. I was like, this doesn't taste right. I
(03:57):
think I'm in the wrong frame of mind. I'm in
the wrong place. I don't have the same oxygen around me.
I don't know what it is, but I'm not eating
this anymore. The expectations are different, Yeah, the whole the
context is different. In context seems to be really really important.
So it really comes down to expectations in people's brains,
the way they work. That's a big part of it.
That's pretty wild. So what about the deal with cilantro.
(04:18):
Now two people can need the exact same ingredient. We're
just talking to ingredient here for flavor, like cilantro. I
love cilantro. I am friends of mine that think it
tastes like a bar of soap. Where's that coming from?
Part of it is genetic. It turns out that you know,
there's a particular odor receptor, if you want to be technical,
it's o R six A two. Uh, that's broken in
some people and not in others. And people with one
(04:41):
version of this o R six a two are more
likely to like cilantro than people with the other version.
So part of it's genetic, but it's not a very
big part. That explains only less than I think they said,
less than ten percent of the difference in people. So
mostly it's probably expectation. The first tiny ate cilantro, did
(05:01):
it surprise you and startle you? I mean, maybe you
don't much care for that experience and nuts colored everything
ever since. Well, that's funny because I grew up in
Europe and I didn't have cilantro when when I came
to America and I was like, wait, why haven't I
had this? I love this stuff. So let's go onto
like food pairing, and I guess there's some science behind that.
I know that fried chicken and champagne are one of
(05:21):
those things that go really really well together, and it's
pretty obvious to me because of the fattiness of the
fried chicken and the acidity level of champagne. The acid
cuts through the fattiness, and I think it's a perfect match.
Is there science behind all this? Besides just acid and fat,
there's some tannin and fat is another one that there's
good scientific evidence for. So a big tannic red wine
(05:42):
goes really well with a big, rich, fatty beef steak.
You know, the tannon helps to clear the fat off
the tongue and the fat helps to tame the tannins,
and so alternating bites of rich steak with SIPs of
tannic wine actually really does work well together, and that
is scientifically shown. So like a little ballet on your palette. Yeah, exactly.
(06:02):
And then of course there's the whole food and wine pairing.
And I always get this every time I do a
food and wine dinner. And I've got you know, as
I call them, the corked dorks, the Sumays of the world.
You know, we're doing a food and wine it or
no artichokes and no asparagus. It's it's as if I'm committing,
you know, one of the Seven sins. If I put
an asparagus on the menu with one of their wines,
(06:23):
Are there any other ingredients? And why is that? By
the way, because I I just do it, and I
just say, okay, I won't use asparagus or artichokes, Am
I okay? Or should I fight them? I would fight
them over the asparagus. I like wine with asparagus. The
thing with arctich chokes is apparently it's an idiosyncratic thing
one of the compounds, and artich chokes activates sweet receptors
so that it makes the wine that you sip afterward
(06:45):
tastes sweeter. And that plays really badly with especially with
red wine. Really wow, Okay, So I'm gonna have to
give him the artichokes. Unless they have a wine that
they want to taste sweeter, I'll tell them that this
wine is not sweet enough. Shuld we have an artichoke
with it. I like nice acid white wine with artichokes.
I mean, I'm cooking my artichokes and white wine is
my favorite way to go. And a little bit of mint,
(07:07):
like the Romans do it, you know. For me, I
love I think there's a way to unlock certain flavors.
And when I cook white beans, for example, I always
put a couple filets of anchovies in there because I
feel like the anchovies give it a little bit of background,
a little bit of depth. You know, how to describe
red wine is having a little tea. Well, I feel
as though anchovies are one of those ingredients that give
(07:27):
a little tailwa to certain dishes. And obviously an Asian food,
they use fish sauce, which is pretty much, you know,
liquid anchovy. As far as I'm concerned, I love the
flavor that it gives. Knowing things like that, does it
make you a better cook if you can, if you
can come up with things like this a little at least? Yeah,
I mean the thing about anchovies than fish sauce is
it adds a mommy, which is basically the flavor of
(07:50):
decomposing proteins of aged foods, aged meats, olives, cheese, all
of that stuff has zo mommy because it's aged and
in the aging process there's some decomposition going on, and
so it adds that. That gives the depth and complexity.
So knowing that, yeah, I had thought of antrovies and beans,
but I'm going to try that next pot of beans
(08:11):
I make. And that's why people like age steak. I
guess so much too, right, that's gonna bring it because
it's deeper, exactly. So I want us to also talk
about these people that are called super tasters. Yeah, and
I guess there's what is it of the population or
super tasters. So if you're a super taster, is that
good or is it bad? That's kind of an it depends.
Super Tasters basically are people with more taste buds on
(08:35):
their tongue so they get a more intense experience of
the food, and for many people that means they're really picky.
I am apparently also a super taster, but I'm also
food adventurous. You spoke to a researcher who said she
thinks there's two kinds of super tasters. There's not adventurous ones.
Those are the picky ones, and then the adventurous ones. Yes,
(08:56):
it's intense, the experience is intense, but that's okay, as
we're we're sort of seeking that. I presumably have a
more intense experience of bitter than the average person, but
I still you know, I drink my coffee black, and
I like the hoppiest beer I can find. And you know,
my favorite green is rappini, which is as but as
bitter as you can get for greens. So some super
(09:17):
tasters are just lazy and they don't want to go
through the exercise of having all these powerful flavors in
their mouth, so they just become bland eaters. And you're
one of the examples of people that are like, oh wow,
I want to experience broccoli, rob I want to experience
a lemon, or you want to experience these things. So
so there's two different types of super tasters. I love that.
It's probably more complicated than that. Psychologically, I put milk
(09:39):
in my tea because tea without milk is just too intense,
the tannic nous of it. I tend not to like
the most acidic apples, because that's just a little too
intense for me. It's not a black and white thing, right. Well,
you were just talking about drinking tea, and I'm a
big tea drinker most of the day, and I'll just
drink espresso like after lunch, after of nurse and meal
(09:59):
or after dinner. But for me, if I ever go
do you ever go to those hotels or that you know,
an hotel lobby and there's the big pot of coffee
and there's a big pot of hot water, and so
I'll take my tea bag and I'll make my tea
with the hot water. If there's ever been coffee in
that pot, I can't drink the tea because I can
taste the coffee in the background. And it's amazing to
me that people don't understand that. And people look at
(10:21):
me like I'm a little crazy likes this hot water
in there. What's the matter with you? I mean, I
don't know if that makes me a super taster, but
it might mean you're a super taster. It might mean
that you're particularly sensitive to some particular aroma compound in coffee.
So the next thing I wanted to talk about is traveling,
and I travel a lot. I try all the cuisines.
Can you explain to me why there's whole continents out there?
They have this thing for breakfast called marmite. They slathered
(10:45):
on a piece of toast in the morning, and I
would if I was to ever put that on my
menu here in America, I think I would be thrown
out of the country. I don't know anybody in America
that would eat this, and I certainly, I mean I
I try everything, I like everything, I've tried my damnedest
can't eat the stuff? What what? What's with that? It's
tradition and experience. We haven't here in North America, haven't
(11:06):
grown up acculturated to marmite, and therefore it's not part
of what we eat. It's like it's hard to find
a North American that would eat Nato, which is the
you know, the Japanese fermented soybean dish that looks like
a bowl of snot. Actually, the Japanese love it, and
most North Americans have a really hard time with it.
And conversely, we all eat cheese. What most of us
(11:30):
love cheese, and it's a hard sell, at least until recently,
in Asia, because it's it's the spoiled milk product that's
smells and tastes rancid, and why would anyone eat that stuff?
And that's almost entirely experienced tradition upbringing what you're used
(11:50):
to culturally. You're right, it's one of those tradition things
you just have to sort of build up to eating it.
So I guess one last question for you, and I
think everybody it's listenings probably wants to know. You're obviously
the export on flavor. Is there anything we can do
to improve our our flavor? Do we have to choose slower?
Especially as a chef of myself, I want to know,
is there something that I can do to improve my
(12:12):
my sort of detection of flavors so I can make
better food for my customers. The short answer is pay attention.
But you're already doing that as a chef and trying
to find ways to articulate the differences between flavor experiences.
You know, there have been studies of wine professionals that
show that they're not any better than the rest of
us at actual perception. Their noses are no more delicate,
(12:33):
no more sensitive than the rest of us. They just
have better access to vocabulary they've practiced, so they can
recognize and articulate the difference between cherry and BlackBerry and
raspberry flavors in a wine. And we could do that
to most of us, but we we just don't have
the experience at it. So just pay attention and and
keep trying and expand on your vocabulary. I guess well, Bob,
(12:56):
thanks so much for joining me and talking about this.
We're gonna work on our flavor or detection over here. Cool.
Thank you. We'll be right back after a quick break.
Welcome back to Food three sixty. Many of you may
know my next guest is one of the original judges
on Bravo's Top Chef. Gail Simmons began her food career
after attending what is now known as the Institute of
(13:18):
Culinary Education in New York. She trained in the kitchens
of La Cirquin Vong before working for Vogue Magazine's food
critic Jeffrey stein Garden and then for Daniel Bloud. Since
two thousand four, she's been the special project director at
Food and Wine Magazine. Well, Gail, thank you very much
for being here. Thank you in the studio. It's very exciting.
I'm very happy to be here. I'm always happy to
(13:38):
see um. So you're you're from Canada and you started
writing in the newspaper. Was it at your school first?
Is that at first? It wasn't my university. When I
was in college, I started writing for the school paper
restaurant reviews, not because I wanted to be a restaurant critic,
although I guess I did, but I didn't really think
that was necessarily a viable career choice. I did it
(13:59):
because I thought it was really fun and no one
else was doing it, and I just saw the whole.
And I went to McGill University in Montreal, and it
is an incredible city for eating. Has always been, I think,
by far, the best food city in Canada, if not
one of the best in North America. It is an
incredible place to eat and drink, and I wanted all
of my fellow students to know about this sort of cool,
(14:21):
out of the way, interesting, ethnic and diverse restaurants in
the city. So I took it upon myself to do
some exploring. I didn't get paid for it. All the
money came out of my own pocket for my meals,
and I was eating it like cheap, little ethnic joints,
but there's so much good food. Then I found a
lot of fun things to write about. But then you
went from being a writer and then you moved to
New York and then you started working in the kitchens
and you worked at cercre I did while I was
(14:44):
a writer in Toronto for a year. You know, I
was an assistant editor, and I was an intern at
a bunch of magazines and newspapers in Canada. And when
I decided that food was my thing and that was
where I wanted to focus on my attention, I realized
that I actually didn't know that much about food. Just
because I liked to eat didn't really make me a
food writer. And how was I going to sort of
differentiate myself. So I took some advice from a food
(15:05):
editor and quit my job in Canada, moved here and
went to culinary school and it did a full year,
you know of the professional culinary program at what is
now Ice. Wait, did you go to Peter Combs. It
was called Peter Comes. Then I went to there as
it was called Peter Comes New York School, and it
was one street in New York Avenue. So I was
the first class in their next location, the twenty three
(15:28):
Street location. And then when I had to leave and
do an apprenticeship. At first I was like, well, I'm
just gonna go be a food right right now. I'll
just go get an internship at Cormet magazine or something,
and they convinced me to stay in the kitchen for
a little while. So from there I went to the
Cirque as my very first job out of culinary school.
And who was the chef? So, so you were there
after me because I was there under who had left?
(15:50):
I guess by that, Yes, I guess so. And then
I went to Peter Comes when it was on the
Upper East Side, and I remember it. It was not
a year, of course, it was a three month core prison.
I called it the professional housewife cooking school because I
was the only one who got a job in the
cooking industry after I left. And that's amazing. Wow, it
really changed mine was I think at eight month course
(16:11):
like you know, a school year basically, and then I
had to do this apprenticeship and I stayed cooking for
a little longer selves. So you must have some good stories,
as do I am. He didn't look me in the
eye for a long time. He didn't really acknowledge that
I existed. That is part of it. We used to
call him. I mean, he was an extraordinary cook, don't
get me wrong, a very fascinating man from Cambodia and
(16:33):
an incredibly talented chef. But we used to call him
the shark, did you because we all wore tokes in
the kitchen. You have the really old school, round professional
chef hats in the kitchen, and he was the only
one who wore one that was different. His came to
a point at the top, and he was very small,
so he was sort of weave in and out of
(16:54):
all of the other tokes in the kitchen, like a
little shark weaving through the water. So we all called
in the shark. That was very funny. Those are some
good times. I really loved working in that restaurant. That
was a lot of and it was an amazing kitchen.
What an enormous kitchen too. It was hard for me.
I was the only woman in the kitchen, and it
was you know, formative for sure, but it was not
(17:15):
an easy place for girls back then. It was. It
was never an easy place. I remember well. A lot
of stories. We could have a whole other podcast. So
your cookbook, it was inspired by travel and your upbringing
and flavors. To me have memories, they have thoughts of
the past. But how did you take all those thoughts
and those memories of traveling in childhood and so on
(17:37):
and so forth, and uh and and recreate the recipes
and put them in your book because it's it's all
about flavor in the end, right, it absolutely is. And
what's funny is that memory played such a huge role
in this book, particularly it's called Bringing It Home. And
the original simple concept of the book was to talk
about all of these incredible experiences I've been able to
(17:59):
have through the of my career, starting with my childhood
and the travel I did as a child. My father's
from South Africa and my mother's from Canada, but they
sent a lot of time traveling. We spent a lot
of time in Southern Africa growing up. My father family
then moved to Australia, so you know, we have this
very international family. And then moving into my adulthood. Serendipitously,
I've spent so much of my adulthood on the road
(18:21):
because of my job. And then ultimately I come home
inspired and I take a lot of notes while I'm traveling,
and I come home and I want to cook it,
and I end up adapting and creating recipes out of
those memories. I always have the whole thing with memory
and food. I remember being a kid in the south
of France and my parents took me to a very
fancy restaurant called Chevrol, which is still around, and there
(18:42):
was a raspberry souflet there that to me was like
eating the most beautiful cloud, raspberry flavored cloud I can imagine.
And I can still remember sitting there, going I need
another one, and they're like, oh, well, you have to
order at the beginning of meal. It takes so long
to make it and so and I was devastated. And
to this day, I'm almost scared to go back and
(19:05):
have it. And I know it's still on the menu
because I google it every once in a while and
I see that thing is still there. It's like an
ex girlfriend. It's so perfect in my mind. I don't
want to ruin it. Did you have did you find
in your cookbook? You're like, oh, I really want to
make this recipe, and you make it and you're like, oh,
it's not as good as I remember it. I definitely
built up in my mind several recipes that I had
had in the past and I put into my book.
(19:26):
But when I went to develop them, I developed them
as I remembered them, just as perfectly and just as magically.
So the truth is how they are in my book
compared to how they really are if you maybe go
back to that place and eat them, are very different
because I'm remembering them in this sort of pristine way,
which isn't necessarily truth. I actually have to bring it
(19:49):
all home. I have that exact recipe about a BlackBerry
souflet from Le Cercue. When I was cooking it Le Cercue.
You know, we'd have long days, long nights, and once
in a while, if I had a particularly difficult night
on the line, I would sneak back into the pastry
kitchen and Jack Torres was the patriochief at the time,
and he wouldn't necessarily hang out with me, but I
remembered so vividly that that BlackBerry sou flay was this perfect,
(20:14):
extraordinary dessert. They would make a little hole in it
for me, pour the cremon glass inside. And years later,
when I wrote my first book, I recreated that blackberryou flay,
and I called Jacque Torres, who many years later I
had become friendly with, and he had gone on, obviously
to become a chocolate emperor. So we spent a day
together and made black berry to flays, and of course
they were perfect, but he didn't remember them being sort
(20:36):
of as exalted as I did. He was like, yeah,
I probably make it blackberace. I don't even really remember
making them Atlas Sirk. He's like, I'm sure I did,
but sure, whatever you say, And I remember those very well.
To me, they were the only thing that mattered. Yeah. Boy,
So when you're judging food, I think you said once before,
there's taste, there's flavor, but it's also it's a personal thing, right,
So how is it when you're when you're judging on
(20:57):
the show, you're like, Okay, the flavors there where they're
supposed to be a but I don't really like to taste.
I mean, how do you how do you balance that?
I get this question a lot, as I'm sure you do.
Judging food has become this job, this very recent phenomenon. Really,
I guess since like Iron Chef Japan and then Top Chef,
and when I talk to people about judging, they get
(21:18):
frustrated often because they're like, food is so subjective, and
I often tell them that it's about understanding. Is the
meat cooked to the proper dumbness in terms of the
cut that this person used, and did they treat it
the way it should have been treated to bring out
the best flavor? Is it seasoned well, which is to say,
was there enough salt to bring out the flavor but
not too much to overpower or any spice that they use.
(21:40):
Is it imbalance? Is there a counterpoint? Is there a
textual component? All of these pieces, to me make up
the success of a dish, And of course there's subjectivity,
but truthfully, I'm able to separate, for the most part,
my personal likes and dislikes from if a dish is
successful in its preparation and judge if it has merit,
(22:03):
And I think a lot of it also comes from
the chef's intention. I think you're absolutely right. Their story
sometimes does tell how and when and why they put
it together. And also on top of that, you have
to have a poker face sometimes absolutely give your hand
all the time. Although we are encouraged on our show,
they really want to show authentically the experience. And I
appreciate that our producers allow us to be ourselves. I mean,
(22:25):
we can't make it completely obvious if there's one dish
that's terrible when everyone else is good, because then everyone
changes the channels, you know. But we are encouraged to
engage with them in those moments and talk about when
the food is really great, or when the food needs help,
or what these major issues are. But in terms of
finding the energy and the articulation of food, are producers
(22:47):
are always telling us just that, you know, we need
description because telling someone that food is great or amazing,
this is amazing, that doesn't actually tell them anything. I've
seen shows like that where I want to reach through
the television and go, okay, I get you like it,
but tell me what it is you're eating. I need
to know exactly what's happening, right, That's it. So it
becomes a real mental exercise in finding new ways to
(23:11):
describe food a hundred times a day in a way
that if you are sitting on your couch, you'll understand
and believe the judges, because, as you well know, if
you don't believe the judges are trust their taste, then
you're also turning the channel and the whole thing falls apart.
I hope they're trusting us by now. We've been doing
this long time. Something else I want to talk about
(23:32):
it is sort of the science. I feel like if
people are going to understand the science of cooking, they're
going to have an easier time being a better cook.
I mean, for example, for me, I feel like a
lot of people just don't season their food enough. And
people always say they see me season and steak when
I'm at home, They're like, wow, that's a lot of salt.
I'm like, you have to season it before you can't
(23:53):
season and afterwards if you put enough salt and pepper
on the outside of your steak and give it a
good sear grilling it where if you grill it have
to salt falls off and it goes on the grill,
so you have to I always tell people season your
steak the way you normally would, then do it again
and then cook it. You know, it makes people very
nervous to see professional cooks seasoning food. My mother is
what's interesting about my mother and I, as although she's
(24:13):
a great cook, we actually don't cook together because we
have these arguments because I guess I have like a
professional perspective, and she's a great cook, but you know
she comes from that sort of eighties cooking mentality of
like salted the devil and understandably if you are predisposed
to heart disease, high cholesterol, all those things. But most
(24:34):
people are very afraid to season their food. But then
they'll go to restaurants and wonder why the food is
like so good. And so it is understanding the scientific
reasoning behind doing things a certain way. Techniques, the reason
that you sear a piece of meat first before you
braise it, for example, or the reason that you want
to cook eggs at a certain temperature or for a
(24:55):
certain amount of minutes if you're boiling them. My favorite caramelization,
I mean sstables get seared. People are like, oh, it's burnt. No,
it's not. It's caramelizing me exactly that. And it's about
sugar rate and understanding sugar contents and my law effect
and all of these things that are actually science. I mean,
it's chemistry. It is protein and fat and heat and
what happens when those things are combined. And so I'm
(25:18):
not saying that I am fluent in all aspects of
the scientific process. But I do think that having that
professional background and understanding action and reaction in the kitchen
and the reason why you want to do things in
a certain order really help me understand how to cook
food well and explain it well in turn, because we
(25:40):
have to explain it. The next thing I want to
talk about, and have you heard of super tasters? Yes?
You have? Yes? Are do you know if you're a supertaster? No?
You don't know. Well, you know, there's a little test
we could do. We can do that right here. You're
excited about that. I'm curious. I haven't done it either.
I don't. I don't believe in super tasters. You don't,
I don't know. Let's see, all right, well, let's see.
(26:02):
There's a little piece of paper. The directions are right here.
Put the strip on your tongue. After a few seconds,
remove the strip from your mouth. How does it taste?
Are you ready? I'm we're gonna do it at the
same time. I'm gonna be ready with my water, my
tea right here, because I'm just I'm a little worried.
What's it supposed to taste? Like? That? Is nerve racking.
All right, what'd you get? Intense bitterness? Yeah, me too,
(26:31):
So it says here non taster and hold on, I
need a sip. Yeah, that's real. Non taster will taste nothing,
a taster will detect a mild bitter or bland taste,
and a supertaster will find the paper extremely bitter. So
I guess here, hold on, good thing. We do what
we do, Mark, I mean, we were born for this.
(26:53):
I'm surprised they didn't give us this test before they
gave us our jobs on the television set. So now
there's something else interested and going on right here in
the studio. Every episode we play a game with our guests,
and since we're talking about flavor today, we thought let's
do a chip taste test. We've got five balls in
front of us here, and I don't know what's in
any of them. They look good. Let's see what this
one is. It's m this is terror taro chip. I
(27:15):
can tell you that it's as harot. That's it. It's
a salted taro chip. I love this game, by the way.
All right, let's try this one. This one looks like
it's it's a ruffled potato chip. It's got a nice
sun tan color. Oh what is that? It could be
what is called all dressed, but I think it's probably
like a I don't know, like a barbecue. Really a
roasted chicken wing. Oh wow, heck did we find that?
(27:39):
It's like wine? Like if you say I taste leather shoes,
I'm going to taste leather shoes. There's maybe some roast
chicken in their shirt. Take it. It's ridiculous. Now, this
one here is a curly thing that you know when
you go to a Japanese restaurant and they cut the
calamari with small little criss crosses, or it could be
like something that you'd use in plumbing. I love the
(28:00):
texture that's like a shrimp chip of some kind, because
you're getting that like light. You're definitely right. It's a rice.
You get those in Vietnamese restaurants. They're all usually like
different colors. Adore them, but they those have no flavor.
This is a little This is a little bit of
a like barbecue, a little barbecue. You're really into these
texture is awesome, Like, look how beautiful they're kind of
crazy looking. The reveal squid. All right, now we're gonna
(28:23):
go to number four. You guys, canna hear me sniffing potato? Yeah,
it's like a sour creaming on your bet. No, wo oh,
I like it. It's coming at me from all angles.
It's like thick cut. It's roughly with like a sabby
horse rats situation, but there's a little sour note backing
(28:45):
up on the other side, on on the side of
the tongue. They're like sour cream with sabby or sour
cream horse radish or something awesome. Wait a minute, where
these coming from? Sabby ranch ranch? You guys, that is
a big covery. Okay, we got another ruffled one with
green specks. Oh I spelled dill. That's that's good stuff.
(29:08):
That's the money right there. What's the dill pickle chip?
It's good. It's like a deep fried pickle. What's the
name of it. It's just dill pickle. It tasted like
that's my dam right there, right there. I'm just gonna
you just keep those right there. Oh boy, that was
a surprise for everybody, anybody. That was really something midday snack. Well,
(29:28):
thank you so much for coming by. Thank you, Mark,
glad you put up with the chip tasting. I love
I didn't love all the chips, but I love the
chip taste. Thank you for having me, Thank you, thank
you well. I enjoyed talking about flavor. I hope you
guys got something out of it. I'm excited to share
the rest of the season with you. We're going to
explore food culture from every angle, from the hidden messages
you never knew were on the menu to what happens
(29:50):
behind the scenes at restaurants. Plus, we're gonna be joined
by some of my closest friends in the industry, like
Marcus Samuelson, Melissa Clark, Jonathan Waxman, and so many more.
Also Bob Holmes, Gayl Simmons, thank you so much for
being here with me today. I'll see you next week.
Food three six is a production of I Heart Radio
(30:10):
and I'm your host, Mark Murphy. A very special thanks
to Emily Carpet, My director of Communications, and producers Nikki
Etre and Christina Everett. Mixing and music by Anna Stump
and recording help from Julian Weller and Jacopo Benzel. Thank
you to Bethan Michaeluso and Kara Weissenstein for handling research.
Food through sixty is executive produced by manguest Head ticket
(30:33):
or for more podcasts on my heart Radio, visit the
i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Food through sixty with Mark Murphy is a production of
I Heart Radio. Because my pasta tastes different when I'm
speaking Italian. It might well because it frames your expectations,
and expectations make a difference to flavor. And you heard
of super tasters, Yes, you have? Yes? Do you know
if you're a supertaster? You don't know. I don't believe
(00:23):
in super tasters. You don't, I don't know. Let's see,
let's see. Welcome to Food three sixty, the podcast that
serves up some serious of food for thought. I'm your host,
Mark Murphy. I've been troking for thirty years, everywhere from
Paris to Italy to Monte Carlo and here in New
(00:45):
York City. I've worked at and owned a number of restaurants.
Some of you might know, some of you might not
well Cirque, Seller in the Sky, Lumis, Ravine, Layla, Ditch Planes, Landmark.
But my experience is a judge on food networks Chopped
for the past ten years has really pique my curiosity
and food culture. I love everything about food. I watched
a lot of documentaries, I read plenty of books, and
(01:07):
now on my day off, I'm spending it with you
guys in the student talking about food. But there's a
story behind every meal, a story behind the person who
makes it, a story behind each ingredient, and I want
to know everything. So pull up a seat, let's dig
in today. We're going to discuss flavor. It's a subject
(01:27):
I'm very interested in. After all, I tabled my first
cookbook season with authority, so I asked Bob Holmes and
Gail Simmons to join me. You just heard them at
the beginning of the show. First, I sat down with Bob.
He's a science writer who spent years researching and interviewing
experts for his book, Flavor, The Science of Our Most
Neglected Sense. Bob, thank you so much for coming on
(01:50):
the show. Here, you bet my pleasure. Let's start talking
about your book. Why do you think flavor is the
most neglected sense? I think one of the big reasons
that flavor doesn't get the attention that it probably deserves
is the it's so hard to talk about. We don't
have the vocabulary. Most of the flavor of a food
comes not from taste itself, which is sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami,
which we actually have words for, but most of it
(02:11):
is is to do with with a sense of smell,
and we don't have words for smell. If you're describing
what something smells like, it's all by analogy. Well it
smells like lemon, smells like mint, and we just don't
have the objective words. If you're talking about colors, you
can say, well, you know, the Swedish flag is blue
and yellow. You don't have to say that it's skylike
(02:32):
and lemon like. And that makes it so much easier.
That's really interesting. And I can just hear my little
kids if they taste something and I like yuck, they
don't give you a description that would it tastes like.
It's actually very very true. So understanding flavor, flavor and
taste are not the same thing. Can you explain how
that works. Flavor is really the whole experience that happens
when you have food in your mouth. It's about taste,
(02:54):
you know those five sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami, And
it's about the smell of the food, which is like
and carries most of the characteristics. But it's also about texture.
It's about feelings of hot and cold. You know, sound
figures in expectation, figures in you if I serve you
two glasses of the same wine, and I tell you
one's expensive and one's cheap. You're gonna like the glass
(03:15):
that I told you was expensive better, even though it's
the very same wine. And that's because of expectation. And
the same sort of thing happens for strawberry moose. I
think tastes sweeter on a white plate than it does
on a black plate, probably because you can see the
redness stands out better against the white plate. That makes
you expect it to taste sweeter and strawberry or wow.
(03:36):
One of my personal experiences is I grew up in Italy,
you know, and I would be sitting in the countryside
in Italy. As a kid, I always ate new Tela
on a toasted country bread. I would bring that exact
same new talent back to America and find a very
good country bread in America and have the same breakfast
in an apartment in New York City. And I didn't
like it. I was like, this doesn't taste right. I
(03:57):
think I'm in the wrong frame of mind. I'm in
the wrong place. I don't have the same oxygen around me.
I don't know what it is, but I'm not eating
this anymore. The expectations are different, Yeah, the whole the
context is different. In context seems to be really really important.
So it really comes down to expectations in people's brains,
the way they work. That's a big part of it.
That's pretty wild. So what about the deal with cilantro.
(04:18):
Now two people can need the exact same ingredient. We're
just talking to ingredient here for flavor, like cilantro. I
love cilantro. I am friends of mine that think it
tastes like a bar of soap. Where's that coming from?
Part of it is genetic. It turns out that you know,
there's a particular odor receptor, if you want to be technical,
it's o R six A two. Uh, that's broken in
some people and not in others. And people with one
(04:41):
version of this o R six a two are more
likely to like cilantro than people with the other version.
So part of it's genetic, but it's not a very
big part. That explains only less than I think they said,
less than ten percent of the difference in people. So
mostly it's probably expectation. The first tiny ate cilantro, did
(05:01):
it surprise you and startle you? I mean, maybe you
don't much care for that experience and nuts colored everything
ever since. Well, that's funny because I grew up in
Europe and I didn't have cilantro when when I came
to America and I was like, wait, why haven't I
had this? I love this stuff. So let's go onto
like food pairing, and I guess there's some science behind that.
I know that fried chicken and champagne are one of
(05:21):
those things that go really really well together, and it's
pretty obvious to me because of the fattiness of the
fried chicken and the acidity level of champagne. The acid
cuts through the fattiness, and I think it's a perfect match.
Is there science behind all this? Besides just acid and fat,
there's some tannin and fat is another one that there's
good scientific evidence for. So a big tannic red wine
(05:42):
goes really well with a big, rich, fatty beef steak.
You know, the tannon helps to clear the fat off
the tongue and the fat helps to tame the tannins,
and so alternating bites of rich steak with SIPs of
tannic wine actually really does work well together, and that
is scientifically shown. So like a little ballet on your palette. Yeah, exactly.
(06:02):
And then of course there's the whole food and wine pairing.
And I always get this every time I do a
food and wine dinner. And I've got you know, as
I call them, the corked dorks, the Sumays of the world.
You know, we're doing a food and wine it or
no artichokes and no asparagus. It's it's as if I'm committing,
you know, one of the Seven sins. If I put
an asparagus on the menu with one of their wines,
(06:23):
Are there any other ingredients? And why is that? By
the way, because I I just do it, and I
just say, okay, I won't use asparagus or artichokes, Am
I okay? Or should I fight them? I would fight
them over the asparagus. I like wine with asparagus. The
thing with arctich chokes is apparently it's an idiosyncratic thing
one of the compounds, and artich chokes activates sweet receptors
so that it makes the wine that you sip afterward
(06:45):
tastes sweeter. And that plays really badly with especially with
red wine. Really wow, Okay, So I'm gonna have to
give him the artichokes. Unless they have a wine that
they want to taste sweeter, I'll tell them that this
wine is not sweet enough. Shuld we have an artichoke
with it. I like nice acid white wine with artichokes.
I mean, I'm cooking my artichokes and white wine is
my favorite way to go. And a little bit of mint,
(07:07):
like the Romans do it, you know. For me, I
love I think there's a way to unlock certain flavors.
And when I cook white beans, for example, I always
put a couple filets of anchovies in there because I
feel like the anchovies give it a little bit of background,
a little bit of depth. You know, how to describe
red wine is having a little tea. Well, I feel
as though anchovies are one of those ingredients that give
(07:27):
a little tailwa to certain dishes. And obviously an Asian food,
they use fish sauce, which is pretty much, you know,
liquid anchovy. As far as I'm concerned, I love the
flavor that it gives. Knowing things like that, does it
make you a better cook if you can, if you
can come up with things like this a little at least? Yeah,
I mean the thing about anchovies than fish sauce is
it adds a mommy, which is basically the flavor of
(07:50):
decomposing proteins of aged foods, aged meats, olives, cheese, all
of that stuff has zo mommy because it's aged and
in the aging process there's some decomposition going on, and
so it adds that. That gives the depth and complexity.
So knowing that, yeah, I had thought of antrovies and beans,
but I'm going to try that next pot of beans
(08:11):
I make. And that's why people like age steak. I
guess so much too, right, that's gonna bring it because
it's deeper, exactly. So I want us to also talk
about these people that are called super tasters. Yeah, and
I guess there's what is it of the population or
super tasters. So if you're a super taster, is that
good or is it bad? That's kind of an it depends.
Super Tasters basically are people with more taste buds on
(08:35):
their tongue so they get a more intense experience of
the food, and for many people that means they're really picky.
I am apparently also a super taster, but I'm also
food adventurous. You spoke to a researcher who said she
thinks there's two kinds of super tasters. There's not adventurous ones.
Those are the picky ones, and then the adventurous ones. Yes,
(08:56):
it's intense, the experience is intense, but that's okay, as
we're we're sort of seeking that. I presumably have a
more intense experience of bitter than the average person, but
I still you know, I drink my coffee black, and
I like the hoppiest beer I can find. And you know,
my favorite green is rappini, which is as but as
bitter as you can get for greens. So some super
(09:17):
tasters are just lazy and they don't want to go
through the exercise of having all these powerful flavors in
their mouth, so they just become bland eaters. And you're
one of the examples of people that are like, oh wow,
I want to experience broccoli, rob I want to experience
a lemon, or you want to experience these things. So
so there's two different types of super tasters. I love that.
It's probably more complicated than that. Psychologically, I put milk
(09:39):
in my tea because tea without milk is just too intense,
the tannic nous of it. I tend not to like
the most acidic apples, because that's just a little too
intense for me. It's not a black and white thing, right. Well,
you were just talking about drinking tea, and I'm a
big tea drinker most of the day, and I'll just
drink espresso like after lunch, after of nurse and meal
(09:59):
or after dinner. But for me, if I ever go
do you ever go to those hotels or that you know,
an hotel lobby and there's the big pot of coffee
and there's a big pot of hot water, and so
I'll take my tea bag and I'll make my tea
with the hot water. If there's ever been coffee in
that pot, I can't drink the tea because I can
taste the coffee in the background. And it's amazing to
me that people don't understand that. And people look at
(10:21):
me like I'm a little crazy likes this hot water
in there. What's the matter with you? I mean, I
don't know if that makes me a super taster, but
it might mean you're a super taster. It might mean
that you're particularly sensitive to some particular aroma compound in coffee.
So the next thing I wanted to talk about is traveling,
and I travel a lot. I try all the cuisines.
Can you explain to me why there's whole continents out there?
They have this thing for breakfast called marmite. They slathered
(10:45):
on a piece of toast in the morning, and I
would if I was to ever put that on my
menu here in America, I think I would be thrown
out of the country. I don't know anybody in America
that would eat this, and I certainly, I mean I
I try everything, I like everything, I've tried my damnedest
can't eat the stuff? What what? What's with that? It's
tradition and experience. We haven't here in North America, haven't
(11:06):
grown up acculturated to marmite, and therefore it's not part
of what we eat. It's like it's hard to find
a North American that would eat Nato, which is the
you know, the Japanese fermented soybean dish that looks like
a bowl of snot. Actually, the Japanese love it, and
most North Americans have a really hard time with it.
And conversely, we all eat cheese. What most of us
(11:30):
love cheese, and it's a hard sell, at least until recently,
in Asia, because it's it's the spoiled milk product that's
smells and tastes rancid, and why would anyone eat that stuff?
And that's almost entirely experienced tradition upbringing what you're used
(11:50):
to culturally. You're right, it's one of those tradition things
you just have to sort of build up to eating it.
So I guess one last question for you, and I
think everybody it's listenings probably wants to know. You're obviously
the export on flavor. Is there anything we can do
to improve our our flavor? Do we have to choose slower?
Especially as a chef of myself, I want to know,
is there something that I can do to improve my
(12:12):
my sort of detection of flavors so I can make
better food for my customers. The short answer is pay attention.
But you're already doing that as a chef and trying
to find ways to articulate the differences between flavor experiences.
You know, there have been studies of wine professionals that
show that they're not any better than the rest of
us at actual perception. Their noses are no more delicate,
(12:33):
no more sensitive than the rest of us. They just
have better access to vocabulary they've practiced, so they can
recognize and articulate the difference between cherry and BlackBerry and
raspberry flavors in a wine. And we could do that
to most of us, but we we just don't have
the experience at it. So just pay attention and and
keep trying and expand on your vocabulary. I guess well, Bob,
(12:56):
thanks so much for joining me and talking about this.
We're gonna work on our flavor or detection over here. Cool.
Thank you. We'll be right back after a quick break.
Welcome back to Food three sixty. Many of you may
know my next guest is one of the original judges
on Bravo's Top Chef. Gail Simmons began her food career
after attending what is now known as the Institute of
(13:18):
Culinary Education in New York. She trained in the kitchens
of La Cirquin Vong before working for Vogue Magazine's food
critic Jeffrey stein Garden and then for Daniel Bloud. Since
two thousand four, she's been the special project director at
Food and Wine Magazine. Well, Gail, thank you very much
for being here. Thank you in the studio. It's very exciting.
I'm very happy to be here. I'm always happy to
(13:38):
see um. So you're you're from Canada and you started
writing in the newspaper. Was it at your school first?
Is that at first? It wasn't my university. When I
was in college, I started writing for the school paper
restaurant reviews, not because I wanted to be a restaurant critic,
although I guess I did, but I didn't really think
that was necessarily a viable career choice. I did it
(13:59):
because I thought it was really fun and no one
else was doing it, and I just saw the whole.
And I went to McGill University in Montreal, and it
is an incredible city for eating. Has always been, I think,
by far, the best food city in Canada, if not
one of the best in North America. It is an
incredible place to eat and drink, and I wanted all
of my fellow students to know about this sort of cool,
(14:21):
out of the way, interesting, ethnic and diverse restaurants in
the city. So I took it upon myself to do
some exploring. I didn't get paid for it. All the
money came out of my own pocket for my meals,
and I was eating it like cheap, little ethnic joints,
but there's so much good food. Then I found a
lot of fun things to write about. But then you
went from being a writer and then you moved to
New York and then you started working in the kitchens
and you worked at cercre I did while I was
(14:44):
a writer in Toronto for a year. You know, I
was an assistant editor, and I was an intern at
a bunch of magazines and newspapers in Canada. And when
I decided that food was my thing and that was
where I wanted to focus on my attention, I realized
that I actually didn't know that much about food. Just
because I liked to eat didn't really make me a
food writer. And how was I going to sort of
differentiate myself. So I took some advice from a food
(15:05):
editor and quit my job in Canada, moved here and
went to culinary school and it did a full year,
you know of the professional culinary program at what is
now Ice. Wait, did you go to Peter Combs. It
was called Peter Comes. Then I went to there as
it was called Peter Comes New York School, and it
was one street in New York Avenue. So I was
the first class in their next location, the twenty three
(15:28):
Street location. And then when I had to leave and
do an apprenticeship. At first I was like, well, I'm
just gonna go be a food right right now. I'll
just go get an internship at Cormet magazine or something,
and they convinced me to stay in the kitchen for
a little while. So from there I went to the
Cirque as my very first job out of culinary school.
And who was the chef? So, so you were there
after me because I was there under who had left?
(15:50):
I guess by that, Yes, I guess so. And then
I went to Peter Comes when it was on the
Upper East Side, and I remember it. It was not
a year, of course, it was a three month core prison.
I called it the professional housewife cooking school because I
was the only one who got a job in the
cooking industry after I left. And that's amazing. Wow, it
really changed mine was I think at eight month course
(16:11):
like you know, a school year basically, and then I
had to do this apprenticeship and I stayed cooking for
a little longer selves. So you must have some good stories,
as do I am. He didn't look me in the
eye for a long time. He didn't really acknowledge that
I existed. That is part of it. We used to
call him. I mean, he was an extraordinary cook, don't
get me wrong, a very fascinating man from Cambodia and
(16:33):
an incredibly talented chef. But we used to call him
the shark, did you because we all wore tokes in
the kitchen. You have the really old school, round professional
chef hats in the kitchen, and he was the only
one who wore one that was different. His came to
a point at the top, and he was very small,
so he was sort of weave in and out of
(16:54):
all of the other tokes in the kitchen, like a
little shark weaving through the water. So we all called
in the shark. That was very funny. Those are some
good times. I really loved working in that restaurant. That
was a lot of and it was an amazing kitchen.
What an enormous kitchen too. It was hard for me.
I was the only woman in the kitchen, and it
was you know, formative for sure, but it was not
(17:15):
an easy place for girls back then. It was. It
was never an easy place. I remember well. A lot
of stories. We could have a whole other podcast. So
your cookbook, it was inspired by travel and your upbringing
and flavors. To me have memories, they have thoughts of
the past. But how did you take all those thoughts
and those memories of traveling in childhood and so on
(17:37):
and so forth, and uh and and recreate the recipes
and put them in your book because it's it's all
about flavor in the end, right, it absolutely is. And
what's funny is that memory played such a huge role
in this book, particularly it's called Bringing It Home. And
the original simple concept of the book was to talk
about all of these incredible experiences I've been able to
(17:59):
have through the of my career, starting with my childhood
and the travel I did as a child. My father's
from South Africa and my mother's from Canada, but they
sent a lot of time traveling. We spent a lot
of time in Southern Africa growing up. My father family
then moved to Australia, so you know, we have this
very international family. And then moving into my adulthood. Serendipitously,
I've spent so much of my adulthood on the road
(18:21):
because of my job. And then ultimately I come home
inspired and I take a lot of notes while I'm traveling,
and I come home and I want to cook it,
and I end up adapting and creating recipes out of
those memories. I always have the whole thing with memory
and food. I remember being a kid in the south
of France and my parents took me to a very
fancy restaurant called Chevrol, which is still around, and there
(18:42):
was a raspberry souflet there that to me was like
eating the most beautiful cloud, raspberry flavored cloud I can imagine.
And I can still remember sitting there, going I need
another one, and they're like, oh, well, you have to
order at the beginning of meal. It takes so long
to make it and so and I was devastated. And
to this day, I'm almost scared to go back and
(19:05):
have it. And I know it's still on the menu
because I google it every once in a while and
I see that thing is still there. It's like an
ex girlfriend. It's so perfect in my mind. I don't
want to ruin it. Did you have did you find
in your cookbook? You're like, oh, I really want to
make this recipe, and you make it and you're like, oh,
it's not as good as I remember it. I definitely
built up in my mind several recipes that I had
had in the past and I put into my book.
(19:26):
But when I went to develop them, I developed them
as I remembered them, just as perfectly and just as magically.
So the truth is how they are in my book
compared to how they really are if you maybe go
back to that place and eat them, are very different
because I'm remembering them in this sort of pristine way,
which isn't necessarily truth. I actually have to bring it
(19:49):
all home. I have that exact recipe about a BlackBerry
souflet from Le Cercue. When I was cooking it Le Cercue.
You know, we'd have long days, long nights, and once
in a while, if I had a particularly difficult night
on the line, I would sneak back into the pastry
kitchen and Jack Torres was the patriochief at the time,
and he wouldn't necessarily hang out with me, but I
remembered so vividly that that BlackBerry sou flay was this perfect,
(20:14):
extraordinary dessert. They would make a little hole in it
for me, pour the cremon glass inside. And years later,
when I wrote my first book, I recreated that blackberryou flay,
and I called Jacque Torres, who many years later I
had become friendly with, and he had gone on, obviously
to become a chocolate emperor. So we spent a day
together and made black berry to flays, and of course
they were perfect, but he didn't remember them being sort
(20:36):
of as exalted as I did. He was like, yeah,
I probably make it blackberace. I don't even really remember
making them Atlas Sirk. He's like, I'm sure I did,
but sure, whatever you say, And I remember those very well.
To me, they were the only thing that mattered. Yeah. Boy,
So when you're judging food, I think you said once before,
there's taste, there's flavor, but it's also it's a personal thing, right,
So how is it when you're when you're judging on
(20:57):
the show, you're like, Okay, the flavors there where they're
supposed to be a but I don't really like to taste.
I mean, how do you how do you balance that?
I get this question a lot, as I'm sure you do.
Judging food has become this job, this very recent phenomenon. Really,
I guess since like Iron Chef Japan and then Top Chef,
and when I talk to people about judging, they get
(21:18):
frustrated often because they're like, food is so subjective, and
I often tell them that it's about understanding. Is the
meat cooked to the proper dumbness in terms of the
cut that this person used, and did they treat it
the way it should have been treated to bring out
the best flavor? Is it seasoned well, which is to say,
was there enough salt to bring out the flavor but
not too much to overpower or any spice that they use.
(21:40):
Is it imbalance? Is there a counterpoint? Is there a
textual component? All of these pieces, to me make up
the success of a dish, And of course there's subjectivity,
but truthfully, I'm able to separate, for the most part,
my personal likes and dislikes from if a dish is
successful in its preparation and judge if it has merit,
(22:03):
And I think a lot of it also comes from
the chef's intention. I think you're absolutely right. Their story
sometimes does tell how and when and why they put
it together. And also on top of that, you have
to have a poker face sometimes absolutely give your hand
all the time. Although we are encouraged on our show,
they really want to show authentically the experience. And I
appreciate that our producers allow us to be ourselves. I mean,
(22:25):
we can't make it completely obvious if there's one dish
that's terrible when everyone else is good, because then everyone
changes the channels, you know. But we are encouraged to
engage with them in those moments and talk about when
the food is really great, or when the food needs help,
or what these major issues are. But in terms of
finding the energy and the articulation of food, are producers
(22:47):
are always telling us just that, you know, we need
description because telling someone that food is great or amazing,
this is amazing, that doesn't actually tell them anything. I've
seen shows like that where I want to reach through
the television and go, okay, I get you like it,
but tell me what it is you're eating. I need
to know exactly what's happening, right, That's it. So it
becomes a real mental exercise in finding new ways to
(23:11):
describe food a hundred times a day in a way
that if you are sitting on your couch, you'll understand
and believe the judges, because, as you well know, if
you don't believe the judges are trust their taste, then
you're also turning the channel and the whole thing falls apart.
I hope they're trusting us by now. We've been doing
this long time. Something else I want to talk about
(23:32):
it is sort of the science. I feel like if
people are going to understand the science of cooking, they're
going to have an easier time being a better cook.
I mean, for example, for me, I feel like a
lot of people just don't season their food enough. And
people always say they see me season and steak when
I'm at home, They're like, wow, that's a lot of salt.
I'm like, you have to season it before you can't
(23:53):
season and afterwards if you put enough salt and pepper
on the outside of your steak and give it a
good sear grilling it where if you grill it have
to salt falls off and it goes on the grill,
so you have to I always tell people season your
steak the way you normally would, then do it again
and then cook it. You know, it makes people very
nervous to see professional cooks seasoning food. My mother is
what's interesting about my mother and I, as although she's
(24:13):
a great cook, we actually don't cook together because we
have these arguments because I guess I have like a
professional perspective, and she's a great cook, but you know
she comes from that sort of eighties cooking mentality of
like salted the devil and understandably if you are predisposed
to heart disease, high cholesterol, all those things. But most
(24:34):
people are very afraid to season their food. But then
they'll go to restaurants and wonder why the food is
like so good. And so it is understanding the scientific
reasoning behind doing things a certain way. Techniques, the reason
that you sear a piece of meat first before you
braise it, for example, or the reason that you want
to cook eggs at a certain temperature or for a
(24:55):
certain amount of minutes if you're boiling them. My favorite caramelization,
I mean sstables get seared. People are like, oh, it's burnt. No,
it's not. It's caramelizing me exactly that. And it's about
sugar rate and understanding sugar contents and my law effect
and all of these things that are actually science. I mean,
it's chemistry. It is protein and fat and heat and
what happens when those things are combined. And so I'm
(25:18):
not saying that I am fluent in all aspects of
the scientific process. But I do think that having that
professional background and understanding action and reaction in the kitchen
and the reason why you want to do things in
a certain order really help me understand how to cook
food well and explain it well in turn, because we
(25:40):
have to explain it. The next thing I want to
talk about, and have you heard of super tasters? Yes?
You have? Yes? Are do you know if you're a supertaster? No?
You don't know. Well, you know, there's a little test
we could do. We can do that right here. You're
excited about that. I'm curious. I haven't done it either.
I don't. I don't believe in super tasters. You don't,
I don't know. Let's see, all right, well, let's see.
(26:02):
There's a little piece of paper. The directions are right here.
Put the strip on your tongue. After a few seconds,
remove the strip from your mouth. How does it taste?
Are you ready? I'm we're gonna do it at the
same time. I'm gonna be ready with my water, my
tea right here, because I'm just I'm a little worried.
What's it supposed to taste? Like? That? Is nerve racking.
All right, what'd you get? Intense bitterness? Yeah, me too,
(26:31):
So it says here non taster and hold on, I
need a sip. Yeah, that's real. Non taster will taste nothing,
a taster will detect a mild bitter or bland taste,
and a supertaster will find the paper extremely bitter. So
I guess here, hold on, good thing. We do what
we do, Mark, I mean, we were born for this.
(26:53):
I'm surprised they didn't give us this test before they
gave us our jobs on the television set. So now
there's something else interested and going on right here in
the studio. Every episode we play a game with our guests,
and since we're talking about flavor today, we thought let's
do a chip taste test. We've got five balls in
front of us here, and I don't know what's in
any of them. They look good. Let's see what this
one is. It's m this is terror taro chip. I
(27:15):
can tell you that it's as harot. That's it. It's
a salted taro chip. I love this game, by the way.
All right, let's try this one. This one looks like
it's it's a ruffled potato chip. It's got a nice
sun tan color. Oh what is that? It could be
what is called all dressed, but I think it's probably
like a I don't know, like a barbecue. Really a
roasted chicken wing. Oh wow, heck did we find that?
(27:39):
It's like wine? Like if you say I taste leather shoes,
I'm going to taste leather shoes. There's maybe some roast
chicken in their shirt. Take it. It's ridiculous. Now, this
one here is a curly thing that you know when
you go to a Japanese restaurant and they cut the
calamari with small little criss crosses, or it could be
like something that you'd use in plumbing. I love the
(28:00):
texture that's like a shrimp chip of some kind, because
you're getting that like light. You're definitely right. It's a rice.
You get those in Vietnamese restaurants. They're all usually like
different colors. Adore them, but they those have no flavor.
This is a little This is a little bit of
a like barbecue, a little barbecue. You're really into these
texture is awesome, Like, look how beautiful they're kind of
crazy looking. The reveal squid. All right, now we're gonna
(28:23):
go to number four. You guys, canna hear me sniffing potato? Yeah,
it's like a sour creaming on your bet. No, wo oh,
I like it. It's coming at me from all angles.
It's like thick cut. It's roughly with like a sabby
horse rats situation, but there's a little sour note backing
(28:45):
up on the other side, on on the side of
the tongue. They're like sour cream with sabby or sour
cream horse radish or something awesome. Wait a minute, where
these coming from? Sabby ranch ranch? You guys, that is
a big covery. Okay, we got another ruffled one with
green specks. Oh I spelled dill. That's that's good stuff.
(29:08):
That's the money right there. What's the dill pickle chip?
It's good. It's like a deep fried pickle. What's the
name of it. It's just dill pickle. It tasted like
that's my dam right there, right there. I'm just gonna
you just keep those right there. Oh boy, that was
a surprise for everybody, anybody. That was really something midday snack. Well,
(29:28):
thank you so much for coming by. Thank you, Mark,
glad you put up with the chip tasting. I love
I didn't love all the chips, but I love the
chip taste. Thank you for having me, Thank you, thank
you well. I enjoyed talking about flavor. I hope you
guys got something out of it. I'm excited to share
the rest of the season with you. We're going to
explore food culture from every angle, from the hidden messages
you never knew were on the menu to what happens
(29:50):
behind the scenes at restaurants. Plus, we're gonna be joined
by some of my closest friends in the industry, like
Marcus Samuelson, Melissa Clark, Jonathan Waxman, and so many more.
Also Bob Holmes, Gayl Simmons, thank you so much for
being here with me today. I'll see you next week.
Food three six is a production of I Heart Radio
(30:10):
and I'm your host, Mark Murphy. A very special thanks
to Emily Carpet, My director of Communications, and producers Nikki
Etre and Christina Everett. Mixing and music by Anna Stump
and recording help from Julian Weller and Jacopo Benzel. Thank
you to Bethan Michaeluso and Kara Weissenstein for handling research.
Food through sixty is executive produced by manguest Head ticket
(30:33):
or for more podcasts on my heart Radio, visit the
i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
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