As humans, we are equipped with a lot of senses that tell us a lot about the world around us. Watching dark clouds build on the horizon, feeling the growing humidity on your skin, hearing the distant thunder, and smelling petrichor can give you a clue that a storm’s on its way. Likewise, smelling the burning plastic, watching the flames, and feeling the pain from trying to pick up the now worse-for-wear cutting board can let you know that you should be more careful with which burner on the stove you actually turn on. Having food and beverages is a much more pleasant multi-sensory experience we can have nearly every day.
Smell is one of the major aspects of making dining pleasurable. Our noses are very complex chemical receptors, able to detect over 400 individual scents and over one trillion different combinations as found in a study from Rockefeller University. Most things you smell are going to be made up of several combinations of naturally occurring chemicals: cherries and almonds both contain benzaldehyde as a major scent component, for example, but cherries have several other aldehydes, esters, and terpenoids that make you think, “Yes, this is clearly cherry-flavoured”. In addition to many different naturally-occurring chemicals being present in various foods, these same compounds can naturally occur in wines, beers, spirits, sakes, and various other beverages as well! That these compounds can be shared among different things is one of the major aspects of both molecular gastronomy as well as food and beverage pairing.
Though our noses play a major role in our perceptions of taste (notice, for example, how foods taste totally different when you have a cold), our mouths have different sensors as well for textures, temperatures (whether physically or chemically if you’ve ever eaten too spicy a pepper), as well as different chemicals on their own. We can detect sugars (sweetness), acids (sourness), salts (saltiness), amino acids and glutamates (umami or savouriness), as well as various other things that play toward bitterness. Each of these different tastes can play together in interesting ways: a secret of dessert chefs is to often have a touch of salt to play against the sweetness, and having a bit of acidity to play against sweetness can make your beverage just that much more refreshing.
Next time you’re having a meal, think about how flavours blend with and enhance each other. How would your tomato and cheese sandwich go with the savouriness of a Ginjo sake? Would your citrussy Cold IPA potentially bring out more with an herbal Thai green curry? Could your minty fresh rolls taste even better with a herbaceous Sauvignon Blanc? If you’d like to have more recommendations on how different beverages can bring just that little extra to your dinner, ask for your favourite sommelier at Metro Liquor!
Any content, resident submissions, guest columns, advertisements, and advertorials are not necessarily endorsed by or represent the views of Best Version Media LLC (BVM) or any municipality, homeowners associations, businesses, or organizations that this publication serves. BVM is not responsible for the reliability, suitability, or timeliness of any content submitted, inclusive of materials generated or composed through artificial intelligence (AI). All content submitted is done so at the sole discretion of the submitting party.
