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Flavour and Perfumed Food

post #1 of 15
1/2/06 at 3:15pm
Thread Starter 
As individuals with a love of fragrance, and potentially, a highly developed sense of smell, do you find yourself drawn to distinctive flavours fresh, highly fragrant even perfumed food? Is there a correlation between this and your taste in scent?

I have always loved flavours as much as smells (our refined sense of flavour is from the olfactory sense after all.) I desire swathes of fresh herbs (try completely surrounding a guinea fowl, chicken or rabbit with bunches of thyme, rosemary, marjoram, and parsley, lemons and shallots) or heady combinations of spices (chicken breasts stuffed with dried apricots and sultanas fragranced with cardamom and coriander seeds with garlic then wrapped in filo pastry). How I love Christmas cake, Jasmine Rice, Gewürztraminer, Rose Flavoured Turkish Delight, Port, Tokaji Asszú, piquant deep red pomegranates (roast a leg of lamb with lemon thyme and a couple of these, bitter pith removed of course), Thai Green Curry, mandarin oranges, and the darkest bitterest chocolate! The festive period is particularly great for me. Not to say that I eschew the light, simple and fresh delights of homemade lemonade, green tea or good sashimi. I do however prefer the more perfumed end of things, similarly my taste in scent edges toward the spicy and woody if not the outright oriental.

How about you?
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post #2 of 15
1/2/06 at 4:59pm
Most of the pleasure in tangerines comes to me from my fingers after I've peeled one. Does that count?
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post #3 of 15
1/3/06 at 4:54pm
Well,

this is kind of weird. I went to a bookstore to get the new Nellie McKay album (which her website says should be out today, but it WASN'T. I hate it when labels give bogus release dates and never update them!), but anyway I got an "Eggnog Latte"

Hmmm....It wasn't bad. It tasted OK, but I left it in the car for about 20 minutes while I went to Best Buy. I came back and started drinking my eggnog latte and thought, "you know what this tastes like? not eggs...CHICKEN!" yeah, it kind of tasted like chicken. I'm fairly certain that the eggnog did not contain any raw egg products- I'm pretty sure that it was a synthetic flavoring. But I could just see the flavorist who created it thinking that if he gave it just a 'hint o' fowl" that it would really nail that "egg" note. Also I was eating some "Buffalo Wing Pretzel pieces the other night, and I'd swear there was some chicken flavoring, but I looked at the ingredients and couldn't find anything to account for it... weird.

But yeah, the chicken latte was a bit dissappointing.
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post #4 of 15
1/5/06 at 9:35am
Thread Starter 
Indie, how disgusting! Although I have heard Beef Tea is good for those convalescing. Have you tried a bit of cardamom and cinnamon in your coffee? Needs to fairly strong though. Ambergris is meant to be a good addition too. Ive had it in chocolates, but not coffee or tea. It was delicious. Try using advocaat instead of synthetic flavours though it will need to be colled to prevent it from cooking!

Shycat, I agree Tangerines, one of the few things by which one is yielded greater pleasure when manipulated by the fingers rather than the mouth: they are so often watery and uninspiring when you actually get them in there.

My thread seems to have held limited appeal for most Basenoters. I was expecting people who love chocolate oranges to be A*Men fans, People who like Clean to endorse the macrobiotic diet, die hard fans of Kouros to enjoy licking piss of a thistle while being kicked up the arse by a sandaled foot etc.
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post #5 of 15
1/6/06 at 11:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by tmn15

die hard fans of Kouros to enjoy licking piss of a thistle while being kicked up the arse by a sandaled foot etc.


Oh, you didn't just say that...

ROTFL!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I've heard many lurid descriptions of Kouros lovers, but that one just takes the (urinal) cake!

RE: tangerines- i bought a bag of tangerines the other night, and last night I peeled and ate one before going to bed. I woke up and went to the kitchen for something and washed my hands. Then i noticed that my fingers smelled amazing- a bit of the dish soap mixed with the strong smell of tangerines still on my fingers. The combo smelled alot like a crisper take on Miller et Bertaux Spiritus #2/Land. It's funny that I saw this thread, because I hadn't had a tangerine in years. But I do agree, the real experience is in the peeling process.
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post #6 of 15
1/6/06 at 4:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tmn15

My thread seems to have held limited appeal for most Basenoters. I was expecting people who love chocolate oranges to be A*Men fans, People who like Clean to endorse the macrobiotic diet, die hard fans of Kouros to enjoy licking piss of a thistle while being kicked up the arse by a sandaled foot etc.

I enjoyed much your thread tmn15! I like very much xmas time flavours&smells! for sure we have a great variety of dishes and wines that exude holidays time: dried fruits, figs, dates, candy orange, candy cedar, apricots etc...
and also herbs and spices play a keyrole. Wines are also a smell paradise: for example I prefer the red ones (even if Gewürztraminer, Silvaner ect. are good too) so I drunk wonderful Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Barolo with hints of ripe fruits&woods flavours.
We talked also often about food and smells in the chatroom... So maybe it had not so much echo because off topic section is not as viewed as male scents section... But it will grow!
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post #7 of 15
1/6/06 at 6:42pm
Thread Starter 
So glad Magnifiscent! Candt Cedar sounds interesting! love Barolo!

Indy, dont you find a lingering pub toilet note in GIT too?
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post #8 of 15
1/7/06 at 2:49am
Quote:
Originally Posted by tmn15

So glad Magnifiscent! Candt Cedar sounds interesting! love Barolo!

Indy, dont Â*you find a lingering pub toilet note in GIT too?




A confession: I've never smelled Green Irish Tweed!

But since everyone says its a cross between Curve and Cool Water, what incentive do I have to try it? D'oh!
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post #9 of 15
1/18/06 at 5:02pm
Jasmine tea, chai tea and just got some Osmanthus tea the other week...haven't tried it yet.
I was at a Moroccan restaurant awhile ago, and they had the most magical tea, it was very floral and sweet. Wonderful.

I think it was Martha Stewart or "Real Simple" magazine that had scented foods, like doing things with Jasmine tea in making icecream. I've been meaning to try it.

Love anything with fresh basil in it, especially so fresh it has a licorice twinge. And cilantro...and Indian food. Cardamon....
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post #10 of 15
1/19/06 at 9:30am
  • Gus
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This thread has reminded me of something I watched on TV. It was an interview with Ferrán AdriÃ*, a spanish cook considered to be one of the best in the world. His cuisine is very avant-garde, and eating one of his creations often involves more than one sense. In this interview, he described how to eat one of his dishes. I don't remember what it was, but supposedly you had to eat it while holding a little rosemary close to your nose. He explained that the senses of taste and smell are very closely related, and this trick added a plus to the pleasure of eating, making it a whole sensorial experience.
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post #11 of 15
1/19/06 at 1:01pm
It seems to me that if the fragrances we like have what the image say, it's a winner...

anyway, dont' mind me too much, i'm not making any sense today...
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post #12 of 15
1/19/06 at 1:56pm
  • Gus
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Interesting graphic, Alteza!
I didn't know about umami, quite a surprise!
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post #13 of 15
1/20/06 at 8:53pm
As I took a more interest in fragrances to put on my sking, I've also been more acutely aware of scents around me. Now, if I could just stop smoking, I could enjoy it more.
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post #14 of 15
1/21/06 at 2:05am
Thread Starter 
Is umami the meaty/savoury taste from Japanese? Think I recall talking about it with a friend who is married to a japanese woman.
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post #15 of 15
1/22/06 at 6:29am
Quote:
Can't Get Enough of Umami: Revealing the Fifth Element of Taste
Kristy Yuan, Science Journalist.
..."Umami is the taste of savory-ness (after the Japanese word umai, meaning delicious) with an appetite-boosting effect...The fifth element of taste derives from the palates ability to detect a specific amino acid, glutamate, if it is unbound to other amino acids....
Umami has become a big hit worldwide as a palatability enhancer. Mature, well-fermented multi-dimensional wines are said to bring out more umami from a meal, allowing the tongue to enjoy many sensations from food. MSG and lower sodium containing IMP and GMP can be added to foods like vegetables to allow individuals whose sharpness of taste sensation has been dampened by age or drug use to continue healthy eating. Companies such as Senomyx, Inc., of La Jolla, Calif., have sprung up to exploit the use of glutamate to create new food flavoring releasing that umami mouth-watering taste.
Umami has even inspired the hunt for other taste enhancers. A group of German scientists reported this year in Chemical Senses the discovery of a new compound, alapyridaine, that augments salt, sweet, and umami flavors in food. Alapyridaine is isolated from beef stock, and like umami, is itself tasteless. While you cant add umami to chocolate to make it sweeter, you can add this substance to do the trick, providing support for sweet and umami sharing taste pathways. As a possible general taste enhancer, alapyridaine also relies on GMP synergism with other umami-flavored food to strengthen taste. Alapyridaine is definitely a substance that deserves special attention as research advances....

To read the whole article:
http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume9/i...ures/yuan.html
now I wonder if the sense of smell afects umami...
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Basenotes › Basenotes Forums › General Discussion › Off topic › Flavour and Perfumed Food