When people talk about food, they talk about how it tastes, but they should be talking about a different sense entirely.
“About 90 percent of what we call taste is really smell,” said Dr. Alan Hirsch, neurological director of the Smell and Taste Treatment Foundation of Chicago, a private practice focusing on disorders related to smell and taste.
“Hold your nose and eat chocolate and it tastes like chalk,” he explained. “Hold your nose and an apple, onion and potato taste just the same.”
The tongue can distinguish only five tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami (described as savory, pungent or meaty). It is up to aromas to round out the picture.
“They allow us to experience untold thousands of flavors,” said Marcia Levin Pelchat, a biological psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, a scientific institute for research on taste, smell and chemosensory irritation. “They let us tell beef from lamb, lobster from shrimp and mangoes from peaches.”
All chefs worth their salt understand the connection between aroma and flavor, but most rely on natural cooking odors to set their customers’ mouths watering.
Now, however, a growing band of culinary adventurers across the country–and around the globe–is focusing on ways to accent the natural fragrances of food. Home chefs can easily mimic their ideas.
“Aromas are huge for us,” said Grant Achatz, whose restaurant, Alinea, is scheduled to open in May in Lincoln Park.
Achatz has worked under Ferran Adria at El Bulli in Spain and Thomas Keller at French Laundry in California, two culinary giants who have experimented with escalating aromas. But Achatz is spinning in his own direction.
He devised his first aroma dish soon after he took over the kitchen at Trio in Evanston in 2001. Waiters poured boiling water over sprigs of rosemary that were served alongside a dish.
“The idea was to flavor the food with rosemary without putting rosemary into it,” Achatz explained.
The idea evolved. Soon, Trio was offering roast pheasant accompanied by the fragrances of fall.
“We crushed up cinnamon sticks, shaved pumpkins and apples, and even got some dead leaves from outside and poured hot water over them while the guests were eating,” he recalled. “It made the dish very seasonal, and it really helped the diner. It was an emotional trigger that was very powerful. It went way beyond flavor.”
Groundbreaking approaches
At Alinea, Achatz will go beyond boiling water in a bowl. He will spray concentrated flavors from atomizers directly into guests’ mouths and he will introduce a newly designed vaporizer into his kitchen. Developed with Crucial Detail, a San Diego design firm, the device can extract a scent from fresh herbs, spices and even liquids and catch it in a bag. The scented air can then be injected into dishes.
“The possibilities are endless,” Achatz said. “In the past, we could trigger a smell, but never contain it.”
He could, for example, inject ravioli with truffle-flavored air: “When you bite down on it, it pops like bubble gum and releases this heady air,” he explained. Or he might decide to put cinnamon air into a bottle to be opened at the table as the guest tucks into bison braised with blueberries and cinnamon.
The vaporizer represents “a completely new technique,” Achatz said. “But it’s very grounded. It’s not wacky.”
“Wacky” is a word some might use to describe Homaro Cantu, the executive chef of Moto in Chicago’s meatpacking district. But more people use terms such as “farsighted,” “groundbreaking” and even “brilliant.”
Cantu hopes to challenge diners and push the limits of fine dining with his globally influenced cooking. The son of a fabricating engineer, he has designed 30 inventions to help ensure that that happens. Eighteen of the items in what he calls his “food delivery system” boost the aroma of food.
For Cantu, aroma is 75 percent of flavor perception, “so it is 75 percent out of 100 in importance,” he said.
Some of Cantu’s inventions–including utensils with pressurized handles that release aromatic vapors–are prototypes at this point. Others–like forks and spoons fashioned so that aromatic materials can be attached to the handles–are already in use at Moto.
“Your mouth is closed when you are extracting something from the utensil,” explained Cantu, who works with DeepLabs, a Chicago-based product development and design firm. “You breathe through your nose and inhale the aroma.”
The aromatic materials are limited only by the chef’s imagination, which is sizable.
“It could be anything: It could be a piece of garlic, a sprig of fresh herbs or rice sticks,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be edible. It could be a piece of burnt wood, to remind you of a backyard barbecue. You’re not going to eat it, but you are going to be thinking barbecue.”
Finishing touches
Like Cantu, chefs at Per Se in Manhattan think a lot about aromas, but they use a more traditional approach to introduce them in the dining room.
“Finishing things with herbs at the last possible minute really helps,” said Jona-than Benno, chef de cuisine at Per Se, the East Coast cousin of the French Laundry in Napa Valley. “If we are making a variation on bearnaise sauce with shallots, tarragon and veal stock, we add a little tarragon just before it’s plated.”
In a technique similar to the one Achatz tested at Trio, Per Se servers release vapors into the air by setting large bowls filled with herbs or spices beneath smaller platters of food.
Rabbit with a fricassee of pole beans arrives at the table in a bowl resting on a larger bowl filled with fresh rosemary. A dish of almond pastry with mint ice cream rests on a bowl of fresh mint.
Per Se chefs also roast a mix of herbs and spices to release their aromas, then use the mix as a bed for dishes including roast duck, whole fish and rack of lamb.
Vaporizing and roasting produce effects as different as cinnamon and Cajun spice, Benno pointed out.
“When we do the vapor at the table, particularly with mint or rosemary, the aroma is pretty profound,” he said. “When we present a roasted rack of veal or roast chicken on a steaming bed [of vegetables] with herbs, the effect is more subtle.”
California chef Daniel Patterson wants aromas to be part of the dining experience, and he explains his techniques in “Aromas: The Magic of Essential Oils in Food & Fragrance” (Artisan, $30). Written with perfumer Mandy Aftel, the book focuses on the use of aromatics in cooking and in perfumed items like bath salts and fragrant mists.
The cookbook section shows how to beef up the aromas of foods with fresh aromatic ingredients like coffee, green tea and citrus, and includes helpful tips for the everyday kitchen. (Cook white rice in chamomile tea for a fragrant accompaniment to fish and chicken.) But its emphasis is the use of intensely flavored essential oils made by distilling oils or squeezing citrus fruits to “make commonplace dishes memorable and good dishes great.”
The oils (organic are recommended) are available at supermarkets, health food stores and from a list of suppliers included in the book. They are relatively inexpensive and have a long shelf life. An ounce of ginger essential oil, for example, costs $6 and can last for up to two years.
“The exciting thing for me is that there were no books on essential oils, except hippie books,” Patterson said. “It was uncharted territory.”
Essential ingredients
Patterson’s cupboard contains dozens of essential oils, including black pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cumin, blood orange, red mandarin and juniper. All of them must be diluted before being added to soups, stews, sauces or a variety of other dishes.
“They make the food pop,” Patterson explained. “Something that is very good becomes intensely flavored. It makes it stand out in a way it didn’t before.”
Patterson puts a drop of ginger essential oil into lemon vinaigrette to use with grilled fish, adds coriander essential oil to chickpea dip and blends chamomile essential oil into a stock for poaching veal tenderloin. Black pepper essential oil transforms bean soup.
“When I’m making something, I just open the drawer,” he explained. “If I’m making bread pudding, I’ll say, ‘Maybe cardamom would be nice in this,’ and I’ll add a few drops, and it transforms the bread pudding from something commonplace to something exotic.”
Patterson realizes he is something of a pioneer.
“Cooking and aromas are so intertwined that most chefs don’t necessarily think about it, they take it for granted,” he said. “I like the fact that this is something new. There’s a spirit of adventure about it.”
Like Achatz, Cantu and other forward-looking chefs, Patterson has awakened to the importance of aromas. He’s smelling the coffee, and his customers are smelling it too.
Aromatic bed for roasted meat, poultry or fish
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Yield: About 1 cup
– Jonathan Benno, chef de cuisine at Per Se restaurant in New York, says to use this bed of spices for serving roast duck, rack of lamb or whole grilled fish. Adjust herbs and spices as you like, according to what is used in the recipe.
6 each: cinnamon sticks, bay leaves
2 tablespoons each: whole cloves, whole star anise, whole peppercorns, ground mace
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all ingredients together on a baking sheet; heat until aromas release, about 10 minutes. Place the spices on a platter. Top with the hot roast of your choice; carve at the table.
Grilled salmon with bok choy, ginger vapor
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Marinating time: 2 hours
Cooking time: 12 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
– From chef Grant Achatz, who uses Alaskan wild salmon for this dish. Serve with steamed jasmine rice.
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 piece (about 2 inches long) ginger root, peeled, chopped
1 tablespoon each: sweet rice wine, sake
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup toasted sesame oil
4 fillets salmon, about 4 ounces each
1 teaspoon olive oil
4 heads baby bok choy, chopped, about 31/2 cups
1/4 teaspoon salt
Ginger vapor:
2 large unpeeled ginger roots, thinly sliced
1. Whisk together the garlic, chopped ginger, rice wine, sake, soy sauce and sesame oil in a small bowl. Pour all but 1/4 cup of the marinade over the fish fillets in a plastic food storage bag or shallow pan. Reserve remaining marinade. Refrigerate fish 2-3 hours.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the bok choy; cook, stirring often, until almost tender, about 5 minutes. Season with salt; keep warm.
3. Prepare a grill or heat a grill pan or skillet. Remove the salmon from the marinade; discard that marinade. Cook salmon, turning once, until cooked through, about 3 minutes per side.
4. Meanwhile, for the ginger vapor, heat water to a boil in a teapot or medium saucepan over high heat. Place the sliced ginger into four large bowls on the table. Divide the salmon and bok choy among four smaller bowls; drizzle with the reserved 1/4 cup of marinade. Place the smaller bowls inside the larger bowls with the ginger. Carefully pour the hot water into each large bowl to just cover the ginger.
Nutrition information per serving:
305 calories, 55% of calories from fat, 19 g fat, 3 g saturated fat, 72 mg cholesterol,
4 g carbohydrates, 29 g protein, 1,569 mg sodium, 1 g fiber
Mint-infused asparagus soup
Preparation time: 35 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes
Yield: 8 servings
– “In this recipe, quickly cooked asparagus is blended with mint and creme fraiche to create a vibrant and refreshing soup,” Mandy Aftel and Daniel Patterson write in “Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Food & Fragrance.” They then garnish the soup with a small salad of endive, radish and apple: “Recommend to the diners that they stir the soup and salad together.”
Soup:
4 bunches large asparagus, ends trimmed, about 4 pounds
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 yellow onion, sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups vegetable or chicken broth
20 large fresh mint leaves
1/4 cup creme fraiche or plain yogurt
Salad:
4 red radishes, thinly sliced
9 red or green endive leaves, thinly sliced
6 fresh mint leaves, thinly shredded
1/4 Granny Smith apple, peeled, seeded, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper
1. For the soup, roughly chop three-quarters of the asparagus spears; thinly slice remaining spears. Set aside. Heat butter in a large saucepan over medium heat; add onion and salt. Cover; cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Pour in the vegetable broth. Heat to a boil over medium-high heat; cover. Reduce heat to a simmer; cook 10 minutes. Add the chopped asparagus; cook until barely tender and still bright green, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in mint and cream fraiche. Add more salt if needed. Puree in batches in a blender or food processor.
2. Meanwhile, for salad, place the sliced asparagus in a large bowl; add the radishes, endive, mint and apple. Add rice wine vinegar, salt and pep-per to taste; toss. Divide the salad evenly among soup bowls, making a small mound in each. Pour the warm soup carefully around the salads.
Nutrition information per serving:
80 calories, 20% of calories from fat, 2 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 4 mg cholesterol, 13 g carbohydrates, 6 g protein, 607 mg sodium, 5 g fiber
Home, sweet (smelling) home
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or have a budget to equal NASA’s to heighten the aromas of your meals, according to Grant Achatz, chef of the soon-to-open Alinea.
“The easiest way is to trigger something volatile with heat,” he said. Here are a few of his secrets:
1. Use a bowl of mint or rosemary as a table centerpiece and douse it with hot water when serving a course containing those herbs. “Guests won’t have any idea what is happening, and it becomes part of the experience,” Achatz said. If you don’t want to soak a centerpiece, a similar effect can be achieved by dousing small bowls filled with herbs or citrus peels.
2. Sprinkle an aromatic spice like cinnamon or allspice on a hot surface–a stone or terra cotta baking dish heated in a 300- to 350-degree oven for five minutes–at the same time you serve a dish flavored with those spices. “It perfumes the air, like a potpourri,” Achatz said.
3. For something even simpler, place a sprig of a fresh herb on the plate beside a dish prepared with that herb. “If you’ve cooked with rosemary, use a sprig of rosemary, and have [guests] smell it as they eat the course,” Achatz said.
4. Above all, chill out.
“It’s not technically hard, and people should not be intimidated by it,” Achatz said. “It’s really a lot of fun.”
— Virginia Gerst
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ctc-goodeating@tribune.com
