Developing Flavors

Flavor can be designed

A good combination found once, by chance, is worth little to a workshop. Flavor development is worth having as a method. Three things carry it. An understanding of what each ingredient brings in (Part III), the frame of the formulation (Part I), and a record of the senses. With these three in place, a passing idea becomes a design that can be built again.

Put the other way: let the flavor idea run ahead and ignore the frame of the formulation. The taste may then be fine while the gelato refuses to set, freezes too hard, or turns gritty within days. Flavor development is an application that stands on every chapter so far.

Three types of combination

Ingredients are combined in three broad ways.

Classic harmony is the combination long experience has settled. Chocolate with hazelnut, vanilla with strawberry — little goes wrong with these. They are dependable as a starting point, and as a base.

Shared aroma rests on a hypothesis, and the hypothesis carries a condition inside it. Two ingredients whose leading aromas overlap at a strength that can actually be perceived tend to sit well together. Aroma analysis takes a scent apart down to the level of molecules, and the question becomes where a bridge can be built. This line of thought has been organized into the theory of food pairing. It suits a reasoned search for pairings that experience alone would never join.

Do not let that condition fall away. The hypothesis held it from the beginning. Analysis detects volatile compounds in great number, and only a small share of them reaches the flavor at all. A compound below the threshold of perception counts for nothing. The theory does not hold that the more molecules are shared, the better. The cooks who carried the theory into their own kitchens say as much themselves. A long list of shared compounds guarantees no affinity. It is an excellent place to begin, and past that point there is only trying and tasting.

Contrast sets qualities of different kinds against one another, so that each lifts the other. Sweetness against salt, richness against acid, or a difference in temperature. Salt with caramel is the type case.

Whichever type is taken, the aim is the same — coherence and surprise, held together. Too much coherence and the result is ordinary. Too much surprise and it scatters. Finding that balance is the heart of development. For the affinities of particular ingredients on the ground of shared aroma, specialist books set them out in order. The Art & Science of Foodpairing is one of them, and such books widen the stock of ideas to draw on.

Approfondimento — deep diveTranslating pairing theory into cold and milk fat↓ Go deeper

The constraint of cold

The constraint particular to gelato, and the largest of them, is temperature. In a frozen dessert eaten at around −14 °C, the cold holds aroma back and dulls the sense of sweetness (Chapter 7). A flavor exactly right in a dessert at room temperature falls short once it is cold.

So the flavor is designed somewhat stronger than a tasting at room temperature asks for. It is the same reasoning that took the roast of the nuts stronger in Chapter 10, and lifted the aroma with alcohol. During development, the final judgment is always made on gelato frozen to serving temperature. Never decide on a warmed, half-melted spoonful.

Fat appears here as a brake, and Chapter 5 called it a carrier — fat carries aroma as it melts in the mouth. Both are true, and they are one property seen from two sides. Fat holds the aroma compounds and releases them slowly. What is released slowly reaches the nose over a longer time, and reaches it less sharply. So a formulation rich in fat asks for a flavor designed stronger, and returns it spread across the melt rather than all at once.

Development runs in a loop

Flavor development is not finished in a single pass. Run it small, in circles, and close in.

What matters is to move one variable at a time. Change the sugar, the amount of fruit, and the stabilizer at once, and no result can be traced to its cause. This holds whether the result is better or worse. Development is nothing but separating the variables one by one and confirming what causes what.

Start from the season and the place

The surest source of an idea is an ingredient in season. Fruit at its height carries aroma and sugar, and little handling is needed to make it attractive. Chapter 9 showed that the best answer moves with ripeness, within one and the same fruit. So flavor development takes in a fine adjustment every year and every lot. The ingredients of a place, the turn of the seasons — the character of a gelateria lives in how this starting point is chosen.

Translate into words and numbers

Last, and most easily overlooked, is putting the senses into language. Do not stop at "good". Translate the sweetness, the acidity, the strength of the aroma, the length, and the melt into words and numbers, and record them. Add a note on flavor to the balancing sheet of Chapter 5, and the formulation and the taste are joined on one page.

Here Part III closes. Sorbetto, the special ingredients, and the method by which a flavor is developed are now in hand. Part IV stands on this ground and turns to the gelato as a product. Quality control, the diagnosis of defects, regulation and labeling, cost and price — the view moves to management.

Reference: Peter Coucquyt, Bernard Lahousse, and Johan Langenbick, The Art & Science of Foodpairing (2020); consulted in the Japanese edition (Graphic-sha, 2021).