The Flavour Thesaurus

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After all the combinations you think you know, the ones you've never even considered will blow your mind … Eggplants take you to chocolate, which takes you to miso, which takes you to seaweed, which takes you to a recipe in another book or a restaurant dish you have to hunt down straight away. The curiosity is infectious, the possibilities inspiring on this ingredient-led voyage.” --Yotam Ottolenghi in The New York Times Magazine , on how he uses More Flavors for recipe development The most horrific thing about this book is that it does NOT explain why the food pairs work or not. It had one job and it failed miserably. for those who don’t speak english and come from poland... there has been polish translation available for a few weeks now :-) Segnit's] prose hums with poetic cadence in descriptions such as caramel roasted, flower and meadow, creamy fruity, zesty woody, nutty milky, and animalic, making it a whimsical read for those who simply want to be delighted by a discussion of food … Clever, unusual, and overwhelmingly intriguing, part two of The Flavor Thesaurus adds pizzazz to cookbook collections with its offbeat, choose-your-own-adventure look at the possibility of flavor pairings today. An eclectic combination of dictionary, recipe book, travelogue and memoir … Erudite and inspiring, practical and fun, it will make you salivate, laugh, take issue and feel vindicated … Segnit does for flavour what Lucca Turin achieved for scent in Perfumes: The A-Z Guide. A deceptively simple little masterpiece, set to take its place by McGee on Food and Cooking as a household Bible

This book is way more entertaining than I expected. I had done a few brief “flip-throughs” before I obtained my own copy noting the lists of flavor pairings and thinking of all the new combinations I’d learn to love. Since I assumed this would be a pretty straightforward reference book (I mean common, thesaurus in the title, a British author, a seemingly complex diagram/color wheel on steroids on the inner front cover, an intro quote with the following words “Sauternes,” “foie gras,” “steak-frites,” rouille”…), I read through the intro before I went exploring. And whatdoyaknow. She’s witty! Funny! She admits to her own misgivings and like me questions, “Had I ever really learned to cook? Or was I just reasonably adept at following instructions?” – Questions I constantly ask myself. The idea of this book is “out-of-the-box” both in its concept and how it leaves you thinking. Sections are organized in “flavor categories” like Meaty, Cheesy, Sulfurous, Citrusy, Fruity, Woodland, etc. Flavor combinations are then listed in short paragraph form which could either contain a simple recipe (more guidance, than literal – see below), a witty anecdote, or an amusing aside. Take the commentary on Chocolate and Strawberry for example:

I’m sure there are people who will get some value out of this book. People who, say, aren’t too clear on what a thesaurus is and so isn’t mislead by the title. Colquhoun, Kate (27 June 2010). "The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit". The Sunday Times . Retrieved 23 February 2017. [ dead link]

I'm going to put my notes here. And probably do up a blog post. Needless to say, this is the type of book that I would tend to buy to help me generate ideas. I ran across this book at the new coffee shop in my town, and I was so taken with it that I asked the coffee shop owner if I could borrow it! Yes, I am now asking to take home books I run across at coffee shops. And then I had to buy my own copy. Ok, all my food industry friends would just hate me for saying this but I didn't like this book at all. It felt like there was no rhyme or reason for the author's flavor pairings, sometimes using recipes, sometimes personal anecdotes to justify why certain things go together. With her debut cookbook, The Flavor Thesaurus, Niki Segnit taught readers that no matter whether an ingredient is “grassy” like dill, cucumber, or peas, or “floral fruity” like figs, roses, or blueberries, flavors can be created in wildly imaginative ways. Now, she again draws from her “phenomenal body of work” (Yotam Ottolenghi) to produce a new treasury of pairings-this time with plant-led ingredients.

But trust me on this. It’s about flavor combinations, yes, and I know you are familiar with lots of these, but the author is odd and snarky and fun, and, most important, she can write about food in a way that will make you look for more of her works, even if it’s a food dictionary or a taste encyclopedia. I was unable to make it past the chocolate section. The author's rambling is so incoherent it is indiscernible from bad editing. Sorry. I really wanted something that would guide me to understand patterns, create new templates, visualize & predict what's likely to work or not. But the author and I do not organize ideas in complementary ways, and we taste and eat very differently. I could not study the 'color wheel' as I could not process/ understand it, and I am not motivated to read all the fine print stories interspersed with the lists of pairings. It really is most akin to an American Heritage dictionary, in that it's mostly lists, with the odd illustration, chart, or usage note (but in the cookbook, those additions are just text). English–Arabic English–Bengali English–Catalan English–Czech English–Danish English–Hindi English–Korean English–Malay English–Marathi English–Russian English–Tamil English–Telugu English–Thai English–Turkish English–Ukrainian English–Vietnamese