Flavor for All: Everyday Recipes and Creative Pairings

Husband-wife collaborators Briscione, a two-time Chopped champion, and Parkhurst follow 2018’s The Flavor Matrix with an info-packed recipe collection focused on the fundamentals of flavor pairings. The 100 recipes are divided into categories such as vegetables, land, and sea, each annotated with flavor, taste, and chemical compound notes. For example, the chemistry underlying spicy kiwi and bacon grilled cheese sandwiches relies on the compound 3-carene and the aromas of bell pepper and lemon—as well as resin and rubber—to build flavor. If the scientific annotation proves to be a bit overwhelming, cooks can dive straight into the recipes, which lean toward Briscione’s Southern roots. There’s an unami-rich summer dish that combines clams and squash (compound: dimethylamine) with garlic, basil, and tomatoes. A chianti-braised beef with grits (compound: 2-phenylethanol), meanwhile, has notes of fruit, honey, lilac, and rose. Dessert stars include a decadent chocolate and red wine bread pudding, while cocktails feature temptations like a butternut old-fashioned. Each ingredient also gets labeled with its taste profile: i.e., garlic is umami; Dijon mustard both spicy and acidic; fresh pineapple sweet. Home cooks as curious about what goes on inside the pot as what goes into it will have a ball. [em]Agent: Joy Tutela, David Black Literary Agency. (Oct.) [/em]