baking: 14 posts

Continue reading →

As much as I love trying various unusual flavor combinations, from making forays into unfamiliar cooking traditions to sampling durian, a scent of warm butter invariably seduces me more than any other exotic spice or fruit. It is really a perfume in itself–sweet, floral, grassy, with a hint of milky almond and green apple.  Harold McGee in his treatise On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, quotes the Irish poet Seamus Heaney on butter, “coagulated sunlight… heaped up like gilded gravel in the bowl.” …

Continue reading →

Classical oriental fragrances like Guerlain Shalimar (1925) used a large amount of citrus oil (30% bergamot oil in case of Shalimar) supported by a lush base of animalic and woody notes. The effect of this dramatic juxtaposition is unforgettable—the scintillating, icy chill of citrus melting into the languid warmth of the amber accord, rich civet and leathery castoreum. Such contrasting sensations not only serve to lend an intriguing and memorable quality, but also to lighten the intoxicating richness of the classical oriental notes—vanilla, benzoin, tolu, opoponax, civet, ambergris, castoreum, musk, sandalwood, and patchouli. The new generation of gourmand fragrances based on the chocolate accord has taken a similar approach—the heft of chocolate can be made more palatable when accented with bright and sparkling notes, be it the lemony jasmine of hedione and bergamot in Thierry Mugler Angel, the orange blossom in Missoni Eau de Parfum, or green ivy leaves in Lolita Lempicka Eau de Parfum. …

Continue reading →

The writer Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin once said, “Smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and chimney is the nose.” I first heard this quote from Michelle Krell Kydd, who puts this philosophy into her deeds. Michelle organized the James Beard Foundation event with chef Bill Yosses and perfumer Christophe Laudamiel, during which the relationship between flavor and fragrance were explored in depth. As Michelle reflects, “Smell and taste hit us where we live—in memory and emotion, in the past and in the present, all simultaneously. This is what makes these particular senses so powerful.” Given the close link between the two senses, the discoveries one makes into the realm of cuisine translate into olfactory appreciation and vice versa. As an example from my own experiences, the beautiful note of bitter chocolate woven into Serge Lutens’s Borneo 1834 prompted me to create a cake that allowed the bitterness of chocolate to stand out. Similarly, a Thai basil stir-fry with bean sprouts had me craving a scent that pairs the lemony clove verdancy of this fascinating herb with vegetal musk. One passion never fails to feed another. …

Continue reading →