When I'm writing a post about a new recipe I am currently infatuated with, I tend to get caught up with my image taking. Getting nice light, a good angle, and nice color saturation all lends itself to a yummy landscape. Sure a picture speaks a thousand words, but what I'm often finding in my posts and others' is a lack of description on how it tastes.
A quick scan of a recipe will usually give us a sense of the general idea, but it doesn't serve as a complete substitute for a good description of how these flavors played themselves out in your mouth.
What I'm ultimately seeking is a moment frozen into a sentence or two, a virtual lick of your spoon. A description that will seduce me beyond looking at your blog's picture and move me to recreate your scoop of bliss.
Do you smell your morsel before the spoon gets to your mouth? Does it taste like it smells? Is it crunchy, limp, smooth, gritty? What flavor hits first? What note remains in your mouth one minute later? After your dishes are put away, do you still taste your meal? What else did it really taste good with?
Flavor/Aroma and Texture
A quick scan of some of my favorite cookbooks and blogs yielded the following quotes. Some seem trite, some hit a memory spot. however, they build expectation and trigger a sense of what the dish will yield.
- delicate texture
- enhance the velvety finish
- succulent in its richness and luxuriously smooth on the palate
- tender, crumbly crust- almost like a cookie
- adds a fruity sourness to sauces that works well with the umami sweetness of seared food
- tastes simple, intense, even more like itself: clean, delicate, and verdant. It melts seamlessly into a light custard, morphing into a smooth, silky thing
- has an intense fruity, sour taste which enhances the delicate sweetness of the fish
- salt enhances the sweetness of butter
- adds a sweet sour note that refreshes
- earthy and soothing, a rich yolk running to meet sweet, garlicky broth, inviting slurps, burps, and other lapses in decorum
A list such as this can read like an episode of Iron Chef. Every recipe doesn't have to be so grand, but a little bit of tantric tasting every now and then won't hurt your readership.
11 comments:
Mcauliflower - I imagine because it is so hard to write and get right is why it gets glossed over.
Why is it that wine has such details but nothing else does?
Cause we use food terms to describe wine. You can describe a wine as having "apricot nuances" but can you describe an apricot that way?
Next time I have an apricot I'm gonna say "This has essence of 2004 Pinot Noir from the Marlborough Region of NZ."
paul you are cracking me up. I wanted to make the point but I couldn't think of a smart way of saying it like you did. Tee hee - good one!
I do appreciate Mcauliflower bringing this up. It's given me a lot of food for thought. I'm one of those people who can usually read a recipe and kind of imagine how it will taste, and I think I assume that everyone else is too. I'm going to work on more descriptions of the taste.
I don't describe flavors as often as perhaps I should, but I do try: "The Calvados, with it's apple nuances, highlights the sweetness of the scallops and the slightly medicinal tarragon plays off that sweetness delightfully. The touch of lemon adds brightness without being assertive."
And when was the last time anyone stopped to listen? "There's a faint gurgling as olive oil streams from the bottle and an even fainter tintinnabulation of oil striking the baking sheet. Paper rips when I open the package of trout and there's a slithery sound as I drag the fillet through the oil, coating it. Then glass rattles on glass and wood while I rummage in a drawer for herbs and spices."
Yea, I was trying to be funny , but I do find it very difficult to describe food without being obvious. I find Karen Page's book - Culinary Artistry helpful sometimes. It contains list of food types, groupings, pairings etc. primarily as a guide for creating dishes, but I find it useful to find the right words. That said, I still don't always find them.
Good point about sound - sometimes it's subconscious but think how important sound is during the cooking process - the sizzle of butter in a pan can tell you when the water in it has boiled off, a hollow thump when tapped tells you bread is completely baked.
I also like the way Scotch tasters have embraced non-food terms as descriptions - you'll see terms like leather, rusted iron, wet wool sweaters etc.
I hear you Vanessa- simply writing a recipe takes time. It may be overwhelming to seduce with every post, but it can be a nice habit to get into.
I was surprised at how difficult it was to find juicy phrases in my cookbooks. Even Bon Appetit and Martha's magazines were pretty relient on images to convey everything.
Kevin- your olive oil dribbles gave me goose-bumps! See that's what I'm talking about :)
That was the lead ito a short piece describing and entire dish by sound (http://seriouslygood.kdweeks.com/2006/03/broiled-trout-with-lemon-cream-sauce.html).
The trout was pretty good too.
What. "Delicious" won't do it? :D
For a really good laugh (and tons of material), enjoy Adrien Edmondson's Hamish (vogue food critic) character in Absolutely Fabulous. And, there's always Monty Python's Cheese Shop skit for some exciting vocab.
I sort of think this is a stylistic choice. I prefer a sort of restraint when it comes to the use of adjectives and metaphors in general, not just in food writing. (This is why MFK Fisher is my food writing hero. She never got too flowery). One thing that rather turns me off about some, not all, wine afficionados is the preciousness of their vocabulary.
Incidentally, my favorite term for describing food comes from the British and is often used by Nigella: moreish. How utterly non-flowery yet descriptive is that word?
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