Salon.com > Flavor

“This American Life” reveals original Coca-Cola recipe

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:16:00 +0000

Chicago-based radio program "This American Life" cracked the Coca-Cola code. The show apparently unearthed the soft drink's recipe -- which is guarded in a massive vault in the Coke's corporate headquarters in Georgia -- in a 1979 edition of the Atlanta Constitution-Journal. The recipe dates back to 1886.

So what's in it, then? To start: the eponymous coca extract, plus citric acid, lime juice vanilla, caramel, caffeine, sugar and water. More important, though is "7X" -- which includes orange oil, alcohol, nutmeg oil, lemon oil, coriander, neroli and cinnamon -- and constitutes the drink's backbone.

You can read more about the recipe and listen to This American Life's broadcast at their website here.

How to be a food snob

Mon, 24 May 2010 22:20:00 +0000

There's no more insufferable supper companion than a food snob: You know, one of those folks who sit around and complain that the sauce is too bright and the roux too bitter, or that the onions should have been allowed to sweat rather than brown.

But hey, there's something to be said for the power of their palates, their ability to pick up cues and vocalize what they're tasting from the muddle of flavors in the mouth. (Even if, as I sometimes suspect, they just think they can.) I'm not talking about "super tasters" — those few who physically have more taste buds than the rest of us — but the eaters and cooks who always seem to know just what it is they're eating.

How do they do it? And more importantly, other than spending $60,000 on a culinary degree, could I train myself to do it, too? I put the question to experts who should know: a tongue doctor, a chef or two, a sommelier and a flavor chemist.

Breathe, Damn It!
I start with the doc, naturally: Andrew P. Lane, an otolaryngologist — he studies the head and neck, that is — who directs the Johns Hopkins University Sinus Center.

Do spices really only keep for six months?

Thu, 20 May 2010 18:01:00 +0000

Dear Salon Food:

How many times have you heard that spices lose their potency "after 6 months"? It's repeated so often, but it seems absurd to me that all spices would behave exactly the same and I know that most processes of deterioration graphically resemble that of Newton's law of cooling (\[\frac{dT}{dt} = -k (T - T_a).\]) with the fastest deterioration occurring initially.

Paul

Dear Paul:

Do you have any idea how awkward it is to get on the phone with some poor spice company representative and subject them to the sentence, "Yes, but is the deterioration of the spices anything like Newton's law of cooling? You know, like, slash-bracket-slash-frac-whatever that squiggly bracket is called…"

But hey, I did it for you. And even better, I also called Jane Daniels Lear, who wrote the superb cookbook "One Spice, Two Spice" with chef Floyd Cardoz of Tabla, the most influential Indian-inflected restaurant in America, and I learned more than I ever thought I would about the buying, storing and fading of spices. Here's what you should know.

How to make a vinaigrette, and everything you need to know about them

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 01:01:00 +0000

This is how to make a vinaigrette: Take vinegar. Take oil. Mix. OK, thanks for reading! See you next week!

Meanwhile, back at Salon:

"Uh, Francis ... there's more to this, isn't there?"

"Not really."

"That's it? That's your cooking column for the week?"

"Well, uh, I'm still recovering from eating that KFC Double Down."

"We're paying you for this, you know."

"Uh, well..."

"You would like to keep getting paid, wouldn't you?"

Well, hello again! Sorry, I must have gotten cut off there…

Anyway, despite the obvious simplicity of how to make a vinaigrette, there are wonderful, hidden complexities in it. (How come some separate back into oil and vinegar and some don't? Why do some taste so much better than just oil and vinegar?) But even beyond that, what fascinates me about vinaigrettes is what they can teach us about how we taste food.

What it means to balance tastes

The flavorist conversations: Wylie Dufresne

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:01:00 +0000

If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then how do you talk about flavor? Inspired by "The Taste Makers," Raffi Khatchadourian's fascinating story in the New Yorker on the highly creative people who invent the flavors in your soda and candy, we're chatting with chefs on how they think about flavor in their work.

This installment: Wylie Dufresne of New York's wd-50, who years ago became known for serving oysters pounded flat into sheets and pairing venison tartare with soybean ice cream, talks to us about how he constructs the flavors of his dishes, the way novelty and memory taste, and growing out of his younger, rasher phase.

"The manufacture of flavors demands a childlike openness." That's a line from Khatchadourian's story, a paraphrase of Willy Wonka. Does that relate to how you think of your flavor combinations? Is there a process you go through when designing them?