On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

In practice, most cooks keep their flavorings at room temperature. As long as they aren’t regularly exposed to strong light, whole spices keep well for a year, and ground spices for a few months.

Though we tend to think of a particular herb or spice as having its own distinctive flavor, it too is always a composite of several different aroma compounds.

Immersion in oil, which protects the tissue from oxygen, also works for a few weeks, after which much of the flavor has oozed into the oil. Herbs in oil should always be kept in the refrigerator, because the same absence of oxygen that’s good for flavor preservation is also good for the growth of botulism bacteria. The bacteria don’t grow or produc... See more

This combination of specificity and complexity helps explain why we find echoes of one food in another, or find that two foods go well together. Some affinities result when the foods happen to share some of the same aroma molecules.

We can distinguish and enjoy the many hues of anthocyanin- and carotenoid-rich plants—as well as the same hues in paintings and clothing, makeup and warning signs—because our eyes are designed to see well in this color range of yellow to orange to red. It now looks as though we owe this ability to leaves and fruits! It turns out that we are among a... See more

By simmering the vegetables until soft, the cook breaks down their cell walls and releases the cell contents into the water. These contents include salts, sugars, acids, and savory amino acids, as well as aromatic molecules. Carrots, celery, and onions are almost always included for their aromatics, and mushrooms and tomatoes are the richest source... See more

Without good red vision, it would be hard to find them—or carotenoid-colored fruits—among the green leaves. So leaves and fruits shaped our vision. The pleasure we take today in their colors was made possible by our ancestors’ hunger, and the sustenance they found in red-tinged leaves and yellow-orange fruits.

There’s no match for the flavor of a vegetable picked one minute and cooked the next. Once a vegetable is harvested it begins to change, and that change is almost always for the worse. (Exceptions include plant parts designed to hibernate, for example onions and potatoes.)

Try the experiment of chewing on an oregano leaf, or a clove, or a vanilla bean. The result is far from pleasurable! When eaten as is, most spices and herbs are acrid, irritating, numbing.