Creating the Perfect Pair

The secret to creating great flavor pairings is taste, taste and taste—and taste yet again. Regardless of how we come into contact with different flavors—whether taking part in a professional sensory taste test or going to a favorite restaurant—we remember what ingredients taste like and place them in our flavor memory banks.

The culinary touch 

I am inspired by many great chefs who take basic ingredients and pair them with unique products resulting in incredible dishes. On one trip to the United Kingdom, I found myself driving two hours into the countryside to Chard, England, to visit an incredible restaurant called The Vineyard. The chef was a master at taking the simplest ingredients to form the most-delicious dishes. To cite one example, he would ferment raisins and add this to his sourdough bread. This gave the freshly baked bread a unique taste, and people would travel from far to eat there. Fermented raisins have a bit of an alcohol flavor, as the sugars are starting to convert to alcohol.

Chef Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck, Bray, England, is a master of unconventional flavor pairing. He has paired white chocolate and black caviar—strange, but when eaten together, the flavors blend together. Simplicity can also reveal profound flavor effects. Chef Jacques Pépin is able to take the simplest ingredients like garlic, onion, olive oil and tomatoes and create the most delicious sauce.

The key is to know what ingredients taste like on their own. My fellow TechnoChef™ colleagues at Firmenich, Plainsboro, NJ, can create incredible flavor pairings because of our experience with a wide range of ingredients, raw and prepared with a variety of methods—grilling, poaching, braising, roasting, etc.—or combinations of methods that create subtle or pronounced changes to the flavor of that ingredient.

It’s also important to understand distinctions between different types of the same class of ingredients— like Thai sweet or holy basil vs. traditional “European” sweet basil. Where sweet basil has a bold flavor similar to anise, Thai basil has an even stronger flavor and aroma reminiscent of licorice. Such differences can greatly affect decisions related to pairing flavors. In Italian cuisine, sweet basil often accentuates the sweetness of tomatoes. However, Thai basil, so named for its place in Thai cuisine, adds a strong note to curries and stir-fries.

Protein performers 

Chicken, beef, fish and other center-of-the-plate proteins offer many opportunities for classic and innovative flavor combinations. Fennel combines well with chicken in salads or stews, grilled, or braised with herbs. When fennel is cooked, either braised or roasted, the natural sugars caramelize and blend beautifully with the cooked caramelized flavors of the chicken. Fennel’s light anise flavor is also a good complement to delicate-tasting fish that do not have a very oily taste, like red snapper or some types of sole.

Working at Pret A Manger, based in New York and London, as director of menu innovation, we prepared a great-tasting sandwich called the Chicken Coronation, a basic chicken-salad sandwich with mango chutney and toasted, sliced almonds. This pairing works by pitting savory vs. sweet. The chicken salad provides a savory flavor and creamy mouthfeel while the mango chutney contrasts with a sweet-and-sour finish.

Great flavor pairings exist throughout the world. In North African cuisine, vegetable beef tagine is accented with cinnamon. Braised chicken is paired with dates and almonds. Sauces can also carry flavor pairings to diversify beef, poultry and fish. These days, chefs often take classic sauces and add a twist to them by adding nontraditional flavors. One good example is vanilla beurre blanc.

Fruitful accents 

One of the simplest and most-classic examples of contrasting, yet complementary, flavor pairings is sweet and sour. We find this combination in beverages, candies, desserts and entrées across numerous cultures. Asian sweet-and-sour dishes typically combine vegetables and meats coated with a glaze made of sweet grenadine syrup and unsweetened pineapple juice. Italians drizzle aged balsamic vinegar over ripe melon like honeydew or cantaloupe. Candy companies are selling sweet-flavored jelly candies coated with a citric-acid glaze. The beverage giants add lemon and lime flavors to classic sodas. The many varied combinations of what we call sweet and sour are everywhere.

I have also used the classic sweet-and-sour combination in a unique dessert of bourbon-vanilla-bean ice cream, served with grilled pineapple and a drizzle of aged balsamic vinegar over the top. I have even paired fresh pasta flavored with lemon zest and a chocolate ganache filling to form dark-chocolate raviolis with thyme-infused vanilla sauce.

Vegetable combinations 

Every vegetable flavor lends itself to combination with a number of classic and innovative flavors. The trick is to work with the inherent flavor of the vegetable without overpowering.

The fresh, delicate flavor of artichokes is often paired with light sauces: lemon juice, butter and hollandaise. One of these classic flavor pairings—butter and artichokes— comes to life in stuffed artichokes, where they are commonly stuffed and baked with a covering of buttery breadcrumbs and Italian seasonings like garlic. The combination of artichokes and creamy notes also works in salads, where artichoke hearts make good additions to complement creamy dressings, as well as in subtle, creamy pasta sauces.

Asparagus is usually paired with subtle sauces like hollandaise or vinaigrettes, so that its flavor is not overpowered. The flavor of asparagus also is highlighted in creamy spring soups for the same reason that asparagus works well with hollandaise. Also, instead of steaming or boiling asparagus, try roasting it with olive oil and herbs, and then topping with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

Beets are pickled, steamed or roasted. Their flavor mingles well with mint, orange, coriander, horseradish and balsamic vinegar. When beets are cooked—steamed, boiled or roasted—they offer an incredible, sweet flavor. When paired with savory herbs, or acidic aged balsamic vinegar or sweet-champagne vinegar, the combination of these flavor profiles work well. In one example, I peel and quarter red beets and steam until tender and cool slightly. I then make a roasted-garlic and thyme infused oil. To finish the dish, I present the cooked beets over a bed of champagne- vinaigrette-dressed wild arugula, top with crumbled feta cheese, and drizzle the infused roasted garlic and thyme oil over the cooked beets. If you taste all these recipe ingredients on their own, they’re pretty good, but when combined, all the ingredients and flavors create an incredible marriage of flavors.

New potatoes are best steamed or boiled and served hot, tossed with a lightly herbed dressing to complement their creamy texture and delicate flavor. There are very few herbs that do not complement the flavor. Parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme and chives are just a few of the more-common pairings.

New potatoes are not appropriate for baking, mashing or frying, for which the higher starch content of mature potatoes is needed. Some twists on classic mashed potatoes include seasoning with roasted garlic or chipotle chiles. Fennel gives potatoes a sprightlier flavor and texture.

Many purists scorn eating corn any other way than on the cob— steamed, roasted or boiled, with butter and a little salt and pepper. But in corn succotash, corn chowder, corn fritters, corn bread with fresh kernels baked in, and creamed corn, adding red peppers and/or jalapeños provides a contrasting or complementary flavor; red peppers complement the sweetness of the corn, while the chiles provide a nice contrast.

Sauté wild mushrooms with butter, garlic and an aromatic herb such as thyme, or stir into a cream sauce and serve over poultry, meat or toast. Porcinis are good grilled or broiled and drizzled with olive oil, where they make a more-flavorful alternative to portobellos. The earthy, nutty flavor of porcini mushrooms pairs well with the slight bitterness of a good, first-press virgin olive oil.

Today we sometimes see trendy restaurant chefs position traditional vegetables as desserts. For example, consider a lobster and herb ice cream with an herb and mushroom foam.

Looking into legumes 

Green peas are most traditionally served tossed with fresh mint, butter or both—these additions also flatter sugar snap peas. Green peas are the basis of many puréed spring soups, with or without cream. Peas are popular in Indian vegetarian curries that also include cauliflower and potatoes, as well as in pilafs. Snow peas are especially common in Chinese dishes, where their crunch might be fortified with the addition of the different, but equally spirited, crunch of water chestnuts.

Look for fava beans in French, Italian and Middle Eastern dishes. The Egyptian breakfast dish ful medames combines the mild, earthy, slightly nutty flavor of fava beans with cumin, olive oil and garlic; a touch of lemon juice brightens the flavors. In the Greek dish macco, the flavor of puréed fava beans is paired with stronger notes from fennel, red onion and sun-dried tomatoes.

Going for the greens 

Endives and chicories are available throughout the winter and make assertively flavored salad greens. As salad, chicories—especially Belgian endive—are often found in combination with pears, Gorgonzola cheese and sometimes bacon or lardoons (cubes of bacon common in Europe and a staple in traditional French quiche Lorraine). Chicories can also be served braised or sautéed, or added to soup, such as Italian endive soup or Italian wedding soup, where the slight bitterness from endive adds a distinctive, contrasting flavor to savory flavors from chicken or chicken broth and garlicky meatballs.

In spite of its name, broccoli rabe—also known as rapini—is a closer relative of turnips than of broccoli. It has a slightly bitter taste not unlike turnip greens. Whether sautéed in soups or tossed with pasta, rapini is rarely prepared without garlic in many Italian dishes. The bitterness of the rapini is slightly offset by the sweet flavors that develop from cooking garlic. Other ingredients that help gently smooth out the bitterness in rapini include cream, Parmesan cheese and olive oil.

In North African cuisine, salads of oranges and radishes are served with cinnamon vinaigrette, where the peppery flavor of radishes is complemented by the sweetness from cinnamon and a sweet-citrus note from the oranges.

Chard, a mild-flavored green originally from the Mediterranean region, is usually combined with ingredients familiar to that area: garlic, olive oil and tomatoes.

The next time you are in the product-development lab or test kitchen and you’re contemplating what to do with a piece of fish, some produce or a steak, think about those great flavors locked into your flavor memory bank and try some new flavor routes. Or play around with flavor combinations that you have read about to see if workable ideas surface. Today’s innovation might be just another way of saying tomorrow’s classic. 

Steven Capodicasa is senior TechnoChef™ at Firmenich in Plainsboro, NJ. He has worked as senior director of food and beverage innovation for Pret A Manger, based in New York and London, as well as culinary director for Atkins Nutritional, New York, and corporate chef for Kings Super Markets, a division of Marks and Spencer, London. He is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and is a member of the Research Chefs Association.