Fairly new at this, so bear with me.
When you plan on making a new recipe, what is your way of thinking? Some flavors go well together while others do not. Is it just trial and error or do you have another process?
Obvious examples are something like strawberry goes well with cream while vanilla with tuna doesn't sound very tempting.
But there are less obvious things that fit very well, and things that don't go well but sound really good before trying.
Maybe someone could help me improve a recipe I make and also explain why he/she would try what they suggest. My recipe includes rum, vanilla and cherry. What else would go well with that or improve it?
I use sites like this for inspirations:
http://nouveauraw.com/raw-recipe-templates-and-development/flavor-prfiles-that-pair-well-in-recipes/
This helps me out a lot when I have a creative block.
>As a rule of thumb, desserts usually only have one or two predominant flavors, and some may have small amounts of additional flavor elements to help support the main flavor combination. Try to avoid combining too many flavors together, this can result in dulling all the flavors and nothing will stand out.
Great tip. Nice link. Thanks.
Well put. It's like making a cake. You taste the chocolate, and the cinnamon...the frosting. But not the eggs, oil, baking powder, etc.
Fuck. Now I want cake...
Look for the "Flavor bible" and the "Flavor thesaurus". Both excellent books about flavour pairings.
Food is the main answer here, but another great place for inspiration is a coffee shop or a juice bar. They come up with some of the most insane (but delicious) combinations.
This may sound simple and obvious, but just think of food, whether it's desserts or a smoothie, or a drink, a snack, etc. Aside from tobacco flavors, all juices are based on something edible. We all know the classic desserts. For fruit flavors, check out a smoothie or milkshake menu somewhere for some inspiration.
It's about the ingredients and percentages more than the target flavor (when making juice). There's plenty of recipes and sources online to help you get there. Unfortunately, you can only decide by trial and error what satisfies your palate. Hence, the beauty of DIY.
Wait - tobacco's not edible?
I usually start with a concept - like my favorite smoothie, which is strawberry, banana, pomegranate juice, spinach, and blueberries. Okay, so scratch the spinach. The smoothie is equal parts of the berries, and one banana, so 1/1/1/.5. Pretty good, too much blueberry, which to me gets too marshmallowy after a certain point, so cut back the blueberry. I never finished the recipe, as I got distracted, but it's on my list. I also start with commercial juice i like, and use that as a starting point. And, by trying each ingredient on it's own, I learn what they taste like. Then start trial and error - pomegranate is pretty good on it's own, but other berries bring out it's flavor more. Blueberry/pomo is a good simple mix. Another source is the DIY recipe lists, I take a look at what others have done, for ideas, what works, what they're using to "pop" flavors, how to sweeten, etc. Anything strawberry, I like - which is funny, because I'm not a huge fan of the real thing, unless it's part of something else. I have another idea I want to play with, my relative is a chef, who specializes in desserts. He makes a cake that's german chocolate cake, with raspberry filling, milk chocolate inside icing, dark chocolate on the outside, and rum. It's incredible. Reminds me, I need to make a flavor order! :)