Can you teach taste?
How to Taste outlines the underlying principles of taste, and then takes a deep dive into salt, acid, bitter, sweet, fat, umami, bite (heat), aromatics, and texture. You'll find out how temperature impacts your enjoyment of the dishes you make as does color, alcohol, and so much more.
Buy now:
“This book should be your new go-to guide in the kitchen. Selengut’s prose is witty, and the science is presented at just the right level of food nerdiness.”
—Seattle Magazine
Design and illustration by Tony Ong
So much more than ratios
How to Taste will help you feel confident about why and how various components of a dish are used to create balance, harmony, and deliciousness. You'll learn how to adjust a dish that’s too salty or too acidic and how to determine when something might be lacking. It also includes recipes and simple kitchen experiments that illustrate useful techniques, guaranteed to boost your knowledge and improve your cooking.
Praise for How To Taste
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“Becky is a cook of enviable talent and a generous, insightful teacher. She somehow manages to cram an entire culinary education into just 200-odd pages using both hard science and sharp wit, and including kitchen experiments and recipes I can’t wait to make, from Sweet Potato Soup with Chile and Lemongrass to her grandmother’s brisket. I love this book.”
—Molly Wizenberg, author of A Homemade Life and Delancey
“How to Taste is an informative, entertaining journey inside your own mouth. Selengut’s writing is so well-seasoned with humor that you’re challenged to complete the book without at least one retronasal laugh [snort].”
—Scott Heimendinger, technical director, Modernist Cuisine
“Does your dish need salt, acidity, sweetness, or all three? What do ‘astringent’ and ‘umami’ feel like in your mouth, anyway? Becky Selengut is a chef of the people, and in this hilarious and practical manifesto, she answers those questions and many more. Your tongue is going to come out of this 100 percent smarter.”
—Matthew Amster-Burton, author of Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo
“Selengut explains the mysteries of human taste, not simply to offer scientific theory but to help both cooks and eaters to figure out how to improve their own discernment and appreciation of one of the most elusive and subjective of the five senses....A wealth of accessible, practical information marks this as a singular achievement.”
—Booklist, starred review