Ever wondered why one flavour works with another? Or lacked inspiration for what to do with a bundle of beetroot? The Flavour Thesaurus is the first book to examine what goes with what, pair by pair. The book is divided into flavour themes including Meaty, Cheesy, Woodland and Floral Fruity. Within these sections it follows the form of Roget's Thesaurus, listing 99 popular ingredients alphabetically, and for each one suggesting flavour matchings that range from the classic to the bizarre. You can expect to find traditional pairings such as pork & apple, lamb & apricot, and cucumber & dill; contemporary favourites like chocolate & chilli, and goat's cheese & beetroot; and interesting but unlikely-sounding couples including black pudding & chocolate, lemon & beef, blueberry & mushroom, and watermelon & oyster. There are nearly a thousand entries in all, with 200 recipes and suggestions embedded in the text. Beautifully packaged, The Flavour Thesaurus is not only a highly useful, and covetable, reference book for cooking - it might keep you up at night reading.
The Flavor Thesaurus
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
The art of combining one food with another to create flavor harmonies has challenged earnest cooks for centuries. A good deal of science underlies this attempt to codify the senses’ reactions, but in the last analysis, flavors either taste good together or they don’t. Segnit, who has made a career creating and marketing new products, has set down what she’s discovered over the decades about which flavors harmonize with one another. She readily acknowledges the general success of such traditional pairings as lamb and mint, asparagus and mushrooms, garlic and basil, cucumber and dill, and bacon and eggs. But she goes on to explore more obscure and unusual combinations including watermelon and chili, horseradish and beets, Parmesan and pineapple, oysters and chicken, and even bacon and chocolate. Any aspiring culinary student will find this an invaluable reference work, and home cooks may find equal inspiration in Segnit’s creative ruminations. --Mark Knoblauch
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
Review
'A deceptively simple little masterpiece' Sunday Times 'An exquisite guide to combining flavours' Observer 'An original and inspiring resource' Heston Blumenthal 'It has intrigued, inspired, amused and occasionally infuriated me all year, and will for years to come' Nigel Slater, Observer Books of the Year
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 34 people found the following review helpful
By bookish mom
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is on my Hannukah Hot List this year. I bought it for my brother in law who is an adventurous cook and ended up buying one for myself and a few others on my list. Love this book for a few reasons - 1) it's an immensely practical source of kitchen inspiration - it's organized around the flavor wheel by simple food pairings. Start by whatever food you have in the house and you will be connected to a range of unexpected flavor partners for it and often some great starting recipes 2) Important to the time-starved and culinarily challenged like myself - many of these ideas are not complicated recipes or even cooked, just food/spice combinations. It gets you back to the intensity and simplicity of good quality ingredients and flavors (if only we had the intensity the basic ingredients like tomatoes and basil that the author must experience in Europe, but Wholefoods or farmers markets are a good start). Some of these flavor pairings will push you out of your palate's comfort zone and are worth trying out of curiosity - eg Juniper and Hard Cheese, Watermelon and Oysters, Lobster in Vanilla Butter etc. You can see why Heston Blumenthal the experimental chef behind egg and bacon ice cream gave this book a rave review. Lastly, it's full of interesting food history and food trivia (eg rhubarb leaves are poisonous, artichokes contain a chemical that inhibits the palate from tasting sweet flavors etc) and I love these kind of books - my other faves include 'Salt' and 'Cod' by Mark Kurlansky and 'Wicked Plants' by Amy Stewart). It doesn't have any pretty pictures or photos, but I think it will be a kitchen staple. Mine's already covered in stains which is a good sign..
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compulsive reading for all foodies, and the perfect present for keen cooks
July 2, 2010
Format:Hardcover
This book has had stunning reviews in the British national newspapers, and I decided to buy it as a present for my husband, the chef in our household. On the tube home, I had a quick flick through it out of curiosity...and I haven't been able to part with it since.
The concept of `The Flavour Thesaurus' is utterly, utterly genius. Segnit has taken 99 basic flavours (mint, coriander, basil, strawberry etc) and researched 980 pairings of them. The result is part recipe-book, part food memoir, part flavour compendium. (The English Language geek in me feels compelled to point out that `thesaurus' is a misnomer - even similar flavours are NOT synonyms, jeez, though the book retains Roget's format).
Some of these pairings are familiar, such as Bacon & Egg, whilst others (Avocado & Mango, anyone?) are not. Now and then, Segnit provides a recipe; many of these sound incredible, and despite being the most amateur of cooks, I reckon even I could manage many of them. Under Melon & Rose, for example, she merely tells you to drown a cantaloupe melon in rosewater syrup, so that it tastes like "a fruity take on gulab jamun". Can you even read that sentence without wanting to dash to the supermarket for the ingredients?
Segnit also peppers the book with restaurant and dish recommendations - not in an insufferable shiny London lifestyle way, but in an enthusiastic, unpretentious, eating-out-with-your-mates "you really have to try this" way. If only she had supplied phone numbers so we could immediately make reservations.
The real revelation, though, is Segnit's language. Put simply, it's superb. Modern cookery writing seems to fall into three distinct camps: venomous snob, obsessed with tablecloths and ambience rather than the food itself; faux-geezer dahn the faux-pub; and flirty girl breathlessly enthusing over cake. With `The Flavour Thesaurus', Segnit may well have ended the careers of many of these over-hyped morons.
For a start, her prose is endlessly entertaining. Breezy erudition sits alongside hilarious similes. She is a whizz with description: when she tells you that cloves on their own taste the same as sucking on a rusty nail, you half suspect she conducted a comparative taste test just to be sure. She incorporates references so wide-ranging that both Sybil Kapoor and Velma from Scooby Doo rate a mention. Then there are her unmissable riffs: p 148 instructs us on that "essentially unitary quantity, fishandchips", and insists they must be served in "newsless newspaper" (never polystyrene boxes) and always eaten at a bus stop or "on the wall outside the petrol station". Read about Instinctos and you will be snorting with laughter (and visiting Pizza Hut at the first excuse). I have now read `The Flavour Thesaurus' from cover to cover, and still I have not finished.
I must temper my enthusiasm with a few tiny criticisms just to prove this is a genuine review. At nigh on Ł20 full price in the UK, it's expensive for a book without illustrations or photographs (though note Amazon has since discounted it). It assumes a certain level of prior culinary knowledge, which was sometimes frustrating to a novice like me, though it won't bother those with lots of cookbooks and greater competence in the kitchen. The integration of the recipes into the text - Elizabeth David and Simon Hopkinson style - can be irksome until you've got busy with post-it notes. The index needs further sub-division: `crab', for example, offers 11 entries in the index, but the recipe for crab cakes is easily missed under Butternut Squash & Bacon.
But these are such minor complaints given the enormous appeal of this book. My husband hovers over it constantly, anxious for his promised present. My brother and my best friend have already asked to borrow it. `The Flavour Thesaurus' is truly a classic in the making, and no foodie's bookshelf is going to be complete without it.
EDITED TO ADD, the husband (Latin geek) points out that 'thesaurus' means treasury. Well, whatever language you're using, this book is ACE.
The concept of `The Flavour Thesaurus' is utterly, utterly genius. Segnit has taken 99 basic flavours (mint, coriander, basil, strawberry etc) and researched 980 pairings of them. The result is part recipe-book, part food memoir, part flavour compendium. (The English Language geek in me feels compelled to point out that `thesaurus' is a misnomer - even similar flavours are NOT synonyms, jeez, though the book retains Roget's format).
Some of these pairings are familiar, such as Bacon & Egg, whilst others (Avocado & Mango, anyone?) are not. Now and then, Segnit provides a recipe; many of these sound incredible, and despite being the most amateur of cooks, I reckon even I could manage many of them. Under Melon & Rose, for example, she merely tells you to drown a cantaloupe melon in rosewater syrup, so that it tastes like "a fruity take on gulab jamun". Can you even read that sentence without wanting to dash to the supermarket for the ingredients?
Segnit also peppers the book with restaurant and dish recommendations - not in an insufferable shiny London lifestyle way, but in an enthusiastic, unpretentious, eating-out-with-your-mates "you really have to try this" way. If only she had supplied phone numbers so we could immediately make reservations.
The real revelation, though, is Segnit's language. Put simply, it's superb. Modern cookery writing seems to fall into three distinct camps: venomous snob, obsessed with tablecloths and ambience rather than the food itself; faux-geezer dahn the faux-pub; and flirty girl breathlessly enthusing over cake. With `The Flavour Thesaurus', Segnit may well have ended the careers of many of these over-hyped morons.
For a start, her prose is endlessly entertaining. Breezy erudition sits alongside hilarious similes. She is a whizz with description: when she tells you that cloves on their own taste the same as sucking on a rusty nail, you half suspect she conducted a comparative taste test just to be sure. She incorporates references so wide-ranging that both Sybil Kapoor and Velma from Scooby Doo rate a mention. Then there are her unmissable riffs: p 148 instructs us on that "essentially unitary quantity, fishandchips", and insists they must be served in "newsless newspaper" (never polystyrene boxes) and always eaten at a bus stop or "on the wall outside the petrol station". Read about Instinctos and you will be snorting with laughter (and visiting Pizza Hut at the first excuse). I have now read `The Flavour Thesaurus' from cover to cover, and still I have not finished.
I must temper my enthusiasm with a few tiny criticisms just to prove this is a genuine review. At nigh on Ł20 full price in the UK, it's expensive for a book without illustrations or photographs (though note Amazon has since discounted it). It assumes a certain level of prior culinary knowledge, which was sometimes frustrating to a novice like me, though it won't bother those with lots of cookbooks and greater competence in the kitchen. The integration of the recipes into the text - Elizabeth David and Simon Hopkinson style - can be irksome until you've got busy with post-it notes. The index needs further sub-division: `crab', for example, offers 11 entries in the index, but the recipe for crab cakes is easily missed under Butternut Squash & Bacon.
But these are such minor complaints given the enormous appeal of this book. My husband hovers over it constantly, anxious for his promised present. My brother and my best friend have already asked to borrow it. `The Flavour Thesaurus' is truly a classic in the making, and no foodie's bookshelf is going to be complete without it.
EDITED TO ADD, the husband (Latin geek) points out that 'thesaurus' means treasury. Well, whatever language you're using, this book is ACE.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By Orpen
Format:Hardcover
The Flavor Thesaurus is just excellent. There's a reason it was nominated alongside Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Nigel Slater et al for the prestigious Galaxy National Book Awards in the UK: it is classy, original, entertaining and extremely useful.
To be honest, I'm not much of a cook - but my wife is very much so. I read the book and merely find it extremely funny, engaging and entertaining.
For my wife, a trained chef no less, it is a godsend. Open the refrigerator. A couple of leftover ingredients with no time to shop... in minutes we've got something delicious on the table, or at least on the way... or we're out at the local restaurant without the guilt that we could have done something with what we had at home (the book tells you when flavors don't go well together as well as when they do.)
I bought a copy back from the UK after a trip this summer and now have the US version too. I've given it as a gift several times and the recipients love it.
To be honest, I'm not much of a cook - but my wife is very much so. I read the book and merely find it extremely funny, engaging and entertaining.
For my wife, a trained chef no less, it is a godsend. Open the refrigerator. A couple of leftover ingredients with no time to shop... in minutes we've got something delicious on the table, or at least on the way... or we're out at the local restaurant without the guilt that we could have done something with what we had at home (the book tells you when flavors don't go well together as well as when they do.)
I bought a copy back from the UK after a trip this summer and now have the US version too. I've given it as a gift several times and the recipients love it.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
More Fun Than Functional
The one thing I really wanted to know before buying this book was, what are the 99 foods included? For those similarly curious, here they are:
ROASTED: Chocolate,... Read more
ROASTED: Chocolate,... Read more
Published 4 days ago by K Johnson
3.0 out of 5 stars
Too Wordy!
Too wordy, I have to search for the information I want. Liked the idea she tried to present in how many different combination a spice or flavoring could be used in, but still you... Read more
Published 13 days ago by Jeri Jo Cox
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating
Detailed work, expert contributors, very useful informations, an excellent reference book to have close to your wine refrigerator and your kitchen stove.
Published 1 month ago by Andrew P. Sholtes
5.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat Subjective but an Amazing Feat Nevertheless
Finally someone has tried to tackle such a complex subject. I expect more books will come out with different slants on this same subject.
Published 1 month ago by E. Simmer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect for contemplating what goes with what in your fridge
A lovely discovery. Some of the pairing combination entries are like perfect minature portraits. While its true that not all are of equal quality - you get the feeling the author... Read more
Published 1 month ago by LINA
4.0 out of 5 stars
Inspiration
I bought this for my son, a budding chef. It offers great inspiration of the melding of flavors. Amazing what can result from some of the more unconventional pairings.
Published 3 months ago by D. Kosik
5.0 out of 5 stars
Genius
Amazing for pairing flavors. I gave it to my fiance who's a private chef and he uses it for preparing his clients' menus!
Published 3 months ago by Jessica L. Bernier
5.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining and massively informative
Bought this for my friend the chef, but we all spent hours poring over it on Christmas night. Writing style is witty, and book provides a huge amount of info about flavor pairings,... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Lindsay Lennox
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant
This is the perfect compendium for any chef. The combinations of flavors are so creative, most people would never think of them. Great for inventing new recipes. Love.
Published 4 months ago by Victor Gonzalez
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Even Think About It -- Just Buy It Now
Got this book on a whim -- mostly because I liked the title! Wow, am I glad I did! For anyone who has cooked strictly from recipes and would like to be more creative OR for... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Pamela Weaver
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