But, when two right-sized riders sit on opposite ends, the board can both teeter and totter. It can also rest in that sweet spot where the board hovers parallel with the ground, the riders’ feet dangling in midair.
Chefs call that sweet spot balance.
Stick with the Fundamentals
Now think of the five fundamental tastes as potential teeter-ers and totter-ers: sweet, sour, salty, spicy and bitter. (Some would also include fatty and umami.) Too much of one or too little of another can sink the dish. But, if the dominant taste gets an assist from another player, then the finished dish will be a delicious slam dunk – like a sweet jelly donut in a cup of bitter black coffee.
Too spicy? Increase the sweetness. Too sweet? Add something sour. Too bitter? Try something salty. (That last one is why beer and pretzels are such a classic combination.)
According to an old New England saying, “An apple pie without the cheese is like a kiss without the squeeze.” That’s because this classic New England custom pairs the tart/sweetness of apples and sugar with the savory, fatty, salty tang of cheddar cheese.
Like New Englanders, French culinarians also know a good thing when they taste it. That’s why French school kids snack on radishes with butter and salt. (We don’t call ours French breakfast radishes for nothing.) It’s all about the marriage of spicy and salty, with the mellow round mouthfeel of fat.
Chord Progression
Famed Chef Wolfgang Puck has said that "Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors—it's how you combine them that sets you apart.”
Culinary Vegetable Institute Chef Jamie Simpson furthered the music metaphor. “A single dish might have five ingredients on it,” he said. “Look at those like notes as a chord. Each ingredient is a note. Each bite is a chord. Each dish is a song. The entire dinner as a whole? That is your album.”
Chef Jamie said that other elements, such as texture, temperature and mouthfeel are just as important as taste in achieving balance. “You need those contrasts to achieve a balanced and exciting menu,” he said. “You have to have various levels of salinity. Know when to under-season and when to season more aggressively and make conscious decisions with texture and temperature.”
In the Culinary Vegetable Institute kitchen, Chef Jamie said that “Conversations about balance happen all day long.”
They can also happen all meal long. The progression of courses on a menu is another opportunity to seek balance. “If the timing is right, it can balance from course to course,” he said. “Say I make a dish with spicy elements like nasturtium, arugasabi or mustards. I could clean it up with the next course and follow with something fatty, maybe an emulsion on a salad.”
Good Scents
Aroma is yet another contributor to balance. “That’s where fresh herbs and edible flowers can come into play,” Chef Jamie said. “Marigolds are great because they have so much aroma. It just slaps around the aroma space. Same with black mint or citrus lace.”
The Chef’s Garden grows more than 600 varieties of plants, edible flowers, leaves, and herbs. Multiply those 600 by the infinitesimal possible combinations and that’s simply head-spinning. Having access to a broad variety of aromatic ingredients helps stave off boredom, complacency and sameness, Chef Jamie said. “You become deaf to certain things when you don’t have the contrast. If you wear the same perfume every day, eventually you don’t even smell it.”
Perfect Match
Some of Chef Jamie’s favorite balanced pairings include:
Demi cuke and blooms with spicy yuzu (a sour Japanese citrus fruit)
Salty sea cress with fatty oysters
Tangy sorrels with dairy (remember apple pie and cheese?)
Tomatoes and lovage (an herb Chef Jamie calls “the darker stepchild of celery” for its intense earthy bitterness)
Beets coupled with anise, chocolate, cherry, red wine or red ribbon sorrel
“It really starts with the ingredients,” he said. “If the ingredient changes, we have to change the way we add to a dish.”
Choose your metaphor: playground or turntable, teeter-totter or playlist. Either way, Chef Jamie said skilled chefs can successfully and routinely develop well-balanced and delicious single dish or entire menus.
“It’s either a roller coaster,” he added, “or it’s a free fall.”
Try not to lose your balance.