How to balance the flavours in your cooking
Sweet, salt, bitter, sour and umami – is getting taste right an art or a science?
甜，鹹，苦，酸和鮮味 - 味覺越來越像一門藝術或科學？
The art of seasoning … it's about far more than adding a few grinds of salt and pepper. Photograph: Hera Food/Alamy
調味的藝術......它不僅只是加入幾許鹽和胡椒而已。攝影：赫拉食品/ Alamy
Heinz is not the market leader in tomato ketchups for nothing. In his exhaustive New Yorker essay on why no other make can compete for the ketchup crown, Malcolm Gladwell concludes that Heinz's secret lies in its perfect balance of the five basic tastes: sweet, salt, bitter, sour andumami. Granted, branding is influential, but you don't shift 650m bottles each year unless it tastes good. There's no doubt that a perfect balance of tastes is essential in achieving ultimate deliciousness.
亨氏食品公司是蕃茄醬的市場領導者。在他的精闢的紐約客文章中，一篇為什麼沒有其他品牌可與其爭奪番茄醬的皇冠，馬爾科姆·格拉德威爾的結論是亨氏的秘訣在於五個基本味覺的完美平衡：甜味，鹹味，苦味，酸味和鮮味。誠然，品牌亦是有影響的，除非它的口味好 ，否則一年不會銷量650百萬瓶。毫無疑問，味覺的完美平衡，是實現終極美味必不可少的。
It can be galling when you follow a new recipe to the letter, and the kitchen fills with mouth-watering aromas, yet the food is lacking something when you taste it. It's like getting all gussied up for a party, but somehow the overall effect isn't as spectacular as you'd envisaged. It is, of course, a given that recipes will always need tweaking to account for different cooking conditions and personal tastes. But these days most westerners learn how to cook from printed recipes, and I for one was never instilled with an instinct for balancing tastes. It may be bleeding obvious when something's too salty or acidic or whatever, but only experience can teach you how to fix it. And then there's the more subtle practice of improving an OK dish by adding a pinch of this, a tad of that, until it sings.
當你遵循一個新的食譜按照上面的配方料理，廚房充滿令人垂涎欲滴的香味，但當你品嚐時卻缺少某樣東西 ，頓時讓人心情盪到谷底。這就像為一場盛宴裝扮，但不知何故，整體效果卻不如你所設想的那般引人注目。是，當然，一個已知的假設是食譜配方總是需要考慮到不同的烹飪條件和個人品味來做說明。但近來大多數西方人學習如何從印製食譜做飯，而我為了從未注入平衡口味的一種直覺。這可能譬如是有什麼地方太鹹或太酸甚麼的非常明顯時，只有經驗可以教你如何解決它。而後藉加入一撮這個，一點那個來使菜色ok完成一道美味佳餚的一個微妙練習。
The art of seasoning
調味藝術
This, argues the food writer and former food scientist Jules Clancy in her blog, is about far more than adding a few grinds of salt and pepper. It's about sorting out the sweet, sour and bitterness balance, too (I would add umami to this list). Clancy says she first picked up on the dazzling effects of getting this right in her former life as a wine maker. Increasing the acidity in a wine, she says, did more than simply making it tart: "At the optimal acid level, the wine would be more bright and alive on the tastebuds," she writes. And the mouth feel could be lifted from oily and flabby to thirst-quenchingly crisp.
這一點，美食作家和前食品科學家朱爾斯·克蘭西在她的博客曾爭論，是不僅只是加入鹽和胡椒幾許研磨而已。是也關於滲出甜味，酸味和苦味平衡（我想補充鮮味到此列表）。克蘭西說，在她以前的生活作為一個葡萄酒生產商時她第一次將此做對時她得到這炫目的效果。增加酒的酸度，她說，做更多的而不是簡單地使它更酸：“在最佳的酸水平，葡萄酒會比較富含鮮亮，充滿活力的味蕾，”她寫道。而口感可以從油膩，鬆弛，以消除解渴般甦暢。
In cooking you can match your sources of these basic tastes to the style of dish you're preparing: for example if you need some acidity, says Clancy, it should come from a subtle sherry vinegar, a squeeze of zingy lime or a "super-concentrated" balsamic vinegar (which will also deliver sweetness and umami in one hit).
在烹調裡可以從你準備的菜餚去匹配你的基本口味來源：例如，如果你需要一些酸味，克蘭西說，它應該來自一個不可思議的雪利酒醋，擠壓一個酸橙或“超級濃縮“香脂醋（這也將一次提供甜味和鮮味）。
Thai cooks: masters of balance
泰國料理：平衡大師
David Thompson, the Australian who earned Thai cuisine's first Michelin star, says that western food is like playing draughts, whereas Thai is like playing chess.
The balance of spiciness, saltiness, sourness and sweetness must be considered not only in each dish, but also between the six or more dishes shared per sitting. "Sometimes all four tastes are employed," he says, "sometimes one or two only, but it's always an exercise in trying to strike a balance." If you have a stonkingly hot curry, for instance, then you'll have a mild stir fry and soup. A sweet salad will be accompanied by a sour stir fry. And so on.
大衛·湯普森，贏得泰國美食的第一顆米其林星一位澳大利亞廚師說，西餐就像下西象(跳)棋，而泰國料理則像是在下西洋棋。
辣味，鹹味，酸味和甜味的平衡，不僅必須在每道菜考慮，也需在每次共享的六到或更多的菜之間著手。“有時候，所有四個口味皆被運用”他說，“有時則只有一兩個，但它總是試圖取得平衡的一個練習。” 如果你有一份出乎意料好吃的熱咖哩，比如，那麼你將佳搭配一份清淡菜湯。一道甜沙拉會伴有酸味翻炒。等等。
It's an instinctive way of cooking in which your tongue, he says, is the only thing that can get you through the maze of ingredients. "No recipe book will be able to tell you how to cook Thai food correctly because it doesn't take into account what's happening in front of you. It is anarchic really," says Thompson, "it's very loose. It's circumstantial."
它是運用你的舌頭烹調的一個本能方式，他說，是一個可以讓你走出迷宮組合唯一的事。“沒有食譜能告訴你如何正確烹飪泰國美食，因為它沒有考慮到在你的面前所發生的事情，這是真的無政府主義”湯普森說，“這是非常鬆散的，它是視情況而定。”
First you have to take into account your main ingredient – be it meat, fish or veg – and different batches and varieties will vary. Limes, notes Thompson, have considerably different characteristics in Britain, Australia and Thailand, plus they change with the seasons. The heat in different types of chilli varies wildly and even individual peppers from the same bush can differ, so you can't take anything for granted. Just keep tasting and adding, slowly.
首先，你必須考慮你的主要原料成分 - 無論是肉，魚或蔬菜 -不同批次和品種項次會有所不同。酸橙，湯普森指出，在英國，澳大利亞和泰國相當不同的特點，特別再加上他們會隨著季節而變化。不同類型的野生辣椒的熱潮，慢慢的甚至來自同一個的灌木辣椒也可以不同而異，所以理所當然的你不能帶走任何東西。只要保持品嚐和逐漸添加，慢慢的慢慢的。
The rules
規則
Remember that salt does more than make food taste salty. It enhances sweetness and suppresses bitterness.
請記住，鹽不僅僅使食物味道變鹹。它增強了甜味也抑制苦味。
If you add a little too much salt, says Thompson, you might be able to get away with it if you up the sourness, sugar or chilli. Diluting the dish with a little more water can also help, he adds, "just lift it out of the intensity".
如果加一些食鹽過多，湯普森說，你也許能夠逃脫酸味，糖或辣椒。用一點水稀釋也可以幫助菜餚的味覺，他補充道，“只是將它拉出強度之外”。
You can also disguise an unbalanced dish by adjusting the accompaniments. Don't salt the rice, or compensate a sour main dish with sweeter foods on the side.
您也可以藉由調整附加物掩蓋不平衡的菜餚。不在飯裡放鹽，或在旁用甜食去補償以酸味為主的菜餚。
Beware taste saturation. The more you keep sampling the food, warns Clancy, the more used to it you will become. So punctuate your tasting with palate-cleansing glugs of water.
當心味道的飽和度。克蘭西警告，採樣食物越多，你會更習慣如此。所以你品嚐食物之際用水咕嚕潔淨口味。
When using very hot chilli, you'll need to turn up the volume on the salt and sour, too. "It's what Thais call a rounded taste," says Thompson.
當使用非常辣的辣椒，你就需要調高鹽和酸的量了。“這就是泰國人稱之為完美口感”湯普森說。
Is it an art or is it a science? Do you think about balancing tastes when you're cooking? Have you any more seasoning tips and pitfalls to add to the above?
它是一門藝術還是科學？當你烹飪時你想平衡味覺嗎？你有其他任何調味技巧和圈套添加到上面？
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