Written in 2010, London-based author Niki Segnit’s The Flavour Thesaurus is not your typical cookbook. The Flavour Thesaurus delivers what it promises: “pairings, recipes and ideas for the creative cook”, and has stood the test of time by becoming one of the most sought-after culinary books by chefs and food enthusiasts worldwide.
According to the author, the idea of the book arose from a need to form a manual of why certain flavours work together, without extensive industry-grade equipment or resources to research. The book presents 99 flavours divided into 16 categories – like citrussy, meaty, earthy etc, depending on their qualities. The entire list has been organised into what Segnit called a “flavour wheel”, depicting progression in the flavour families.
Tomato & Strawberry: These are interchangeable, according to some scientifically minded chefs, as the two share many flavour compounds. In the mid-1990s, Ron G.Buttery and his team discovered that tomatoes contain what’s known as the strawberry furanone, also found in raspberry, pineapple, beef, roasted hazelnuts and popcorn. Later research discovered the highest concentrations were found in homegrown tomatoes in high summer. Try substituting one for the other in your favourite strawberry and tomato dishes. Strawberry, avocado and mozzarella salad is a no-brainer. How about strawberries in your burger or tomatoes on your fruit tarts? Wimbledon may never be the same again.
— From 'The Flavour Thesaurus'.
In the introduction, Segnit talks about her excessive reliance on recipe books despite cooking for twenty years, and sudden doubt over whether she really learnt how to cook or if she was “really adept at following instructions”. That thought, accompanied by the motivation from a dish cooked by a friend with just two ingredients, pushed Segnit towards writing The Flavour Thesaurus.
The book not only offers a description of over 4,000 possible pairings of ingredients for readers and culinary enthusiasts to experiment, with but also recipes to incorporate the pairings into easy dishes. Segnit’s recipes, however, are not in the format usually found in cookbooks. She leaves the reader with a brief outline and the basics and gives them room to experiment. “Following the instructions in a recipe is like parroting pre-formed sentences from a phrasebook,” she says.
Chocolate & Cardamom: Like a puppeteer’s black velvet curtain, dark chocolate is the perfect smooth background for cardamom to show off its colours. Use the cardamom in sufficient quantities and you can pick out its enigmatic citrus, eucalyptus and warm, woody-floral qualities. I find adding a pinch of ground cardamom can make even the most ordinary dark chocolate taste expensive. This tart is spectacularly delicious and very quick to make but needs a couple of hours in the fridge to set.
Prepare and bake a 9-in sweet pastry shell. Slit open 10 cardamom pods, grind up the contents with a mortar and pestle, add to 11⁄4 cups heavy cream in a pan and scald. Remove from the heat and add 7 oz dark chocolate, broken into pieces, and 2 tbsp unsalted butter. Stir until melted and well mixed. When cooled a little (don’t let it set), pour into the pastry shell and place in the fridge for two or three hours. When it has hardened, sift a little cocoa powder over it and serve with a modest dollop of crème fraîche.
— From 'The Flavour Thesaurus'.
Apart from shedding light on usual and unusual flavour pairings that are meant to spark inspiration, the book also presents its readers with delightful tidbits of the history of ingredients. For example, if you were to read how coffee and chocolate pair together, you’ll also be introduced to the fact that coffee beans from Mocha in Yemen have a chocolaty aftertaste that has lent its name to how the combination is popularly known.
If you look at eggs and tomato, you’ll be reminded of how Uova al Purgatorio from Naples, Shakshuka from West Asia, and Huevos Rancheros from Latin America all work on similar principles, reminiscent of the underlying connection between cuisines across continents.
Over the years, The Flavour Thesaurus has received rave reviews and continues to be a crowd favourite in culinary circles. It has also been translated into 14 languages. Gurugram-based chef and author Anahita Dhondy often talks about it on her Instagram page, calling it mandatory reading for food enthusiasts. Kainaz Contractor, co-founder and owner of Rustom’s Cafe and Bakery, New Delhi, has called it a “great starting point when creating recipes”. “The book is so unique, every time I open it, I find something new. That’s what I love about it – it’s unexpected,” she was quoted as saying by Goya Journal.
Onion & Orange: Thin sliced rounds of both can make a lovely, crisp salad. Look out for sweet onion varieties such as Vidalia, Empire and Supasweet. The higher sugar levels in sweeter onions come at the expense of pyruvic acid, the defensive chemical responsible for stronger onions’ pungency, aftertaste and the teardrops on your cutting board. If you can’t get naturally sweet onions, you could try giving your cut onions a rinse in cold water, which arrests some of the stronger sulphur compounds released when you damage their flesh. Blood orange and red onion make a pretty pair on the plate, and red onion is often (though not always) on the sweeter, milder side.
— From 'The Flavour Thesaurus'.
The book has also been praised by celebrated chef Yotam Ottolenghi. “Pulling off the trick of being delightful and informative is pretty rare, I find. I love Niki’s style of writing – packed with knowledge and information, but conveyed with such a lightness of touch. This is full of ideas for those who don’t want a prescriptive approach to recipes,” he said.
The book in no way presents an exhaustive list of all possible flavour pairings, but aims to give the readers a primer to understand why two ingredients may or may not work together. Like the author says, it is meant to “get the juices flowing”.
The Flavour Thesaurus, Niki Segnit, Bloomsbury.
