On Food and Cooking

nearly all food aromas are composites of
many different volatile molecules. In the case
of vegetables, herbs, and spices, the number
may be a dozen or two, while fruits typically
emit several hundred volatile molecules.
Usually just a handful create the dominant
element of an aroma, while the others supply
background, supporting, enriching notes. This
combination of specificity and complexity
helps explain why we find echoes of one food
in another, or find that two foods go well
together. Some affinities result when the
foods happen to share some of the same
aroma molecules.
One way to approach the richness of plant
flavors is to taste actively and with other
people. Rather than simply recognizing a
familiar flavor as what you expect, try to
dissect that flavor into some of its component
sensations, just as a musical chord can be
broken down into its component notes. Run
through a checklist of the possibilities, and