As a good restaurant waiter, you should be very aware of the taste types of some common dishes, so that you can better recommend the restaurant's dishes to customers.
1. Classification of flavor types
According to the traditional method, the flavor type is divided into two types: single flavor type (also known as basic seasoning) and compound flavor type.
(1) Single flavor type. Monoscentricity, also known as basic flavor, refers to the taste concocted with only one flavored substance. This flavor exists independently and does not need to be copied. The perception of single flavor varies in different countries and regions. At present, there are six popular sayings: sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, salty and umami. Strictly speaking, a single flavor can only appear in the classification of condiments, and dishes with only one taste do not exist. Spicy and hemp are special sensations caused by food in the mouth, and although the fragrance is a smell, it is customarily weighed. Therefore, from the perspective of cooking, salty, sweet, sour, bitter, fresh, spicy, hemp, fragrant and other flavors constitute the basic taste of the dish.
(2) Compound flavor type. Compound flavor patterns are a combination of two or more single flavor types. Various flavor types are named, some are named after taste, and some are named after the main flavor substances. For example, based on the salty taste, the flavor can be concocted to taste types such as sauce, soy sauce, pepper and salt; Based on sweetness, the taste can be concocted to hang cream, honey juice, plucked silk, sweet and sour, salty and sweet, sweet and sweet, sweet and spicy and other flavor types; Based on sour taste, sweet and sour, fruit acid, acetic acid and other flavor types can be modulated; Based on the spicy taste, the spicy, sour and spicy, paste spicy, spicy and other flavor types can be modulated; Based on the bitter taste, the tangerine peel, tea bitterness, bitter apricot and other flavor types can be concocted.
2. Flavoring effect
(1) Odor removal. Many raw materials such as animal offal, beef and mutton, dog meat and most aquatic products, often with a stronger odor, irritability, fishiness, strangeness, unauthorized and other bad smell, should not be eaten directly, after reasonable seasoning, through the mutual cancellation of flavors, can make the above bad odor weakened or even removed, to meet the requirements of cooking. Blending stronger and lighter flavors or meat dishes with vegetarian dishes can also play a role in harmonizing tastes. For example, meat and vegetables are a way to harmonize tastes. Not only does its taste penetrate into each other, but it can also play a role in degreasing, freshening and removing odor. Some odor-heavy ingredients, such as lamb and greasy pork, can be coordinated and reduced by onions, ginger, vinegar, sugar, cooking wine, and pepper.
(2) Reduce the strong taste. Garlic, peppers, celery, radish, fennel and other raw materials with strong special odors are often not easy to be accepted by diners. Cut the pepper and radish into pieces and mourn with boiling water to reduce the strong taste. By seasoning, adding a little sugar to these ingredients can also dilute or slow down the stimulation of their strong taste.
(3) Increase the taste. Many raw materials and even some high-grade raw materials themselves have a very light or bad taste, such as cabbage, tofu, vermicelli, powder skin, sea cucumber, fish maw, shark fin, etc., but after seasoning, or cooked with fresh pork, chicken, mushrooms and other raw materials with umami flavor, can make the light and tasteless raw materials increase the taste and become delicious.
(4) Determine taste. After seasoning, you can give the dish a specific flavor type, such as fish flavor type, spicy flavor type, etc. The taste of each dish is determined by seasoning. There are only more than 1,000 kinds of Chinese cooking ingredients, but there are tens of thousands of dishes, which shows that seasoning is an important means to diversify the taste of dishes. For example, the same kind of fish, according to the different seasonings, can produce vinegar-distilled fish, sweet and sour fish, boiled fish, spicy fish and so on.
(5) Increase color and fragrance. The color of the dish can be achieved by seasoning. During the seasoning process, the color of the dish can be increased with the help of colored seasoning and the toning reaction between the seasoning and other substances during the heating process. For example, sugar can react with amino acids in animal raw materials under appropriate conditions to color dishes, and sugar in braised dishes can make dishes shiny and bright; Milk and salt can make the fillets white; Curd milk and tomato sauce can make dishes rosy red; Noodle sauce and soy sauce can make the dishes red. White mustard juice, sweet and sour sauce, etc., can make the dishes tasteful, colorful and radiant. The color of dishes such as golden hook roasted tofu, snowflake chicken naweed, rock sugar elbow, fish and shrimp, red grilled shark fin and so on is formed with the assistance or action of condiments. With the help of the color-giving effect of the seasoning, the dish can produce an attractive and beautiful effect. In addition, when appropriate condiments are added, the aromatic components in the dish are highlighted and can produce a seductive odor.
(6) Increase variety. Seasoning determines the variety of dishes. For example, in the case of meat slices, they can be adjusted to "spicy meat slices" or "fish fragrant meat slices", which is due to the different condiments. Take chicken slices as an example, accompanied by a spicy compound flavor, that is, "spicy chicken slices"; Accompanied by a strange taste, it is "strange chicken slices"; Accompanied by a pepper flavor, it is "pepper hemp chicken slices". Taking ribs as an example, accompanied by the compound taste of sweet and sour, it is "sweet and sour ribs": accompanied by five spices, it is "five-spice ribs"; Accompanied by the smell of fish, it is "fish-flavored ribs". The name of the dish changes due to the change of seasoning, so that the same ingredient has a different flavor, increasing the variety of the color of the dish.
(7) Add nutrition. Condiments contain different kinds of nutrients, which can be put into food to increase the nutritional value of food. The types and contents of nutrients in soy sauce and sauce have a lot to do with their raw materials, soy sauce and sauce made of soybeans as raw materials, the protein content is relatively high, up to 3% "10%; The protein content of sweet noodle sauce made from wheat is only 2%; If you add raw materials with high protein content such as sesame seeds during the production process, the protein content can reach more than % of the increase. Vinegar is a commonly used condiment that is rich in calcium and iron. Sugar is also an important condiment, white sugar belongs to refined sugar, the main nutrients are carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, accounting for 99%; The content of inorganic salt, calcium and iron in brown sugar is significantly higher than that of white sugar.
(8) Reflect the flavor. Seasoning can reflect the differences and differences in cuisine and flavor. Such as Lu cuisine taste heavy and fresh; Cantonese cuisine is light and fragrant; Su cai taste is rich and sweet, and the natural taste is mellow; Zhejiang cuisine is fresh and fragrant; Emblem cuisine pays attention to highlighting the original taste, crisp and fragrant; Fujian cuisine tastes heavy sweet and sour, and mostly uses red rot; Hunan cuisine is heavy sour and spicy; The spicy flavor is thick and the fish flavor is mellow, which is the style characteristic of Sichuan cuisine.