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A 16th century woodcut shows the interior of a kitchen. In medieval Europe, cooks combined contrasting flavors and spices in much the same way that Indian cooking still does today. Paul Lacroix/Wikimedia hibernate caption

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Paul Lacroix/Wikimedia

A 16th century woodcut shows the interior of a kitchen. In medieval Europe, cooks combined contrasting flavors and spices in much the same style that Indian cooking withal does today.

Paul Lacroix/Wikimedia

My father usually starts off his curries past roasting a blend of cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, anise, cumin and bay leaves. And so he incorporates the onions, garlic and ginger — and so tomatoes and chilies and a bear upon of cream.

The North Indian cuisine I grew up eating is about melding together singled-out, disparate flavors and building upward layer upon layer of spice and seasoning. Much of European cuisine, by contrast, is virtually combining complementary flavors — think potatoes with leeks, or scallops with white wine.

A recent study tried to explain the divide in Eastern and Western culinary philosophy through some neat information crunching. Researchers from the Indian Found for Technology in Jodhpur looked up the ingredient lists for more than than two,000 Indian recipes. They then analyzed the chemic components of these ingredients, looking at the compounds that, when combined, give foods their gustatory modality.

They concluded that what makes Indian cuisine and then exquisite is its tendency to bring together lots of dissimilar ingredients with flavour molecules that don't overlap.

That'southward quite different from how Western cuisine works — previous research has shown that it relies on pairing ingredients that, at the molecular level, share lots of similar flavor compounds.

While some have praised the new inquiry for revealing the secret to why Indian cuisine is and then delicious, this notion of layering many contrasting flavors and spices isn't unique to Indian cooking.

In fact, most of the earth's cuisines tend to follow that principle, says Tulasi Srinivas, an anthropologist at Emerson University who studies nutrient and globalization. And up until the mid-1600s, European cuisine was the same mode.

In medieval Europe, those who could beget to do and so would generously season their stews with saffron, cinnamon, cloves and ginger. Sugar was ubiquitous in savory dishes. And haute European cuisine, until the mid-1600s, was defined past its use of complex, contrasting flavors.

"The real question, and then, is why the wealthy, powerful Due west — with unprecedented access to spices from its colonies — became so fixated on this singular agreement of flavor," Srinivas says.

The answer, information technology turns out, has just as much to do with economics, politics and religion as it does sense of taste.

Haute Cuisine And The Price Of Pepper

Back in the Centre Ages, spices were really expensive, which meant that only the upper class could afford them. But things started to change every bit Europeans began colonizing parts of Bharat and the Americas.

"Spices begin to cascade into Europe," explains Krishnendu Ray, an acquaintance professor of food studies at New York Academy. "What used to be expensive and exclusive became common."

Serving richly spiced stews was no longer a status symbol for Europe'due south wealthiest families — fifty-fifty the middle classes could afford to spice up their grub. "So the aristocracy recoiled from the increasing popularity of spices," Ray says. "They moved on to an aesthetic theory of taste. Rather than infusing food with spice, they said things should gustatory modality like themselves. Meat should taste similar meat, and anything you add together only serves to intensify the existing flavors."

The shift began in France, in the mid-1600s, adds Paul Freedman, a professor of history at Yale University. "It was a way to also show off the wealth of the French provinces," Freedman says.

The rest of Europe soon adopted this new fashion. "It's a redefinition of what elegant is," Freedman says. "Information technology's sort of like — in fashion — for a while having more frills, more jewelry was fashionable. But and so someone said that a basic black dress with some pearls is much better."

A Philosophical Shift

European ideas nearly diet and medicine began changing in the 17th century equally well.

"In the Middle Ages and in artifact, Europe had had a theory of humors that was like to medical philosophy in India," says Rachel Laudan, a food historian and visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin.

Both Indians and Europeans believed that sure energies circulating within the body affected both general wellness and mood. And by eating the right foods, people believed that they could balance out these bodily energies.

"So, for example, if you were slow and lethargic, yous could exist pepped upward by eating hot spices," Laudan explains. "But if you were impetuous, you would want to eat more cooling flavors."

With the rising of Protestantism in Europe came another theory: that digestion is a matter of fermenting food. "Now the theory was that you want to eat things like fresh vegetables and greens, and fresh herbs that can be rapidly assimilated in the torso because they ferment easily," Laudan says.

With this new way of thinking, spices lost their medicinal value. Information technology'due south non that Europeans rejected flavorful ingredients altogether, Laudan says. "It's just that they began using a dissimilar prepare of ingredients."

And there was another shift, Laudan says: "There was a shift in the nature of sauces."

"Indian sauces — and many sauces in the globe — are basically purees with flavors and spices," she says. "In Europe, they go over to sauces that are based on meat stock."

For Indian and Asian chefs, the sauce or curry was the star. In India, Jains — and many Hindus — don't eat meat. And in full general, most Indians believed that meat was unclean and inelegant, so the goal was, in part, to cover upward the fleshiness of meat by thoroughly infusing information technology with spice.

"In Europe, meat was considered the manliest, strongest component of a repast," Laudan notes, and chefs wanted it to shine. So they began cooking meat in meat-based gravies, to intensify its flavor.

The Modern Palate

To a large extent, the move toward subtler flavour pairings was permanent. And the results of this shift have been scrumptious. French gastronomy has long been prized as the epitome of culinary expression (though its supremacy is no longer a given).

But hints of the older, medieval way of cooking however remain in Western cuisine.

"Think of a charcoal-broil sauce — very medieval," says Ken Albala, a professor of culinary history at the Academy of the Pacific, in that it'southward sweet and sour and full of an array of spices and flavorings. "We do like contrasting flavors."

In the last century, Westerners adopted a few Asian ideas nigh spice and contrast also. After colonizing India, the British developed a taste for back-scratch that they even so haven't shaken. The Brits often serve their fries with back-scratch sauce. And chicken tikka masala — an Anglicized version of a N Indian curry — is so popular in the U.K. that in 2001, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook alleged that it was United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland's national dish.

The big data crunching is interesting, Albala notes, just it doesn't tell the whole story.

"What'due south been done so far is very superficial," he writes in an electronic mail. "And it doesn't account for all the cultural, social, economic, political reasons people eat what they do."

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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/26/394339284/how-snobbery-helped-take-the-spice-out-of-european-cooking

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