Joy of Cooking

by Irma S. Rombauer

Typically, the ingredients added “to taste” are salt and acid.

One of the biggest mistakes we see home cooks make is not tasting food as it cooks or even before it hits the dinner table. How do you know something is going to taste the way you want it to unless you actually try it while you still have the chance to impact the end result? 99% of the time, when you taste a dish and feel like it needs a little something, that something is going to be salt or acidity. Salt doesn’t just make food taste saltier. It brings out other flavors, making everything taste a little more “of itself.” Acidity gives food character or vibrancy. Once, we were talking with a farmer about the variety of blackberries he grew. It was a punchy blackberry with a lot of acidity, and we kept going back for more. Eschewing sweeter varieties, he said “acidity is what makes food taste good.” An oversimplification maybe, but there’s a grain of truth there. Acidity makes food really pop, throwing other flavors into stark relief. It also makes food interesting. This is why we put a big bowl of cranberry sauce on the table at Thanksgiving or spread a mouth-puckering mustard on sandwiches made with cold cuts—contrast is important in making food taste good. If you’re interested in how acidity makes food delicious, and about the different types of acids you can use in cooking, also see the section called Acidic Ingredients on page 950.