The 5 Different Types of Taste

"Everyone eats and drinks, but few appreciate taste"

- Confucius -

Taste is the most important factor when it comes to good food.
So let's have a closer look on the 5 different types of taste.

There's a czech tale about salt. One day a king gathers all people of his town in his castle and asks his 3 daughters in front of the crowd about how much they love him. The first two compare their love to gold and diamonds and that's what the king wants to hear. The third daughter, however, tells him she loves him as much as salt.

Infuriated from what he just heard, the king bans his third daughter from the kingdom and commands to throw away every single gramm of salt. No salt shall ever be used again.

But - how else could it be - as he is being served unsalted food at the next dinner he regrets his decision very quickly and realizes the big symbolic meaning his daughter has thought of.

Everything tastes boring and dull.

I won't tell you the entire story, but in the end his daughter returns with a magical cup that spends infinite amounts of salt and everything turns out good in the end.

The message of the tale is pretty simple. Salt is indispensable. Salt lifts our dishes on a higher level and enhances the flavor of every single ingredient. 

How to make dishes salty?

Of course with salt. What a stupid question you might say. But there are different kinds of salts. Furthermore, you can use salty ingredients as a substitute.

Salt:

• refined salt
• sea salt (i.e. fleur de sel)
• himalaya salt

For cooking, mostly you will be using regular refined salt. It's cheap and it does its purpose. It makes your dish salty and enhances the flavor. When you use it, you mix it into the dish, so every bite is as salty as the other.

However, in some dishes, salt is used to create different areas of saltiness and texture.

For example, the famous tapa (spanish dish) "pimentos de padron", is sprinkled with fleur de sel. These are rather large but very thin crystals of sea salt. So when you bite into a pimento, it will be sweet and salty at the same time. But it's not blended. You will taste the sweet areas from the pimento and the salty areas from the crystals. And since you bite into crystals, it will also have a crunchy texture. Pretty awesome, if you ask me.

Salty substitutes:

• fish sauce
• soy sauce
• canned anchovies
• cheese (i.e. parmesan, pecorino, feta)
• bacon
• ham/sausage

Have you ever had Spaghetti Carbonara before? The famous italian dish contains a lot of flavor, even though it's only made of a couple of ingredients. There is almost no salt used, because the parmesan and bacon already bring a lot of salt into the dish, beside their unique flavors.

Fish sauce might sound a little weird, but I'm sure you ate it quite often already, since it's used in almost every thai dish. Just a hint: don't try it by itself. It tastes and smells horrible. But if you pour it into a dish it can make the whole difference between average and awesome. It adds a very unique saltiness to your meal. Oh, and don't worry. Your dish won't be tasting fishy at all, or did your last chicken thai curry?

The same principle actually applies for anchovies. Have you ever had an original cesar salad? The dressing contains anchovies. Did it ever taste fishy? I guess no :)

So go ahead and start experimenting!