6.3 Seasoning versus flavoring

Many ingredients make food taste better. They work in two different ways, and a skilled cook knows which is which.

Flavoring changes the food's original flavor. It can work in two ways.

• As a contrast. A liqueur added to a dessert sits beside the dessert's own flavor, and you can taste both.
• As a blend. Several flavorings can merge into one new flavor in which you cannot pick out the parts. The spice mix in a pumpkin pie is a good example.

Herbs and spices are the main ingredients for both seasoning and flavoring. Wines, spirits, fruit zest, extracts, essences and oils are used too. Knowing how to use them well matters more than knowing exactly which plants are herbs and which are spices.

When to add them

• Add dried seasonings early and fresh ones late.
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• Season lightly while the food cooks, then taste and add more just before serving, especially fresh seasonings. Building flavor step by step like this is sometimes called layering.
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• Baking is different. Once a cake or bread is baked, it is hard to add seasoning, so bakers test their recipes in advance to get the spice right.
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Fresh and dried herbs

Herbs are mostly the leaves of fragrant plants with soft, non-woody stems. Fresh herbs are milder than dried ones, so you need more of them: up to half as much again. Going the other way, if a recipe gives an amount of fresh herb, use about half that amount of dried.

The fresh herbs used most often are parsley, basil, thyme, rosemary, coriander, sage, oregano, tarragon and marjoram. Good fresh herbs smell clean and fresh and have no wilted or brown leaves. Sealed in an airtight plastic bag, they keep for about five days. Add them close to the end of cooking so heat does not drive off their flavor.

Dried herbs lose strength quickly unless they are kept in airtight containers; stored that way, they can last up to six months. Add them at the start of cooking, because their flavor takes longer to come out.