Flavor Quotes

“What's a rainy day
without some delicious
coffee-flavoured loneliness?”
― Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence

“My love is meatloaf flavored. I just wish my meatloaf was also meatloaf flavored.”
― Dora J. Arod, Love quotes for the ages. And the ageless sages.

“Food is one of the best things about being alive.
Not just food. Good food. There is a chasm between sustenance and satisfaction, and while she spent the better part of three hundred years eating to stave off the pangs of hunger, she has spent the last fifty delighting in the discovery of flavor. So much of life becomes routine, but food is like music, like art, replete with the promise of something new.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Movie without romance feels like food without flavor.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“I remember an hypothesis argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, 'Whether supposing that the flavour of a big who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremem) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting an animal to death?' I forget the decision.”
― Charles Lamb

“I'd probably love the sound that's made when an air guitarist gets struck by lightning while performing. I'd use that sizzle to flavor my Duck Soup.

Of course, I'm open to seasoning my Duck Soup with other sounds, like Track # 3 from U2's classic 1987 hit album "The Joshua Tree." Though I might have to charge an additional $19.95 for such an exotic flavor.”
― Jarod Kintz, BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm presents: Two Ducks Brawling Is A Pre-Pillow Fight

“It tasted somehow like orange and green and dizzyingly sweet, but like Birdie had said, not too sweet. The taste was so rich it made her lips pulse. It was different on different parts of her tongue---the tartness hit the tip, the sweetness tingled at the sides and at the back.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Peaches

“Irie serves me three ramens, including a bowl made with a rich dashi and head-on shrimp and another studded with spicy ground pork and wilted spinach and lashed with chili oil. Both are exceptionally delicious, sophisticated creations, but it's his interpretation of tonkotsu that leaves me muttering softly to myself. The noodles are firm and chewy, the roast pork is striped with soft deposits of warm fat, and the toppings- white curls of shredded spring onion, chewy strips of bamboo, a perfect square of toasted seaweed- are skillfully applied. Here it is the combination of tare, the culmination of years of careful tinkering, and broth, made from whole pig heads and knots of ginger, that defies the laws of tonkotsu: a soup with the savory, meaty intensity of a broth made from a thousand pigs that's light enough to leave you wanting more. And more. And more.”
― Matt Goulding, Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture

“But more than that, what's up with this rice?! It's mellow and mild, without the first hint of any vinegary tang!
This isn't your normal sushi rice!"
"Exactly! For this recipe, I used red vinegar.
The vinegar used in sushi rice is typically rice vinegar made from a blend of rice and wheat or corn that is fermented. But red vinegar is made from fermented sake lees!
By the time Edomae sushi- sushi as we know it today- first became popular in the 1820s, red vinegar was already a condiment...
But since the brewing and aging process can take up to five or six years, it has become a luxury vinegar in the present day
Isn't that right, Senpai?!"
"You are correct!"
Oh, I get it! Because of how it's made, red vinegar has less sugar and a mellower flavor! Plus, mixing it with rice won't make the rice as tough, leaving the finished sushi rice soft and fluffy!
But that also makes balancing the flavors of the sushi rice and its toppings a much more delicate task. ”
― Yuto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 26 [Shokugeki no Souma 26]

“Linda," though, had a flavor that was so assertive that I almost spit when I first heard DeAnne say it. It wasn't the artificial, mellowed-out mints of toothpaste and chewing gum. I would soon identify the taste of mint leaves fresh from the garden, warmed by the sun, their aromatic oils primed and intensified. But when I first heard "Linda," I had no memory of tasting any of the other flavors that accompanied the English words that were already a part of my vocabulary, but I must have as well.”
― Monique Truong, Bitter in the Mouth

“You are the salt of the earth.
And you are here to season the world.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“So, what's your poison, Jay?" Zara joined the buffet line a few minutes later. "Let me guess. Something dark and spicy that packs a lot of heat. Maybe a rista? Or a naga curry?" She studied him, shaking her head. "Hmmm. Not so exotic. I think you're more of a vindaloo. Rich and complicated with hidden depths. Every bite satiates your taste buds and leaves you craving more."
Unsettled by her seemingly casual yet unnervingly accurate assessment, he turned his attention to filling his plate from the lavish spread.”
― Sara Desai, The Singles Table

“SOUR: all the puckering citrus juices, the thin-skinned Meyer lemons, knobbed Kaffirs. Astringent yogurts and vinegars. Lemons resting in pint containers at all the cooks' sides. Chef yelled, This needs acid!, and they eviscerated lemons, leaving the caressing sting of food that's alive.”
― Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

“If you dig deep enough inside you, you'll find music. At BearPaw Duck Farm I hired an excavator, and I unearthed saxophone jazz. Taste the flavor for ONLY $3.33 per song.”
― Jarod Kintz, BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm presents: Two Ducks Brawling Is A Pre-Pillow Fight

“Ducks taste like lobster—if you're blind in your tongue. Ask me about my available Braille flavors.”
― Jarod Kintz, BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm presents: Two Ducks Brawling Is A Pre-Pillow Fight

“If you draw the full length of the blade through the fish in one gentle sweep, the resulting cross section is smooth and the cells are cleanly cut.
But if you force the blade down on the fish to cut it, the cross section becomes ragged and the cells are squashed.
If the surface of the slice is rough, more of the fish is exposed to air, and so it oxidizes faster and its flavor deteriorates.
This becomes even more apparent with water-chilled sashimi. The ragged surface of the slices allows the water to penetrate the fish and leech out its flavor."
"That's why the sashimi becomes watery and tasteless.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Japanese Cuisine

“The big growers are not evil. They are worried about the same thing they've always been worried about: this year's crop. They want it to be big and they don't want it to get wiped out by some insect or fungus. The last thing they think about is flavor because no one is paying so much as a penny extra for flavor. The growers sell to the wholesalers, who are also hooked on quantity because their customers, the supermarkets, sell tomatoes to consumers who think everything should cost 99 cents per pound and who've never known anything other than cardboard tomatoes.”
― Mark Schatzker, The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor

“Once, when I was a kid, I had impressed my mother, intuitively dipping a whole raw pepper into ssamjang paste at a barbecue restaurant in Seoul. The bitterness and spice of the vegetable perfectly married with the savory, salty taste of the sauce, itself made from fermented peppers and soybeans. It was a poetic combination, to reunite something in its raw form with its twice-dead cousin. "This is a very old taste," my mother had said.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“East Coast oysters are brinier, more mineral. West Coasts are plumper, creamier, sweeter. They're even physically different. One has a flat cup, the other tends to be deeper.”
― Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

“TERROIR. I looked it up in The World Atlas of Wine in the manager's office. The definition was people talking around it without identifying it. It seemed a bit far-fetched. That food had character, composed of the soil, the climate, the time of year. That you could taste that character. But still. An idea mystical enough to be highly seductive.”
― Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

“Microplastics now come in 'blood' flavor just especially for you and your family.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“It tasted different from the candies of my youth, not the standard fake lemon flavor but a brighter, more... puckery flavor. Like real lemonade. It reminded me of my mom, of how her hands always smelled. Perhaps these drops really did contain a little bit of kitchen magic. This thought made me smile.
I popped the candy in my mouth and got back into bed, then lay there staring up at the ceiling of my tiny dormer room, sucking on the hard ball, waiting for it to dissolve so I could go to sleep. It was the best lemon drop I'd ever had, the flavor just straddling sour and sweet. It tasted of bright July afternoons, of lemonade stands and paper cups and crunching ice cubes, of wading in the frigid water of Puget Sound, of laughter and a fizzle of joy in my chest for no reason at all.”
― Rachel Linden, The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie

“This mint plant, sheltered against Aunt Gert's cottage wall, seemed likely to make it to spring.
"Persian mint," she explained. "I planted it last summer. The first time I ever had it was in Jordan, on a tour for educators. They serve a drink there limonana, a frosty mint lemonade.”
― Rachel Linden, The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie

“I scoop up a generous mouthful, thankful for something cool to take away the sudden heat flushing up me neck. I can’t believe I agreed to this…. My drawings aren’t good enough.
Then the flavor of the ice cream bursts through my mouth. And it isn’t vanilla or chocolate or any ordinary flavor like that.
Honeysuckle.
Our favorite activity during third-grade recess was to hide behind the classroom, lying under the window so Ms. King wouldn’t see us and ask what we were doing. Jack and I would lie out among the clover and honeysuckle, holding hands and just staring up at the impossibly huge sky.
Some days, I’d bring my sketch pad so we could draw the clouds, and we made those little pictures into stories. A cloud-bunny would go on adventures with the cloud-dragon, and they’d find gleaming treasures and hidden magical lands, always together. When we got bored, we’d suck on the stems of the honeysuckle for a drop of sweetness.
Those honeysuckle days are some of the sweetest moments I ever had growing up.”
― Julie Abe, The Charmed List

“Is this a potato? It's so smooth! It doesn't have that muddy, earthy smell to it! It's not fluffy or dry, and it just melts away in my mouth!"
"This is 'potato stewed in butter.' It's a dish I learned from Ajihyakusen, an izakaya in Sapporo.
For the soup, you use the ichiban-dashi of a katsuobushi. That way you won't waste the scent of the potato.
And for ten potatoes, you place half a pound of salted butter into the dashi...
...flavor it with a very slight amount of salt and sugar, and stew it over extremely low heat.
In about forty minutes, the potatoes will start to float in the dashi. If you keep boiling the potatoes, they'll sink again and then come floating back up in two and a half hours.
All you need to do after that is to boil it for about thirty more minutes, and it's done."
"Then you boil it for almost four hours total?"
"Right. It takes a whole day to cook this, so even though this dish only costs 600 yen, you have to order at least a day in advance to eat it at the izakaya.
The dishes Kurita and I made the other day were all made to your order. They were dishes that avoided the true nature of the potato. But this is a dish that draws out the full taste of the potato in a very straightforward way.
By cooking the potato for several hours over low heat, the flavor of the potato seeps out into the dashi, and when that happens, the unique muddy smell of the potato disappears. The potato can be easily broken apart in the soup, and it melts away on your tongue."
"That's the biggest difference from the other potato dishes."
"You can taste the true flavor of the potato with it.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Izakaya: Pub Food

“While Hugh glad-hands with his constituents, I continue strolling around the fair, on a quest for clotted cream fudge. I find some at a small stand next to the Ferris wheel, and, with what little cash I have left, I buy three flavors: traditional, peanut butter, and chocolate. The traditional, I discover, is not traditional American fudge, which would be milk chocolate, perhaps studded with with toasted walnuts. Instead, this version is blond in color, with a milky, burnt-sugar flavor, like a square of caramel, only less sticky and with a soft, velvety texture.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“That powerful PURPLE hue to my fave vintage beverages is a key unlocking the transformational depth of its flavor to its berry last drinkable drop.”
― Dr. Tracey Bond

“The thing is, sensual women add flavor to life. This explains why they are typically favored above the rest. They are crème de la crème when it comes to a life worth living. I wouldn’t choose anything less.”
― Lebo Grand

“The pink ingredient in your fried rice: it had to be these." Nagare produced a packet of fish sausages from a plastic bag at his side. "You must have noticed them in the rice?"
"Oh yes," said Hatsuko. "You know, I think I remember seeing something like that in our fridge."
"I picked these up in Yawatahama. A local butcher told me this brand was the closest you could get to the type Aihachi Foods used to make." Nagare set the sausages to one side, then produced another packet from his bag. "Now, this was the other reason for that pink color."
"What's that?" asked Hatsuko.
"A Yawatahama specialty. Kamaboko flakes. Just like bonito flakes, except made from kamaboko fish cake instead of tuna. They were invented back before people had fridges, as a way of making kamaboko last longer. Normally you'd sprinkle them over things like chirashi-zushi, but your mother decided they'd be a good addition to her fried rice. They make a pretty decent drinking snack too, by the way." Nagare opened the packet and retrieved a handful of the flakes, which he began to nibble on.
"So it wasn't just the fish sausage, then," said Hatsuko, also sampling the flakes.
"That's right," said Koishi, grabbing a handful for herself. "Given what they're both made from, it's no wonder you remembered the fried rice having a fishy flavor."
"As for the all-important seasoning," continued Nagare, "I imagine she used a mix of shredded shio-kombu and sour plum. That's where that tart aftertaste you mentioned came from. Then I realized: sour plum is pink too. It all fits the color scheme, see?" He showed her a can of the shredded kelp and sour plum mix. Hatsuko gave a deep, appreciative nod.”
― Jesse Kirkwood, The Restaurant of Lost Recipes

“Lemon verbena, though. That's my favorite. It's a pretty hardy plant, and you can turn it into a tisane. In Morocco we call it louiza."
"Louiza?"
"You add the leaves to boiled water and they let out the most deliciously sweet fragrance. Not exactly lemony--- more like a honey balm."
"What does the tea taste like?" he asked.
"Sort of like chamomile, maybe, but with more body, and sweeter.”
― Nadia El-Fassi, Best Hex Ever