Forget oysters! Champagne pairs just as well with PILCHARDS, food scientist claims

Pairing white wine with fish is a golden rule that goes back decades for anyone hosting a dinner party.

Those who really want to impress also know that oysters should always be served with champagne.

But pairing food and drink is largely a marketing ploy, according to Professor Charles Spence, a psychologist and expert in the sensory properties of food from the University of Oxford.

There’s just as much reason to serve sardines with champagne as oysters, he says, based on the theory that the seafood contains the same amino acid that can enhance their savory “umami” flavor when paired with a bottle of bubbly.

He has also questioned the popular suggestion that people should pair things from the same geographic region, such as Spanish paella with Rioja and beer with sauerkraut, due to a lack of evidence that their flavors go particularly well together.

People who like to talk about complementary molecules in food and drink overlook the fact that these molecules and amino acids often make little difference to the actual taste, according to the connoisseur.

According to him, various red wines are fine to drink with fish, provided that the iron content is reasonably low.

The only possible reason to pair a particular wine with a particular dish, he says, is to enhance the fatty texture of meat by drinking a glass of red wine, which makes the mouth tingle more as you drink it.

In a scientific paper on food pairings published in the journal Nature Food, Professor Spence writes, “Sometimes specific food and drink items are combined for no other reason than the idiosyncratic whimsy of the person who happens to be recommending the match in the first place.”

While pairing can be popular, he concludes, “It could be argued that our preference for specific foods, drinks and their combinations depends as much on trends, tradition, price and availability as on the underlying taste chemistry.”

The academic told the Mail: ‘People like to know about food combinations, and it enhances their enjoyment of a meal, while perhaps showing off to their friends if they’ve prepared the magic combination of champagne and oysters or a particular dish. wine with their cheese board.

“But this is just a story about food, because the volatile chemicals in specific wines and foods aren’t necessarily dominant when it comes to taste.”

There’s just as much reason to serve sardines with champagne as oysters, he says, based on the theory that the seafood contains the same amino acid that can enhance their savory “umami” flavor when paired with a bottle of bubbly.

“A matching menu in a restaurant, with specific wines to go with different courses, is often more expensive, and I don’t think it matters much if you reverse the combinations.”

The pairing article states that champagne and oysters can simply be put together as they are now both seen as “luxury” and high status items.

But if you consume them together, it leaves an unpleasant metallic taste in the mouth, according to some experts.

Pairing has become so popular that even beer companies have jumped on it and recommended different craft beers to be consumed with certain pizzas or burgers.

More advanced species choose to serve watercress trout in the UK because the banks of the chalk streams where trout were fished were probably also home to watercress, which grew under much the same conditions as the fish.

But Professor Spence argued in an earlier 2019 article that: ‘On the face of it, this match in no way appears to be based on a perceptual affinity between the flavors in trout and watercress from a flavor or flavor combination perspective.

“It seems rather a combination of convenience/availability that has become conventional and therefore increasingly trusted by those within the relevant food culture.”

Pairing wine with a cheese board, he says, is haphazard because the cheeses have so many different flavors.

He told the Mail: “The only combination that makes sense to me taste-wise is not to drink orange juice after brushing your teeth, because that goes very badly indeed with toothpaste.”

Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal is known for his penchant for unusual flavor combinations, such as caviar and white chocolate, but he has suggested that certain ways to combine them don’t work. almost embarrassed by my inflated enthusiasm, not least because I now know that a molecule database is not a shortcut to successful flavor combinations, nor a safe way to do it.

‘Every food is made up of thousands of different molecules – for two ingredients to have a compound in common is a meager justification for compatibility.

“Had I known then what I know now, I probably never would have tried this method of flavor combinations: there are simply too many reasons why it doesn’t work.”

Recipe: The ultimate baked potato

Tonia has photographed every stage of her Bloomin’ Baked Potato recipe. This is after the potato has been sliced ​​and brushed with olive oil and sea salt

1. First preheat the oven to 220C.

2. Cut the bottom of the potato so that one surface is flat and use a small knife to make rings around the inside of the potato.

3. Then turn the potato over so that it rests on the flat surface and make vertical cuts along the side of the potato. Leave a space at the top that is not cut off. The cuts should go all the way to the center of the potato.

4. Brush the potato with olive oil and sea salt. Place the potato on a sheet of foil and bake for 30 minutes.

After an hour of baking, your potato should look like this

5. Remove from the oven and brush with more olive oil and sprinkle again with sea salt. Put it back in the oven for another 30 minutes.

6. Add any grated cheese and bake for another five minutes until the cheese is toasted and melted.

7. Remove from the oven, top with crispy bacon and serve.