The Flavor Matrix: The Art and Science of Pairing Common Ingredients to Create Extraordinary Dishes

I am so absolutely obsessed with this book. If you’re looking for recipe inspiration or a creative foundation, this is it. I love that Briscione explains each ingredient and gives not only go-to pairings but also surprise pairings. All of this research is based on findings from IBM’s Watson supercomputer, which I’m so excited to be reading. Great book for food science nerds with a heavy emphasis on the science. Oh, and the pictures/charts are incredible too. Thank you, James! Let me emphasize that this is an inspiration book!! If Briscione gave you all the recipes, this book wouldn’t be as much fun, and would also be about 1000 pages long. I absolutely loved the sample recipe after each flavor - didn’t give too much away. I also loved the organization of this book - alphabetical order with ingredient names in the bottom right corner of the page! Made it really easy to find the ingredient I was toying with. One suggested edit: it would have been great to have the olive diagram from page 179 on page 11 so I wouldn’t have to flip back and forth while referred to on page 10. Another suggested edit: I wish the concentric rings in the flavor matrices were colored (or even a grey gradient) so I could see if a flavor is a stronger/weaker pairing than other flavor.

Edit: The most liked review barrage no longer applies to the current most liked review. This book is not for people looking for recipes. The person who wrote the most liked review of this book has misunderstood the concept and reasoning one would get into this brain exercising and creativity releasing book. If you don’t own the Flavor Bible, start with that, what that book helps people understand is... flavors, duh. It’s considerably more home cook driven and much easier to relate to. This book will open your eyes to flavors and unusual pairings that would be more on the level of a seasoned cook, and I don’t mean red lobster, or outback, I mean people that have committed to the hospitality industry and have worked their way up to a professional cooking level, as a career, as a passion. Very rarely is a person who cooks well at home going to find the reason to put bergamot, eucalyptus, etc, etc into their food because, well, it’s intimidating and will rattle their brain more so then help them understand how what they just did even works to begin with. This book lets your mind venture into the “I wonder ifs” and let’s you experiment with ideas that may be rattling around in your brain and shows you that maybe what you composed in your head is headed in the right direction or it shows you, stop now, you should have turned left two lights back. It’s for a person to use as a compass on their food journey, to keep them pointed in the right direction, not to bog them down. I would challenge people to compose a dish in their head starting with one ingredient, not a protein, start with... Hazlenuts, as an example, work backwards, write your dish down as you go, scratch things out, rewrite, when you’re happy with it, open the book and see how much you understand about a hazelnut and the flavors and pairings that work with them. Use this as a brain exerciser, a way to build a strong foundation in your mind to branch off of and adapt to when you don’t have your five go to ingredients(insert first review barrage again.) this will not give you recipes to make for your family everyday, go to the food network section of cookbooks and click on one of the faces you recognize, that’s your book with your five always on hand ingredients. Reviews that miss the premise of what the material is trying to bring to the table should be wiped from any and all platforms. If you are interested in becoming a better than average cook and have the desire to understand ingredients in different ways and how to manipulate flavors this is your book. I’ve been cooking for 13 years, 9 of them professionally, this book is a magical little gem on my wall of cookbooks, but it takes a certain baseline understanding of flavors to navigate what exactly this book is trying to give people.

First off, if you are expecting to open this book and find 88 recipients that you can dazzle your guests with, think again. Think. That may be the very thing you need to start back up again in your life. Having things handed to you without rhyme or reason is what is making the genial public so simple minded. This book teaches you how to question, how to expand your mind on a molecular level. This is not a recipe book, it is a guide to the traveler of flavors. It is an instruction manual of sorts that provides rational reasoning to why flavors are and can be manipulated by the handshake of another. It is quite beautiful indeed. That is, only if you like to think. Do yourself a favor and experiment. Experiment with flavors, books, people, decision making...the journey in thought is so worth it.

I also have the flavor bible, as well as the vegetarian flavor bible and I can say it is not as thorough if you are looking for flavor combinations at a moments notice. It is however useful for inspiring flavor combinations that are seldom used by providing the reader with useful information about how flavors are perceived on a deeper level. It goes into vague detail about various flavor compounds like sulfur, tannins, and several other aspects of taste that people rarely think about, but play a large role in the experience. It pairs this general knowledge with charts for almost every class of food you can think of (melons, mushrooms, alliums, etc.) and these charts show the likely hood of a successful pairing with other, more specific categories of food in a colorful. They follow up these charts in an effort to engage the reader with interesting recipes that will compel you to play with different flavors in a sophisticated way. This is not the best reference (compared to the flavor bible) but it does contribute where the flavor bible is lacking, with insight on how and why these flavors work to stimulate the palate.

Perfect!! Order Now A Must Have!! Beautiful

As a chef, this comes in handy. Quality was brand new and perfect.

Purchased to add to my library at work for my employees to utilize when needed. A must have for any food & beverage professional!

It's good

I purchased this book for a project we are creating around food. So far I have found it to be quite helpful in understanding and determining which foods work well together and for idea inspiration. It has actually boosted my own culinary creativity in the kitchen and given me many ideas. Once you understand how flavours work together then cooking will become so much easier and fun.

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James Briscione y Brooke Parkhurst nos invitan a explorar los secretos detrás de las combinaciones de sabores que transforman platos comunes en extraordinarios. Este libro no es solo una guía culinaria, sino una ventana al fascinante mundo donde la ciencia y el arte de la cocina se encuentran. El corazón del libro es la matriz de sabores, una herramienta innovadora que desglosa ingredientes comunes según sus perfiles aromáticos y de sabor. A través de esta matriz, Briscione nos muestra cómo entender y aplicar principios científicos puede abrir nuevas posibilidades creativas en la cocina. Desde combinaciones clásicas hasta mezclas inesperadas, cada página ofrece una nueva perspectiva sobre cómo los ingredientes interactúan entre sí para crear experiencias gustativas únicas. Además de su enfoque científico, el libro está lleno de recetas prácticas y técnicas culinarias que ayudan a los lectores a llevar los conceptos teóricos a la práctica en su propia cocina. Briscione, con su experiencia como chef y educador culinario, presenta el contenido de manera accesible y entretenida, haciendo que la ciencia detrás de la gastronomía sea emocionante y comprensible para todos. Este libro no solo educa, sino que también despierta la creatividad y la curiosidad.

Very good book for cooking. Gives you lots of ideas for trying new flavours and mixing ingredients.