General Interest

Exploring the Richness of Indian Cuisine

By Paayal Cheema

In the Western world, the concept of Indian food is solely limited to naan and butter chicken. These ranges of foods are only grains of sand compared to the deserts of diverse Indian food. The well-known Indian foods are foods that come from one small part of northern India, Punjab. With our limitations and innocent ignorance, we deprive ourselves of many new and vivid flavors, the flavors of India.

Southern and Northern Indian food holds many mixtures of spices and seasonings, but both have unique tastes of their own. Though South India is filled with many cultures with respective foods, most enjoy a generally shared variety of food. With Northern India having naan and roti, South India has dosa. Dosa is made from fermented rice and lentil batter that is cooked flatly on a pan, which creates a soft but also crispy, thin pancake. It’s served with chutneys and sambar (a stew made with lentils, mixed vegetables, and many unique spices such as tamarind). 

Another unique food of Southern India is idli, made with similar ingredients of dosa but is steamed. Idli is a round, fluffy, and white delicacy that is served with sambar and coconut chutney. Next is medu vada. It is a stubby doughnut-shaped delicacy that’s fried in oil which causes a soft inside and crunchy outside. The dough is made with a batter of black lentils, peppercorns, and other spices. 

It is important to mention that the term “curry” is coined by the British Empire. There’s no Indian dish actually named “curry”. Instead, there are Sabzis (or Sabjis) and lentils. In Northern India, vegetable stews are categorized in Sabzis. These stews are usually enjoyed with roti (flat bread), basmati rice, and naan. There is aloo gobi, consisting of potatoes, cauliflower, and Indian spices. Shahi paneer is Indian cheese with orange gravy made with the same ingredients as butter chicken gravy. For non-vegetarian dishes, there are mutton (goat/lamb) masala, chicken biryani, and chicken keema. 

Indian sweets, mithai, are hidden gems of Indian delicacies. Mithai is a very important part of Indian culture as they are distributed in times of celebration - whether it be a marriage, passing final exams, getting a new car, or really any big or little time of joy. Sweets are always bought and given to others as a way of blessing one another. Food is practically the love language of India’s (tough love) culture. Mithai(confectionery) are very small, colorful, and insanely sweet. They’re usually made from flour, milk, sugar, nuts, and ghee. There is barfi, a small and squared desert that is solid yet soft and gulabi cham-cham, a pink and oval-shaped ball dessert. These are only a handful of India’s most popular sweets. 

India is a diverse country with tens of thousands of cultures hosting their own respective foods. Thus, you should not limit yourself to the same two foods but rather explore all that is available. Every culture’s food is meant to be shared and experienced by all, Why be ignorant of new experiences when you can embrace their uniqueness?

The Importance of the Relationship Between Taste and Smell in Enjoying Food

By Karine Zhuo

We all depend on our sense of taste and smell to enjoy food and drinks. Both senses complement each other by recognizing different factors of the tongue and nose that influence us into liking our favorite foods. Where smell is sensed by the nose, the taste is sensed by the tongue, and the two senses combine to create a seamless experience. 

Our sense of taste recognizes basic tastes such as sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami when we eat or drink something. At this stage, the aromas of the food or drink also travel to our nose, where they bind to receptors in the olfactory epithelium and send signals to the brain, which interprets the combination of taste and smell to produce taste. 

Therefore, losing our sense of smell can negatively affect our sense of taste. Without smell, food loses some of its richness and flavor, making eating less satisfying. In fact, according to scientists in The Exploratorium, a non-profit public laboratory used for science research, studies have shown that our sense of smell influences up to 80% to 90% of what we perceive as taste. 

For chefs and foodies, understanding the relationship between taste and aroma is very important because it allows them to create more delicious and aesthetically pleasing foods. It also highlights the importance of maintaining excellent nasal health, as it greatly affects how much we enjoy eating. We can better appreciate the flavors and aromas that make eating such a pleasure when we understand the interplay between taste and smell.

On a first-hand account, Bayside High School junior Caitlin Bui stated, “Once I decided to order pesto pasta with creamy parmesan sauce. The visual of the pasta was appealing to me on the menu, but when it came out, the smell was so horrible. After taking a bite, I could not bring myself to finish the dish. The smell of the pasta made me dislike the dish even before trying it.” As shown, people tend to judge food by its scent, rather than its taste. Here, Bui was mainly disgusted by the scent of the pasta, not the actual texture or taste of it. 

In another instance, Bayside High School sophomore Mahika Kapoor added, “One time, I was baking chocolate chip cookies with my friends, and the scent of the chocolate from the oven made the cookies taste delicious. But, a few hours later, I tried the cookies again and they didn’t taste as good. This makes me believe that the smell of the chocolate chips was what made the cookies appealing to eat.”

Some companies like “Air Up” use this taste-smell theory to create products that encourage those who dislike water to drink it. Water bottles and scent pod pouches have been manufactured to trick the users’ minds into thinking they are drinking something else from its scent when, in reality, they are just drinking water.

This phenomenon enhances our perception of taste and causes us to have the ability to develop medical data to find alternative solutions to eating health concerns. Understanding the influence of scent on taste can help us improve our sensory experience of eating the foods we love.