When you describe food, you describe how your senses perceive it.
There are four factors to think about:
colour
texture
taste or flavour
smell.
You may not need to use all these factors to describe a food or dish, but you usually need to use at least two.
Colour is the most obvious factor when looking at and recognising food items and dishes. Most people expect tomato sauce to be red, pumpkin soup to be orange, and chocolate cake to be dark brown.
Small ingredients, or smaller pieces of ingredients may be harder to recognise. For example, a customer could say:
‘What are those little creamy-white things?’ referring to sesame seeds tossed through a green bean salad.
‘There are black specks in my crème brûlée’ referring to the seeds of the vanilla pod used to flavour the dessert.
Colour allows you to recognise quickly what a customer is talking about so you can explain what the ingredients are.
We often use colour to categorise foods; for example, red and white meat, green and orange vegetables, black and green olives.
Texture is about how food feels when we touch it, and how it feels when it is in our mouth.
For example, an apple may be crisp and crunchy, tofu may be silky, halloumi may be rubbery, toffee may be chewy, yoghurt is soft and smooth, and fillet steak should be tender.
Taste is the sensation we get in our mouths when we eat food. It is closely related to the smell or aroma of food.
We can normally recognise five basic tastes:
Sweetness – determined by the amount of sugars
Sourness – determined by the amount of acids such as vitamin C and citric acid
Saltiness – determined by the amount of salt (sodium chloride)
Bitterness – determined by chemicals called alkaloids
Umami (savouriness) – determined by chemicals called glutamates.
Many foods may have more than one taste. For example, feta cheese typically tastes salty, and a little bit sour and bitter. Ripe tomatoes typically have a sweet and umami taste.
The smell of food is often described using similar words to the taste of the food. This is because our sense of smell is closely linked to our sense of taste.
Some words to describe aroma are:
delicate – subtle, faint, fine
fragrant – aromatic, scented, pleasant smelling
fresh – warm as in newly baked bread warm from the oven, clean, clear, cool, refreshing, crisp as in newly picked fruit and herbs
earthy – musky, fresh as in the smell given off the earth after rain
floral – flowery
grassy – like freshly cut grass
heady – strong smelling, rich, spicy, piquant
pungent – strong smelling, overpowering, hot, maybe sharp or bitter
rancid – the stale smell of something past its best, rank, off, sour, rotten, not fresh
sweet – sugary, pleasing, appealing.
Flavour is the combination of tastes and aromas of a food or dish. There are many terms we can use to describe flavours. For example:
bitter-sweet – tasting bitter and sweet at the same time
bland – very little or no flavour
hot or fiery – contains a lot of spices that create a burning feeling in your mouth
greasy – fatty or oily
mild – does not have a strong taste
sharp – has a strong and bitter flavour
smoky – has a noticeable flavour of smoke
spicy – has a strong hot or highly seasoned flavour
strong – the flavour is intense or very noticeable
subtle – the flavour is noticeable but not intense or overpowering
sweet-and-sour – contains both sweet and sour taste
tangy – has a slightly sour and/or salty taste
tart – a sour or acid flavour
zesty – a citrus (lemony) flavour.
We also use the flavour of one type of food to describe the flavour of another. For example:
chocolatey
fruity
jammy
lemony
minty
nutty
piney
peppery
vinegary.
An ingredient may be the main ingredient in a dish, a key ingredient, or both. A key ingredient may be present in small or large quantities and is essential to the flavour, aroma, texture or colour of a dish.
For example
Main and key ingredients
Mushrooms are the main ingredient in mushroom soup; there are more mushrooms than other vegetable ingredients. Mushrooms are also the key ingredient. They give a distinctive colour, flavour and aroma to the soup.
Kaffir lime leaves are a key ingredient in traditional Thai green curry, but they are not one of the main ingredients. The main ingredients are vegetables and coconut cream. The small amount of Kaffir leaves give a distinctive lemony-lime flavour to the dish.