Gary is on the red and yellow grape tomato diet, so I am on my own for dinner. I decided gourmet sandwiches would be a good easy dinner for one. I went to the grocery without a recipe. It’s a sandwich! I thought it would be fun to invent some sandwiches.
White and pumpernickel bread. Havarti and cheddar cheese. Easy vegetables like Alfalfa sprouts and spinach dip. Then I bought deli meat, using price as my only criteria. The two most expensive meats were seasoned roast beef and virginia ham.
I thought it would be fun to pair different flavors and invent new sandwiches. Mania? Perhaps.
My creative streak had one sandwich influence, the turkey – stuffing – cranberry sauce sandwich. I read a few web sites for inspiration and saw a recipe for ham – Brie – pear slices. That sounded tasty. Sadly, I had none of those ingredients. But, I decided, both were essentially meat – creamy thing – fruity thing.
I laid out the pumpernickel. I put the ham nearby. I tried to imagine what ham and pumpernickel would taste like, and I realized I had no idea. I have a good imagination, pretty good visual-spatial perception. What I evidently don’t have is an idea of how something will taste.
I had a bite of ham. Salty. Had a bite of pumpernickel. Pumpernickely. Still no idea what they would taste like together.
Well, I thought, I could put them together, take a bite, then see what needed to be added to the sandwich. Which I did. Next, cheese. Then I couldn’t imagine what cheddar cheese or Havarti tasted like. Then I thought, this is frustrating! This was meant to be fun and inventive. Throw it together and it will taste good!
Now the world can know: pumpernickel, orange marmalade, ham, cheddar, spinach dip and alfalfa sprouts is not a good sandwich. It was edible, but I needed more ham, less cheddar and no sprouts.
I tried again tonight. I just did pumpernickel, roast beef and cheddar, and it was good … but boring. Plus, 1) there was no vegetation, and 2) I really like fruit on sandwiches.
So that started me thinking, are there pre-set minimal combinations that are rules of thumb? Not as specific as ham + swiss + rye = good, but something more like pumpernickel + sprouts = bad. Sweet + salty = good. Sweet + salty + cheddar = my sandwich above. Bad. Pick one from column A, one from B, etc.
Since there is no way I can be a chef and imagine what tastes good together, I need those rules. Maybe I could look at casserole recipes and convert them into sandwiches by leaving out the cream of mushroom soup. For pork chop dinner it would be sliced pork, sauteed onions, sliced mushrooms and applesauce. For the cornbread casserole recipe it would be white bread, sour cream, ham, and cheddar cheese and corn chutney.
Do you have an imagination that can tell what things will taste like? It must be wonderful.
6 responses to “Like Visual-Spatial Perception, but for Tongues”
Here is what I think is great: Crusty French bread, Italian salami, Swiss cheese, butter (!) and dill pickle.
Because my poor mom was an abysmal cook and not interest in food at all, I discovered cook books when I was in the 7th grade. The old Betty Crocker cook book had a table of ingredients and their taste – I think it must have been herbs – and how they complimented different types of food.
I got myself really trained up in the ingredients department and also cooked a lot from the Pierre Franey NYT cook books.
But yeah, I read a recipe and pretty much tell how it’s going to taste.
It sounds like you’ve got a good system going.
I like the combo of brie, apples, and ham or chicken. Yum.
I think that citrus doesn’t necessarily pair well with cheese. I think that might have been your marmalade-cheddar problem. Also, spinach dip is probably dairy-based, and I’m thinking that citrus doesn’t play nice with that, either.
I don’t think sprouts taste like anything, so I never mind them in a sandwich.
But, yeah, I can taste things in my head. I didn’t realize that it was a gift!
Hattie – you lost me at dill pickle, darn.Becs – I remember a cookbook that had a list of meats, fillings, cheeses and breads. I thought it WAS Betty, but I couldn’t find it. Tami – Tonght I went with ham, brie, baby spinach, and peach jam on raisin toast. Next time I’ll leave off the peach jam. And I envy your taste imagination.
I watch shows like Chopped and wonder how on earth chefs can see such weird, disparate ingredients and know exactly what to combine with them to make delicious masterpieces. That is a gift I do not posess.
Caroline – I remember trying to have an Iron Chef evening with Catherine. Special Ingredient: Tomato. About a 50% success rate.