Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Flavor Profile

This is used when "flavor" is meant, particularly on Food Network shows where culinary experts are expected to make wise and profound judgements about people's food, and to talk about it in such a way that the viewer, who obviously can never taste what is being discussed, gets some kind of feel for the taste experienced.

Flavor does not have a profile, unless you're looking at it from the side. :)  Food has flavor.  The addition of "profile" is meaningless; it is simply padding the word to make it sound more professional.

If they are meaning to identify the overall set of flavors in a given cuisine (lots of cardamom and saffron in southern Indian cooking, for example), this is a regional cuisine.   Perhaps that has a "profile" or "portfolio" of common flavors.

But a given, individual dish has flavors.  Just say that.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Not an Exact Science

"Drawing a composite sketch is not an exact science.  Pouring wine back into the bottle is not an exact science."

Really?  No fooling?  Die.

First of all, drawing is not any kind of science.  It's not an exact one.  It's not a complete one.  It's not a red one.  It's not a fat one.  The only kind of science that drawing might be is "non."

Secondly, science isn't an exact science.  It's the process of refining inherently imprecise and inaccurate models so that, given some starting data, they will yield increasingly useful predictions.  There's nothing exact about it.  It's fraught with inexactitudes and is designed to take them in stride.

Ironically, doing something like drawing a composite sketch is probably, and pouring wine back into the bottle is definitely, a more exact process than science is.