Hendrik wrote:Why does dark food always have a much deeper flavour than its light counterpart?
Examples:
Sugar
Bread
Rice
Pasta
Beer
Wine
Rum (alcohol in general)
Chocolate
Onions
Please note, I don't mean stronger flavour (white onions are stronger than red), I mean fullness and depth and range of flavours (red onions are all of those things more than white ones).
Does anyone have an explanation for this? Has the area been explored? Is the dark pigment in said foods actually linked to depth of flavour? Is there some chemical found in all of them called Darkinol, Darkamine, Polyhydrodarkide?
Can anyone think of any examples where darker isn't deeper in flavour?
HELP!
Hmmm, OK, I'll give this a go.
Red wine has polyphenols (a class of tannins) in it , which are extracted predominantly from grape seeds and skins. They are astringent and add to mouthfeel. The predominant grape seed tannins are flavan-3-ols, which are repeating units of the monomers catechin, epicatechin, and their gallates. The monomers, dimers, up to heptamers are predominantly bitter, but the larger polymers are astringent rather than bitter.
Sorry you asked yet?
Dark rum has, I think, more sugar than white rum. Sugar adds weight to the palate, as does alcohol.
Dark chocolate has higher levels of polyphenols than milk chocolate - up to 80% cocoa, as opposed to 30%.
When we feel like torturing undergrads, er, I mean, teaching them basic sensory science, we make them hold their noses and close their eyes, then their partner places a fruit flavoured sweet in their mouth. Without being able to sense the aroma of the sweet (because they are blocking their nose) all they can taste is sweet (except for one person who could taste red: not a taste, but a colour, doh). Unblock the nose, sense the aroma, and identify the taste.
Another favourite test is to colour lemon jelly - usually red or green. Invariably, most tasters will identify the red jelly as strawberry. Colour plays a big part in our perception of taste, so you could try getting someone to blindfold you, then feed you white bread and brown bread to see if you can tell the difference. I'm guessing that you will, as they smell quite different to me, and have very different textures.
Returning to chocolate - white chocolate is, to me, much richer than dark chocolate. That is, it has a much heavier mouthfeel because of the higher fat content, but less cocoa flavour, because it contains less cocoa extract.
Sorry, this reply is getting very disjointed: it's very nearly 1am, one of my cats is lolling across my keyboard, and my brain is ready for bed. To summarise, yes, this has been extensively studied. No, there is not one particular chemical responsible for the phenomenon: polyphenols in wines, anthocyanins in fruit, malt in beer, cocoa extract in chocolate, blah , blah, blah.
Hope this makes sense.
Caroline