History is a huge part of it for sure! Take onion and garlic for example. They used to be the only umami ingredients you could grow throughout Europe and they’ve got plenty of sugar (compare apple’s ~13g of carbs to onion at ~9 and garlic at ~30!). Since fruit was not available nearly as much as now, the alliums were one of the most nutritious foods you’d find. That’s why it’s SO prevalent in Western cuisine, but not nearly as much in others, especially when you look South.
The open-mindedness is another spot on, because your perception of flavour is afaik the only of the 5 basic senses that gets altered by memory before you’re even consciously aware of it—that’s why the food you got sick eating actually starts tasting bad in itself, not that it just reminds you of the mishap. Makes cooking for others impossible to unpack analytically.
There’s a real practical effect for me in both—being aware of the difference between craft and art in cooking is useful after you see it, whether you want to just cook or make someone happy. You can really cook anything you want as long as you cook for yourself. Throw some onion on the pan without looking up a recipe and just let yourself think what spice you feel like or which of the veggies in your fridge is soon going bad. It doesn’t really matter as long as you’re not trying to imbue the dish with meaning for your guests. Of course, if you do the same for others, nobody will ever say “could you cook that thing with the bean thing and the honey thing that you made two years ago? I loved it”; so you might wanna just grab your grandma’s cookbook and make her favourite tajine with a funny twist. Both ways are imho useful and nice.
History is a huge part of it for sure! Take onion and garlic for example. They used to be the only umami ingredients you could grow throughout Europe and they’ve got plenty of sugar (compare apple’s ~13g of carbs to onion at ~9 and garlic at ~30!). Since fruit was not available nearly as much as now, the alliums were one of the most nutritious foods you’d find. That’s why it’s SO prevalent in Western cuisine, but not nearly as much in others, especially when you look South.
The open-mindedness is another spot on, because your perception of flavour is afaik the only of the 5 basic senses that gets altered by memory before you’re even consciously aware of it—that’s why the food you got sick eating actually starts tasting bad in itself, not that it just reminds you of the mishap. Makes cooking for others impossible to unpack analytically.
There’s a real practical effect for me in both—being aware of the difference between craft and art in cooking is useful after you see it, whether you want to just cook or make someone happy. You can really cook anything you want as long as you cook for yourself. Throw some onion on the pan without looking up a recipe and just let yourself think what spice you feel like or which of the veggies in your fridge is soon going bad. It doesn’t really matter as long as you’re not trying to imbue the dish with meaning for your guests. Of course, if you do the same for others, nobody will ever say “could you cook that thing with the bean thing and the honey thing that you made two years ago? I loved it”; so you might wanna just grab your grandma’s cookbook and make her favourite tajine with a funny twist. Both ways are imho useful and nice.