An obvious way to deepen the experience of coffee is to ‘pair’ coffees with foods. Treating prepared coffee as a culinary product and then thinking of it as we would any ingredient or dish allows us to not only experience the coffee in a different, more complex way; it also enables us to discover aspects, nuances and effects of that coffee we might miss when tasting it alone. In addition, by pairing prepared coffee with food, we can move prepared coffee from a “morning pick-me-up” into something that is appreciated in more situations and which is enjoyed for culinary rather than pharmaceutical purposes.

There are four rationales for pairing coffees with food: developing one’s palate; gaining a deeper understanding of coffee; increasing business opportunities; and creating an appreciation for the flavors of coffee within the buying public. Examples are emerging of successful implementations of all four rationales. Each requires an understanding of both the process of developing a successful pairing and why pairings are successful. What are you first memories of taste, of flavor? When you’re lonely or sad, what flavors bring you comfort? If you think of holidays, or summer, or a wedding, or your childhood, what tastes come to mind? What is your first memory of the flavor of coffee?

These questions are illustrative of a concept known as Taste Memory. For most food professionals, Taste Memory plays a vital role in developing culinary pairings. When we think over questions like these, we can often “taste” the flavors that come to mind. These flavors resonate deeply with us.

There are scientific, neurological explanations of the concept of Taste Memory. These are, perhaps thankfully you’re saying, beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that the memory of flavor is deeply ingrained and a vital part of the human psyche and experience.

TASTE MEMORY IN THEORY

When creating pairings, the goal is to elicit and invoke these Taste Memories. At the simplest level, this consists of creating a combination of flavors that mimics or recreates the dish that the Taste Memory itself is related to. If your mother always made you chicken-noodle soup with oyster crackers when you came down with the sniffles as a child, mixing up a batch of her recipe for chicken noodle soup and eating it with oyster crackers as an adult will likely be comforting to you when you’re feeling unwell.

Jason McHugh, Chef de Cuisine at the celebrated Portland, Ore., restaurant clarklewis, uses the following illustration. His first memories of coffee are of the smell of freshly brewed coffee on weekend mornings indicating that breakfast was ready. He says that, to this day, the smell of freshly brewed coffee makes him not only think of, but experience a “ghost taste” of fried eggs and bacon. Based on this, an example of an evocative pairing would be a deeply and richly aromatic coffee like the Nicaragua Finca el Injerto with a warm egg custard dish made with a cured pork product like guanciale.

At a higher level of complexity and challenge, you can utilize base flavors that are familiar together but which have additional, unexpected flavors or which intensify flavors in unexpected ways. For example, all of us are familiar with the pairing of peanut and chocolate. This is most commonly seen as a pairing of milk chocolate and sweetened peanut product of some sort (butter, brittle or the like). If instead, we pair a dark chocolate with salted peanuts, we have something that is familiar while new at the same time.

One of my favorite illustrations of this comes from Andrew Barnett of Ecco Caffe in Northern California. He points out that we are all familiar with the taste combination of a bright coffee with cream and with the issues with using cream in softer coffees that possess less acidity. By pairing a coffee like the Brazil Fazenda Cachoeira Yellow Bourbon with Berries and Crème Fraiche, however, you create a familiar (cream, coffee, acidity, fruit) flavor combination that is at the same time new and exciting.

Using Taste Memory can, however, become far more interesting when you move past simple recreation and mimicry. Ferran Adria, Chef at El Bulli outside of Barcelona, Spain, for example, creates a dish using hot jellied vegetables that have been griddled and then are served with a charcoal oil. As a result, the flavors are experienced as fire-grilled vegetables, but the texture and mouthfeel are different and even alien.

To illustrate this, consider some of the natural coffees from Ethiopia. In the case of the great Sidamos, you often find a cup character that combines powerful strawberry notes with intense sweetness, sharp acidity and a sort of lactic acid, barnyard “funk.” This is very similar to how one would describe a classic Belgian Strawberry Lambic. By pairing a great Ethiopia Sidamo of this flavor profile with the classic Lambic pairing (grilled rustic sausage) you can create an evocative and yet unexpected savory flavor pairing that shocks and at the same time pleasures the palate.

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