1,521 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Markers in cooking

When it comes to cooking, there is only one real rule, and that is that there are no rules!
By that I mean that everything is possible, everything can be combined, everything or almost everything can go with everything, but you have to like it, you have to find it good.
I have friends who regularly make brown sugar pasta, just the idea makes me jump up and down, but they love it, I respect that, tastes are not debatable!

That's why the dogmas, or the canons of cooking can be shaken up when you cook and at any time, in other words you make a recipe of this and you want to put that in it? But why not, nothing should stop you, if you like it.

12 K 5/5 (16 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Cooking Taste Markers Essential

Last modified on: July 3^rd 2021

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Markers in cooking

Of course, if you deviate from the basics of a typical recipe, it would be better not to call it by its original name, and especially not to publish it anywhere, as you might get a lot of flak if some guardians of the recipe in question spot you.

tartiflette

An example to illustrate this: You may know tartiflette, a very rich but very good dish from Savoy.
Basically, it's potatoes slices cooked in water, put in a gratin dish with a mix of onion, lardons and dry white wine, from Savoie if possible, cooked separately, the whole thing is topped with fresh cream and covered with half-reblochons before being put to gratinate.
A pure winter delight.

mont d'or

You can easily embroider the basic recipe, I love to replace the reblochon by another soft cheese: Mont d'or or Morbier. It's just as good I think, but here's the problem, for some people it's almost a blasphemy, and above all it's not a tartiflette anymore ! Which can be understood of course, but is it serious ? Of course not, let's call it something else, and nobody will be violated in his personal dogma, and everything will be fine.

All this to tell you that we can, with a certain look, define what the cooks/pastry cooks call the markers of a recipe, that is to say the 2, 3 or 4 or more, indispensable tastes to deserve the name of the original recipe, even if it is completely revisited.

Let's go back to our tartiflette, its markers are: Potato, onion, lardon, Reblochon (or even cream?)
A sweet example, the Black forest cake: chocolate, cream, cherry, kirsch
Tarte tatin: apples, caramel, acidulous
Carbonnade: Beef, beer
Bœuf bourguignon: Beef, red wine, carrots

boeuf bourguignon

etc. etc.

You can see that it's sometimes quite simple to determine, sometimes a bit more tricky ( cassoulet?), but it allows you to target a recipe you want to revisit while keeping its tastes and therefore its spirit, and at the same time to allow yourself one or two liberties by changing 1 or 2 markers. I say 1 or 2, because beyond that you risk doing something completely different, which is not dramatic either, but it will probably not deserve the original name.

To sum up: The markers of a recipe, i.e. its essential basic tastes that characterize it, allow you to know if, when revisiting or adapting it, you are still in the spirit of it, or if you are doing something very different, which may not fit with the original name. But who cares if you like it...

Lasts posts

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20257345

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20256,5803

The grease spray

As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26^th 20255,9905

Cake moulds

When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25^th 20256,1785

Thinning out herbs

If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...
August 8^th 20254,3485

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Should a sausage be pricked before cooking?

If you are using sausages in a recipe, you may have already asked yourself the question: Should you prick it before cooking it, or not? You will certainly find as many opinions "you should prick" as "you should not". Let's try to untangle all this.
September 29^th 201847 K4.1

Don't throw away your pizza crusts

You've probably already noticed that at the end of a pizza meal, at least half of the participants have left the crusts in the boxes or on the plates that many don't eat. Naturally, one would tend to put them "to the birds", or worse, to throw them away, and it's a shame because they are in fact...
April 22^th 20239,3664.9

What is the difference between bakery and patisserie?

This is a question that you may well have asked yourself and which I will attempt to answer. In France the two trades of "boulangerie" (bakery) and "pâtisserie" (patisserie and confectionery) have always been quite distinct, but where exactly do the boundaries lie? .
February 7^th 2017132 K 14.1

Unmoulding cakes while hot

When you make a cake, pound cake or whatever (what bakers call a "travel cake" because it's easy to carry around) you've most likely made a batter, either by hand or in a food processor, which you then pour into a buttered pan. It's a classic, and I've already talked to you about 2 or 3 tips on...
February 6^th 202138 K4.6

The return of the vegetable grater

If you are of a certain age (say +50) you may have known, when you were a kid, something that your grandmother had in her kitchen set, the vegetable grater. A kind of mill, to be turned by hand, and which with cutting discs of different sizes, allowed to grate a lot of vegetables, carrots first...
March 20^th 202116 K4.6