Salty and Sweet

I had a Salted Caramel Mocha at Starbucks recently. I felt that it tasted kind of like uni (sea urchin). Uni is the one of the most popular and expensive ingredients in Sushi. The drink didn’t taste like raw Uni. It was like the uni flavor that is commonly used for snacks.

Do you have a similar kind of experience? The idea of combining different flavors to make a new flavor is popular in Japan, in particular among younger people.

When I was a high school student, I enjoyed discovering new flavors by combining two or more different foods. The following combinations are typical examples:

Japanese style custard pudding + soy sauce = uni (sea urchin)

Mandarin orange + seaweed + soy sauce = salmon caviar

Japanese people like sushi, but we can’t afford it so often because of the price. So, younger people often try to find flavors that are similar to the taste of sushi ingredients by combining low price ingredients. I’m curious if there are food experiments for finding new flavors in the U.S.

I would say that mixing up sweet with other flavors sometimes results in something I like. In the U.S, I have experienced many fabulous flavors which I was not used to eating. 

A typical example is pancakes. In Japan, pancakes are thought of as a kind of snack and aren’t eaten as a meal. I couldn’t even imagine the combination of pancakes and bacon when I was in Japan. Now pancakes and bacon with maple syrup have become my favorite. Rice pudding is another example of a food that I couldn’t imagine before because the combination of rice and milk is very unusual in Japan. I felt disgusted when I saw it for the first time, but its taste was great. Sweet seasonings are often used in American dishes, especially in meat dishes. I don’t know a lot about meat dishes that have a sweet taste.

Sweet-tasting meat dishes might be a clue to making new flavors from the combination of unusual ingredients. I should try unfamiliar flavors more often. Maybe I will find an unusual combination between American ingredients and flavors that make a unique taste similar to the flavor of sushi ingredients.