Status Updates From Flavorama: A Guide to Unloc...

Common Acids:
From Plants: citric, malic & tartaric acid. Named after citrus, apples & grapes (wine making) respectively. Malic and tartaric are about the same level of sour and slightly stronger than citric acid. Most fruits contain both citric & malic.
From Fermentation: lactic & acetic. Lactic bacteria are tough and versatile, operate in many conditions. Acetic bacteria are picker, ignoring sugar, desire alcohol.

The chemical family of acids have a backbone of carbon atoms studded with hydrogen (and a few oxygens thrown in). Their principal trait is that hydrogen atoms tend to break loose and trail off, like sequins coming off a dress. Acidity, quite simply, is loose hydrogen ions. The more loose hydrogen ions, the more acidic something is. Some taste buds have tiny donut-hole shaped pores for detecting loose hydrogen atoms.

Sour: the taste of acids, mostly made by plants or fermentation.
Sourness balances sweetness, bitterness and fattiness, and makes flavors seem brighter and livelier.
Sour enhances gentle saltiness and tames excessive saltiness.

Salty makes other flavors more intense/focused/balanced, while suppressing bitterness. Most flavor differences among salts are due to differences in shape and texture, as well as trace minerals.

Salt your dish early and often while cooking, not heavy-handed at the end. This gives the salt time to slowly absorb into the food and be evenly distributed.

Practice makes perfect. Simply testing & paying attention to lots of things will help develop your palate over time. You help it along by creating an environment of careful smelling, (lots), but you will need patience. It takes repetition, and that’s fine! If you don’t get oak now, you will in a hundred smells. It’s all fine; it’s a long game. Nobody is born with an incredible palate, we all have to earn it.

If you struggle to describe a flavor beyond a generic term like “fruity”, try something like tasting different kinds of apples, pears and berries. Or fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries next to strawberry, raspberry and blueberry jams. Is there one aspect or aroma that sticks out in one versus another? How does one evolve into another?