The Flavor Matrix: The Art and Science of Pairing Common Ingredients to Create Extraordinary Dishes Hardcover – March 6, 2018

Edit: The most liked review barrage no longer applies to the current most liked review.This book is not for people looking for recipes. The person who wrote the most liked review of this book has misunderstood the concept and reasoning one would get into this brain exercising and creativity releasing book. If you don’t own the Flavor Bible, start with that, what that book helps people understand is... flavors, duh. It’s considerably more home cook driven and much easier to relate to. This book will open your eyes to flavors and unusual pairings that would be more on the level of a seasoned cook, and I don’t mean red lobster, or outback, I mean people that have committed to the hospitality industry and have worked their way up to a professional cooking level, as a career, as a passion. Very rarely is a person who cooks well at home going to find the reason to put bergamot, eucalyptus, etc, etc into their food because, well, it’s intimidating and will rattle their brain more so then help them understand how what they just did even works to begin with.This book lets your mind venture into the “I wonder ifs” and let’s you experiment with ideas that may be rattling around in your brain and shows you that maybe what you composed in your head is headed in the right direction or it shows you, stop now, you should have turned left two lights back. It’s for a person to use as a compass on their food journey, to keep them pointed in the right direction, not to bog them down.I would challenge people to compose a dish in their head starting with one ingredient, not a protein, start with... Hazlenuts, as an example, work backwards, write your dish down as you go, scratch things out, rewrite, when you’re happy with it, open the book and see how much you understand about a hazelnut and the flavors and pairings that work with them.Use this as a brain exerciser, a way to build a strong foundation in your mind to branch off of and adapt to when you don’t have your five go to ingredients(insert first review barrage again.) this will not give you recipes to make for your family everyday, go to the food network section of cookbooks and click on one of the faces you recognize, that’s your book with your five always on hand ingredients.Reviews that miss the premise of what the material is trying to bring to the table should be wiped from any and all platforms. If you are interested in becoming a better than average cook and have the desire to understand ingredients in different ways and how to manipulate flavors this is your book.I’ve been cooking for 13 years, 9 of them professionally, this book is a magical little gem on my wall of cookbooks, but it takes a certain baseline understanding of flavors to navigate what exactly this book is trying to give people.

This book is awesome, I just received it today and gave it a quick skim and the way it gives you an ingredient and charts the best pairings, and substitutes is awesome!! I can’t wait to give it a go for my meal prepping for next week!

I am so absolutely obsessed with this book. If you’re looking for recipe inspiration or a creative foundation, this is it. I love that Briscione explains each ingredient and gives not only go-to pairings but also surprise pairings. All of this research is based on findings from IBM’s Watson supercomputer, which I’m so excited to be reading. Great book for food science nerds with a heavy emphasis on the science. Oh, and the pictures/charts are incredible too. Thank you, James!Let me emphasize that this is an inspiration book!! If Briscione gave you all the recipes, this book wouldn’t be as much fun, and would also be about 1000 pages long. I absolutely loved the sample recipe after each flavor - didn’t give too much away.I also loved the organization of this book - alphabetical order with ingredient names in the bottom right corner of the page! Made it really easy to find the ingredient I was toying with.One suggested edit: it would have been great to have the olive diagram from page 179 on page 11 so I wouldn’t have to flip back and forth while referred to on page 10.Another suggested edit: I wish the concentric rings in the flavor matrices were colored (or even a grey gradient) so I could see if a flavor is a stronger/weaker pairing than other flavor.

Purchased to add to my library at work for my employees to utilize when needed. A must have for any food & beverage professional!

I also have the flavor bible, as well as the vegetarian flavor bible and I can say it is not as thorough if you are looking for flavor combinations at a moments notice. It is however useful for inspiring flavor combinations that are seldom used by providing the reader with useful information about how flavors are perceived on a deeper level.It goes into vague detail about various flavor compounds like sulfur, tannins, and several other aspects of taste that people rarely think about, but play a large role in the experience. It pairs this general knowledge with charts for almost every class of food you can think of (melons, mushrooms, alliums, etc.) and these charts show the likely hood of a successful pairing with other, more specific categories of food in a colorful. They follow up these charts in an effort to engage the reader with interesting recipes that will compel you to play with different flavors in a sophisticated way.This is not the best reference (compared to the flavor bible) but it does contribute where the flavor bible is lacking, with insight on how and why these flavors work to stimulate the palate.

THANK YOU!Book came in great condition.

The Flavor Matrix is an amazing book made for cooks who are looking to move beyond specific recipes. While this book confirms some of standard combinations of ingredients, there are unexpected combinations that will amaze cooks who want to create new flavor profiles. I gave this book five stars, although I occasionally do not find foods I am considering. Also, I have had my copy for about four or five years now and have to handle it delicately because the pages feel like they are going to start falling out.

If I could give Flavor Matrix 10 stars, I would. This book has changed my life. My tasting menus have expanded in ways I never thought possible and my understanding of the science of food has contributed significantly to my inherent creativity in the kitchen. Not only is it the essential reference guide for the modern chef, it’s also beautiful, packed with relevant information, and easy to read and understand. I think every single chef and home cook needs this in their collection. I could throw out the rest of my cookbooks and just keep this one...