Cured salmon

Salt draws water, dill oil goes into the gap. The cure is the vehicle.

Sour dense crumb gives the fat something to push against.

Sugar-salt cure plus neutral alcohol; nothing in the glass argues with the dill.

Oily cured fish needs acid that arrives late; the vesicles hold until you chew.

The cure stains and seasons at once; geosmin sits well under oily fish.

Resin cuts the oil, and the colour is doing half the work.

Gravlax with gin: the resin fixes the flesh and scents the cure together.

Mustard-dill sauce: pungency reads as heat the fish has not got.

Cold acid dairy. Nothing cooks, so nothing can break.

Same aldehydes, opposite water content.

Nose heat against a fish with no bite of its own.

Cold-pressed and yellow, spooned over a cure. Nordic plating, no butter in sight.

Nordic acid with an oily orange body. Sharper than lemon, richer too.

Lapsang cure: tannin dries the salt down and leaves smoke behind.

Muscat terpenes over salt. A spring trick, gone by July.

Leaves in the cure. Tannin firms the flesh and the bergamot replaces the dill.

Cocoa butter and cured fat melt at the same heat. Salt does the rest.