Crème fraîche

Allium sulphur needs a fat leash, and this is the shortest one.

Sour fat is the buffer. Without it caviar is salt with texture.

It does the lemon's job without wetting the fish.

Starch takes acid better than it takes fat. Do both at once.

Lactic sourness supplies the sharpness a ripe gage simply does not have.

Acid plus fat; the cream restores what heat took out of a roasted half.

Lactic fat carries the beads and stops them rolling off the plate.

Lactic acid is the seasoning; sour cream does what vinegar would do too harshly.

Cultured fat does butter job and adds the acid butter cannot bring.

Sour dairy thick enough to sit in the leaf instead of running out.

Sour dairy meets salmon fat: same texture, opposite pH.

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

Geosmin flattens against lactic acid and the root sugar steps forward.

Malic acid meets lactic acid; the fat stops them fighting.

Heat that arrives and leaves. The culture keeps it short.

Cold green carvone and cultured fat: northern Europe in one bowl.

Sour fat stops woodland mushrooms sliding into soggy sweetness.

Two lactic ferments stacked. The fat rounds off the crumb.

Acid in the cream stops the earthiness sliding into flat and heavy.

Dairy fat mutes the burn and leaves the vinegar. That is the pan sauce.

Sour fat beside oily fat: the acid stops it going cloying.

Oxalic sharpness over lactic sharpness. Two acids that taste nothing alike.

Apple brandy loosens it into a pan sauce without splitting it.

Sour on sour, but the fat length makes the acid land later and softer.

Brutal orange acid. Only cultured fat has the body to hold it down.

Culture on culture: the mould sugars read as sweet corn against the sour.

Lactic acid plus resin perfume. Infuse it cold and it reads as a herb, not citrus.

Ash reads mineral and bitter, culture reads sour. Together: rind.