Óleo de gergelim

Bulb sulfur and roast thiols: different molecules, one register. Two temperatures.

Toasted fat on raw sugar; add it off the heat or it turns bitter.

Tossed raw at the very end, off the heat, or the crunch is gone before it reaches the table.

Wilted at the very end of cooking, toasted fat is the only thing it really needs.

Sliced thin and dressed cold, toasted fat is the simplest and most common treatment.

Coats the gelatinous surface so seasoning has something to stick to.

Fat carries the aroma, salt carries the fat. The base of half of East Asia.

Fermented chilli paste is thick and dull with no fat to move it around.

Fat clings to a wet surface and gives the mouth something to hold.

Stir it through off the heat; steam carries it straight up the bowl.

Toasted sesame is heavy; pear juice thins it without diluting the flavour.

Toasted fat coats the water content and gives a thin vegetable some weight.

Toasted fat gives a watery vegetable a top note it cannot produce itself.

Roasted fat clings to the flat blade and carries it further.

Smash it so the oil gets inside. Cold water flesh, salt, burnt fat.

Toasted fat clings to leaves too thin to hold a sauce.

Off-heat drizzle; the cob is too bland to survive frying in it.

Toasted fat on a vegetable that is basically sweet water and starch.

Fat clings inside the holes where a thin dressing would run out.

Off the heat, at the end. Cooking it kills the only reason it is there.

Toasted fat finishes a vegetable that is otherwise crunch and mild sweetness.

Toasted fat coats a waxy leaf that a thin sauce would otherwise slide straight off.

A finishing drizzle is the standard, since the stem carries no fat of its own.

Toasted fat finishes a stir-fry the way it finishes most Chinese leafy greens.

A few drops at the table round off a broth built mostly on bitterness and salt.

Toasted fat finishes a stir-fry the way it finishes most Chinese vegetable dishes.

Roasty fat coats the leaf so the bitterness registers late instead of first.

Roasty fat is the standard Korean solvent for the leaf oil. Salt goes in it too.

Toasted fat carries the hydroxy-sanshool further round the mouth.

Toasted fat rounds off the flake and stops the heat from being flat.

Toasted fat carries the heat further round the mouth and blunts none of it.

Korean gim needs the oil more than the salt. Aroma, not fat.

Korean seaweed salad is oil first: it coats the ribbons and unclumps them.

Toasted oil coats the yolk and mutes the sulfur without hiding it.

Toasted oil floats and holds the aroma above the broth line.

Roast covers the raw green note the bean gives off when undercooked.

Two toasted seeds; the oil carries the aroma the ground nut loses on standing.

Roast note over guanylate. Both smell of woodland and neither is subtle.

Nutty top note over a mushroom that is otherwise almost silent.

A slick coat makes the squeak read as pleasure and not as raw.

A film of fat stops the surface drying and gives the aroma somewhere to sit.

Fat is what stops a ferment reading as pure acid on the second bite.

Cold buckwheat and burnt seed run the same nutty pyrazines.

One brings capsaicin, one brings toast. Neither brings any acid at all.

Roasted sesame and charred floret run on the same nutty smoke.

Toasted oil gives a slippery noodle something to hold on to.

Same seed, one raw and one burnt. Use both and the gap is the flavour.

Sweet shellfish under toasted fat is a Cantonese reflex, not a Western one.

Poach it, then dress it cold. The skin holds the oil where heat would burn it.

A raw salad treatment, dressed simply, lets the mild pepperiness stand on its own.

Shared pyrazines. Sesame reads as praline the moment sugar arrives.

Roe sweetness under burnt seed. A drop, not a spoon, or the uni vanishes.

Roast sugar meets ester sugar and the fruit starts tasting fried.