How do you combine plant-based foods to bring out the flavours of Christmas? A food engineer from the University of Copenhagen has a good idea. A boosting of umami is the key.
Meat will be the focal point of most families' Christmas feasts this year. In Danish homes, duck, goose or roast pork typically share the plate with caramelized potatoes, red cabbage, pickled veg and brown sauce.
But what if you want to swap the duck or pork out with something plant-based this year? Or, perhaps there will be a vegetarian guest or two at the Christmas table? There can be many reasons to find alternatives to the Christmas classics. Can you do so without abandoning the flavours of Christmas?
Postdoc Charlotte Vinther Schmidt, a food engineer at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Food Science serves up a suggestion. Her research focuses on exploiting the flavor potential of sustainable foods.
Several things are crucial in developing the "flavours of Christmas" in plant-based fare. One of the most important, according to Charlotte Vinter Schmidt, is for dishes to have enough of the fifth basic taste - umami.
Umami and the creation of Christmas flavour
"Meat is known for its powerful umami taste. If you plan on doing away with meat in your Christmas dinner, you can boost the umami taste of other ingredients, and in doing so, add umami to things that don't normally taste of umami," says Charlotte Vinther Schmidt, who does just that in her alternative Christmas menu suggestion.
- Umami is one of the five basic tastes, alongside sweet, sour, salty, bitter. Umami flavor comes from the free amino acid glutamate and certain free nucleotides. Foods like cheese, mushrooms, meat and sun-ripened tomatoes are high in umami.
- In Japanese, kokumi means "palatability" or "rich taste". Kokumi is the term for small pieces of protein called di- and tri-peptides, which are found in onions, fish sauce and soy sauce. Kokumi can increase umami taste and vice versa, providing mouthfeel and a long-lasting taste effect.
- Maillard is the term given to a series of chemical reactions between amino acids and sugars that develop aromas and flavors when food is browned. The frying of meat and baking of bread are examples of where kokumi occurs. French chemist and physician Louis-Camille Maillard first described the reactions in 1912.
Scientifically, the taste of umami occurs when the free amino acid glutamate is present in food. Charlotte Vinther Schmidt explains that the umami synergy principle makes it possible to enhance the umami taste of glutamate:
"You can achieve the umami synergy effect by combining foods with glutamate with foods that have a high content of other substances called nucleotides. While nucleotides don't give off a umami per se, they boost the umami taste greatly when combined with glutamate in the same mouthful. A general rule of thumb is that 1-part glutamate + 1-part nucleotides gives an umami flavor intensity equivalent to 8 parts glutamate."
We are familiar with this effect from famed 'pairings' like champagne and oysters, ham and cheese, and bacon and eggs.
Furthermore, Charlotte Vinther Schmidt suggests that - to keep the flavours Christmassy - one can make use of traditional yuletide ingredients that aren't animal based, like red cabbage, cranberries and spices such as cloves, cinnamon and allspice.
"Overall, one should think about what makes a classic Christmas dinner taste so good; for example, what basic flavors are present, what textures, what aromas? By dividing the meal into subcomponents like this, you can recreate it in another meal using completely different ingredients. Doing so will deliver the same food properties and stimulate the same senses," says the researcher.
Charlotte's Christmas menu
Charlotte Vinther Schmidt has put together a plant-based Christmas dinner based on the principles above. The meal includes:
- Sweet umami-miso potato casserole - Baked layered yellow and sweet potatoes in light miso, yeast flakes, cloves and allspice.
- Fried oyster mushrooms with caramelized onions and beets in red wine
- Fresh Christmas salad of finely sliced cabbage, endive, chopped apples and fresh sunflower shoots with clementine dressing, light miso and walnut oil, topped with roasted walnuts and cranberries.
"The first component on the plate is a reimagined, 'umamified' version of caramelized potatoes. The umami synergy occurs when the glutamate-rich miso interacts with the touch of glutamate in potatoes and yeast flakes, which contain both glutamate and nucleotides. The spices help to evoke classic Christmas aromas," says Charlotte Vinther Schmidt.
- Find Charlotte Vinther Schmidt's Green Christmas Recipes here.
- Charlotte Vinther Schmidt is a food engineer and PhD in food science who focuses on umami and sustainable protein sources. She works as a scientific researcher at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Food Science and communicates the science behind umami and palatability, among other things on umamipairing.com and @umamipairing on Instagram.
The second component of the dish is a red wine sauce with beets and the extract of fried onions.
"The unique thing about the onions is that they contain a number of so-called kokumi peptides, which give a special mouthfeel while at the same time acting as an enhancer of, among other things, umami taste. And, when the onions caramelize and become sweeter - they giving rise to our two basic taste cravings, sweetness and umami," says the researcher.
The sauce is served with fried mushrooms, such as oyster mushrooms, which in themselves contain both glutamate and nucleotides and are very umami in taste. When fried over high dry heat, oyster mushrooms develop a Maillard aroma. These aromatic substances are triggered in a chemical reaction between free amino acids and sugars when food is browned, an aroma that we know from freshly baked bread or seared meat.
The final component is a fresh red cabbage, endive and apple salad dressed with clementine juice, that contributes both Christmas ingredients and freshness to the dish.
The entire dinner takes between 70-90 minutes to prepare. See the recipe here.
Shopping tips
Charlotte Vinther Schmidt composed the dish based on the criterion of seasonal ingredients being used.
"If you are focused on eating as sustainably as possible, the rule of thumb is to eat what's in season in whichever country you find yourself. But It's not just about local products. Because, even though you can buy Danish tomatoes in winter, they are grown in energy intensive greenhouses that need to be heated," Charlotte Vinther Schmidt points out.
The most 'exotic' element of Christmas dishes is the soya bean paste miso, originally from Japan. Miso can be found in many large supermarkets and Asian grocers, but Charlotte Vinther Schmidt emphasizes that Danish producers have also come on the market that miso is produced using local ingredients.
