Vol. XXVII · The Cuisines of China Plate 4 of 12Sichuan, 川菜, 麻辣, 复合味型, 鱼香, 宫保, 荔枝味, 怪味, 糖醋, 椒麻, 家常, 红油, Sichuan pepper, 花椒, sanshool, 郫县豆瓣, 麻婆豆腐, flavour types, 一菜一格F

Sichuan.

"Fish-fragrant" pork contains no fish. The name is a recipe for a balance — sweet, sour, salty, hot and garlicky — once used for cooking fish.

Sichuan cooks describe dishes by flavour type (味型), and teach them as recipes for a balance rather than for an ingredient. 麻辣 (numbing-hot) — 麻婆豆腐, 水煮牛肉 — uses chilli and 郫县豆瓣 for heat and colour and ground roasted Sichuan pepper for 麻: the sanshool in the husks makes the lips tingle and buzz (XI.7). 鱼香 (fish-fragrant) balances sugar and vinegar roughly equally with salt, pickled chilli (泡椒), ginger, garlic and scallion — 鱼香肉丝, 鱼香茄子. 荔枝味 (lychee) is a lighter sweet-sour, and 宫保鸡丁 adds scorched dried chillies and Sichuan pepper to it (煳辣荔枝). 怪味 (strange-flavoured) puts all of them — salty, sweet, sour, hot, numbing, sesame — in one dressing for cold chicken.

Behind them stand techniques: 干煸 (dry-frying until the ingredient shrivels and concentrates), 水煮 ("water-boiling", meat poached in a fiery broth under a layer of chilli oil), 红油 (chilli oil infused at the right temperature so it is red and fragrant, not burnt), and the Sichuan pantry — 郫县豆瓣 aged for years, 泡椒 from the pickle jar (XIV.3), 汉源 pepper, 保宁 vinegar, 宜宾 芽菜. Most Sichuan dishes are not hot: 开水白菜, the "boiled water cabbage" in a crystal-clear superior stock, is the classic proof. The workshop tastes the flavour types.

Below: the perceived sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami of a dish seasoned as the flavour type you choose (teaching compositions; the course's flavour bench with Stevens's-law intensities and taste interactions), with its heat and numbing on 0–3 scales; the salt slider adjusts the base.

What you will learn
Workshop
Teaching compositions as % of the finished dish (sugar, acid as citric-acid equivalent, MSG-equivalent umami) and 0–3 heat and numbing ratings, from standard Sichuan textbook ratios; salt as set. Perceived intensities: the course flavour bench (Stevens's law with suppressions), log scale.

Recipes for a balance

In the flavour bench, a 鱼香 sauce at 1 % salt is perceived about 3.1 sweet and 2.0 sour on the log scale — both clearly present, neither dominant, the salt still leading — while a 麻辣 dish is perceived only 0.8 sweet: the sugar is there to round the heat, not to be tasted. Change the salt and watch the others shift: salt suppresses bitterness and lifts umami. The numbers are teaching values, but the method is how Sichuan cooks learn: by ratio, then by taste.

鱼香肉丝 for 2: marinate 200 g pork strips with a pinch of salt, 1 tsp Shaoxing wine and 1 tsp starch; mix a sauce of 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp Zhenjiang or 保宁 vinegar, 1 tbsp light soy, 2 tbsp stock and 1 tsp starch. Stir-fry the pork over 旺火 until it separates; push aside; fry 1½ tbsp chopped pickled chillies (or 豆瓣) until the oil reddens; add 1 tbsp each minced ginger and garlic; add 100 g shredded wood-ear and bamboo shoot or carrot; return the pork; pour in the sauce around the side and toss until glossy; finish with scallion. Taste: sweet and sour should arrive together, then the heat, with the garlic behind.

At the stove

Make a little 鱼香 sauce and taste it, then add sugar until it tips sweet, and vinegar until it balances again. Note the ratio you prefer.

Sichuan pepper's tingle is a vibration: in 2013 researchers at University College London found that it feels like a light buzzing of about 50 cycles a second on the lips, matching the touch receptors it excites.

Terms

麻辣
Numbing (Sichuan pepper) and hot (chilli).
复合味型
Compound flavour types: named Sichuan balances.
鱼香
"Fish-fragrant": sweet, sour, salty, hot, garlic, ginger, pickled chilli.
干煸
Dry-frying until shrivelled and concentrated.
Sichuan cooking is more than heat: 复合味型, named balances. 麻辣 = Sichuan pepper + chilli; 鱼香 = sugar ≈ vinegar + salt + pickled chilli + garlic and ginger; 宫保 = lychee sweet-sour + scorched chilli. Most dishes are not hot.

Sources

  1. F. Dunlop, Land of Fish and Rice: Recipes from the Culinary Heart of China (2016), The Food of Sichuan (2019) and Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food (2023).
  2. N. Hagura, H. Barber and P. Haggard, "Food vibrations: Asian spice sets lips trembling", Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280: 20131680 (2013): the tingle of Sichuan pepper matches a vibration of about 50 Hz.
  3. S. S. Stevens, Psychophysics, Wiley, 1975: taste intensity grows as a power of concentration; exponents near 1.3 for sucrose and sodium chloride. The course uses teaching exponents near the published ones.
  4. A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.