Types Of Taste

Types Of Taste in Chinese cuisine usually start from the classic five flavors (五味): salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and pungent/spicy. Cooks combine these into many compound flavors (复合味)—named taste profiles that define regional dishes.

Five basic tastes

• Salty — soy sauce, salt, fermented pastes
• Sweet — sugar, rock sugar, sweet sauces
• Sour — vinegars (e.g. Shanxi aged vinegar, Zhenjiang vinegar), pickled ingredients
• Bitter — bitter melon and certain herbs or toasted notes
• Pungent / spicy — chili, ginger, garlic, mustardy heat; in Sichuan Food, often paired with numbing Sichuan pepper (麻)

Compound flavors (examples)

• Málà (麻辣) — numbing plus chili heat; key to hot pot, Mapo Tofu, Malatang
• Yuxiang (鱼香) — "fish-fragrant" sweet-sour-spicy profile used in Yuxiang Shredded Pork
• Strange-flavor / guaiwei (怪味) — layered salty, sweet, sour, spicy, and nutty notes
• Fermented depth from Doubanjiang and Pixian Doubanjiang

See also

• Sichuan Food
• Chinese Food Map
• Doubanjiang