What Does “Earthy” Food Taste Like?
November 10th, 2008
We spend a lot of time thinking about how our mood affects our cravings. Every Monday, we share some of what goes on inside Cookthink as we’re analyzing recipes for the Cookthink database. The subject of this week’s Root Source is radish, which inspired us to think about which foods we think of as being particularly “earthy.”
Emily’s Minced Words column recently mused about the foods we call heavenly — ambrosia, angel food cake and other foods that send us skyward in search of hyperbole and metaphor. But this week’s Root Source is about the decidedly earthly radish, one of those foods that brings us right back down to earth.
I think of earthy foods first and foremost as those that might come with a bit of actual dirt at the farmers market — vegetables like leeks, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, turnips and dainty radishes that still bear the evidence that they were once rooted to the earth, not bred in a laboratory or sterilized in a packaging plant in a remote town.
But earthy food can also mean simple, rustic, unadorned. A loaf or bread or a stew. A pot of soup.
What tastes “earthy” to you?
November 10th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
When I think of earthy mushrooms are the first thing that come to mind… beets too… and winter/butternut squash… I feel like in my eyes a lot of things that I refer to as earthy are also, some of them not all, tied to what people label as the “umami” flavor…
If i’m trying to describe the taste I think of earthy as an undertone that something has, that just has a much “warmer”, “homey”, “hearty” taste to it…
You can have soup or simple roasted chicken made at home, but I wouldn’t necessarily describe that as “earthy” I see it more as something that has its own flavor and has a depth of “warm/homeyness”… I can definitely see homemade chicken stock having that flavor too… but i guess that may also be attributed to the aromatics that are incorporated in it such as leeks and mushrooms (I usually use both along with onions and carrots)…
November 10th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Mushrooms first and foremost for me. Mushrooms are about as close to “earthy” as I can imagine. There’s something about the deep, rich, dark flavor that speaks to the earth that supports them.
As the previous commenter notes, earthy can also link to “homey” and “hearty.” However, mushrooms, particularly wild ones, bring a bit of the earth directly to the dish.
November 11th, 2008 at 8:47 am
At first, I thought of vegetables with an earthy flavor- beets, chard, etc. But when Mike and Sharon mentioned mushrooms, I thought, “Of course!”.
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So yesterday, when I returned from the market and tranferred a large amount of cremini mushrooms to a paper bag, I inhaled their fragrance and smiled. Earthy.
November 11th, 2008 at 10:54 am
The first thing to come to mind was a dish I recently made for the first time: roasted beets, turnips, parsnips & carrots with a little balsamic & honey and topped with a bit of goat cheese. Those veggies were so earthy, they nearly tasted like the soil they were grown in. Almost too earthy for me!
November 12th, 2008 at 5:47 am
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November 12th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Grains are very earthy to me–barley especially. And any-and-all-things goat’s milk. I tried a goat’s milk butter the other day and swore I was tasting the underside of a goat udder that had been grazing along the ground.
November 14th, 2008 at 5:12 am
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