Food, Drinks and The Third Pairing
I’ve always thought there is something very childish about pairing food with an accompanying drink. I don’t mean childish in an immature sense but childish in the wondrous way that maturity rarely is. Mashing food up in your mouth and leaving a bit behind for your beverage to mingle with? That sure seems like something too fun for an adult to do.
Coffee and biscotti, cheese and wine, pizza and beer; our favourite food and drink combinations are so customary that we often forget they are there. But perhaps the most forgotten aspect of food and drink pairings is the fact that they are often not a pairing at all.
In my view, there is a mistress in this culinary couple, a wild and welcome third party who is the reason we travel the world looking for amazing places to eat and drink; context.
Roast pork, rotbier and Nuremberg.
Food, drink and context?
Yes. Food, drink and the often forgotten but all important context. Context is as simple as what we learnt in English class, the who, when, where and why of it all.
Who are we eating and drinking with? Are they new people or a close friend?
When is this happening? Early in the morning, late at night or just once in a blue moon?
Where are we? Somewhere exotic or our favourite pub?
Why are we enjoying this trio? Is it to celebrate a milestone or just because?
Knowing this can help us complete those unfinished examples from before. Coffee, biscotti and waking up. Cheese, wine and conversation. Pizza, beers and sport.
If you’re still not convinced that context is a necessary element then drink some Coke out of a mug and tell me it tastes as good as it does from a glass. Context matters whether we notice it or not. Airlines wouldn’t charge so much for tickets if it didn’t.
Pasta, wine and a date!
Travel as context.
Where you are is a huge part of the context that completes a trio with food and drinks. How many times have you heard people say Guinness tastes better in Ireland? Aren’t fish and chips always better by the beach? Surely kolsch is best enjoyed served in proper small classes by proper kolsch waiters in Cologne? I could rattle off examples or I could share a case study.
When I visited my friends Tania and Pierre in Belgium they asked if we could bring them some Kakadu Plum sauce they loved when they were in Australia. We got it for them, they cooked with it and found it wasn’t as good as they remembered. That’s because, they were eating it in the wrong context.
When Tania and Pierre first travelled Australia they were camping, cooking on a camp stove, BBQ or fire and eating under that Southern Cross every night. While the recipe for the Kakadu sauce hadn’t changed, everything else had so of course it wasn’t the same anymore.
When we last visited Tania and Pierre they didn’t ask for Kakadu sauce. Now living in the French Alps, Tania cooked us a traditional crozilflette with local reblochon cheese and alpine pasta. We enjoyed it with Savoie region white wine and their amazing view of the French Alps. In case I need to spell this out, the whole thing was perfect.
Yes, we ate the whole thing.
Context is something we should not only seek out but something we should never take for granted. If you’re ever eating somewhere and think ‘I could have made this at home’ it’s probably because you’re lacking that all important third element, whatever it may be.
