Balancing sweet, sour, salty, hot
Thai dishes aim to balance sweet, salty, sour and hot. Palm sugar, made from boiled-down palm sap, brings the sweetness and a mellow caramel note. Sweet and sour turn each other down, so changing one taste changes how the rest seem.
Palm sugar is not white sugar
Palm sugar comes as hard pucks or soft cakes, with a caramel taste from boiling down the sap. It dissolves slowly, so shave or chop it, then melt it in a little warm liquid. Brown sugar is a decent stand-in.
Test yourself
Questions from the interactive lesson, with the answer and the why.
A dipping sauce tastes harshly sour. Which small addition tones down the sourness most directly?
A little palm sugar to soften it. Sweetness turns down the sourness you perceive.
True or false: Tasting after each small addition works better than adding sugar, salt and lime all at once.
True. Each ingredient shifts how you perceive the others, so one change at a time shows what helped.
What went wrong? You taste a too-sour dressing, then stir in fish sauce, sugar and chili at once without tasting between. Now you can't tell what helped.
Changing three things at once hid what each one did. One change at a time shows what helped and what overshot.
Fill the blank: Sweetness and sourness each ___ the other on the tongue.
Sweetness and sourness each dull the other on the tongue. Each lowers how strong the other tastes.
A curry tastes too sweet. What's the best single fix?
A little lime juice. Acid turns down how sweet a dish tastes.