Journal / Principles
Principles - April 23, 2026
Salt, Pepper, Acid, Fat -- And One More Thing
By Audra McKinley
There is a reason every multi-course meal in the world tracks a similar arc: light to heavy, sour to rich, salty to sweet. The way you experience a dish depends heavily on what is on the palate before it. The same plate of pasta hits differently after a tomato salad than after a creamy bisque.
When you cook one dish for a weeknight, this matters less, but when you cook a meal, it matters quite a lot. Think about the dish before and the dish after. If a course is rich, the one after should sharpen. If a course is hot, the one after should soothe. The lineup is part of the recipe.
This is also why a perfect dish can flop at a restaurant: the lineup is wrong, or the kitchen is firing in the wrong order. At home, you control all of it. It is one of the small pleasures of cooking the whole meal.
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