PALEO-PANCAKE: HOW YOU CAN MODULATE FLAVORS IN A SINGLE DISH!

The other day I created paleo-pancakes with egg and banana. For those of you who don't know what a paleo-pancake is, here is the recipe:

Take a ripe banana and an egg (one of each—you can increase the recipe proportionately) and mash together. Fry the mashed combo as you would a regular pancake, either in unsalted butter or a little vegetable oil, et voilá! A delicious "paleo" breakfast treat — though I doubt that my Paleolithic ancestors in Northern Europe ever experienced such a thing...

An (over)ripe banana, perfect for paleo-pancakes!

Here comes the trick:

Taste one of your pancakes (part of one, if you only made one) without salt: the banana flavor comes out and the egg is muted. Then sprinkle a little salt on the remainder, and taste again. The egginess comes to the fore loud and clear and the banana practically disappears!

What is happening?  

Ripening bananas develop a number of different weak acids, primarily malic acid, but also good amounts of citric acid, and lesser amounts of a number of other organic weak acids. In other words (unlike the case for most fruits) the level of titratable acid in bananas goes up the more ripe they are. As discussed in a previous post, these acids inhibit our ability to taste the savory umami quality of the egg, so the pancake tastes primarily banana-y. Further, bananas have a number of flavor compounds that activate the cool/cold receptors, so the flavor compounds in egg that activate warm/hot receptors are suppressed.

Cooked egg has a number of characteristic flavor compounds that activate the warm and hot receptors. These include sulfur compounds that bind to warm (TRPV3) receptors. These compounds also enhance the sensation of umami by activating a warm TRP channel type, TRPM5. This channel is used by Type II taste bud cells to send sweet and umami messages on. These sulfur compounds appear to enhance the umami message in particular.

Another set of compounds produced by the cooking process give eggs (and banana too) a caramel-like flavor to the mix. These compounds activate the hot receptors, TRPV1.

What salt does is shift the balance among receptor activations. It, too, activates TRPV1, the hot receptor, so now we have warm, hot, and umami receptors to dial up the egg flavor. The flavor compounds in banana can no longer overcome this increase in "egg" sensation.

BTW, you will find multiple versions of this recipe on line, with a variety of additives. You might be interested in trying some of them and seeing what happens to the banana and egg flavors. If you do, please let me know!