The Forsaken Food Element… Serving Temperature

We have all heard about the primary tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and the debatable Japanese concept of umami. Our tongues are capable of some pretty crazy stuff. Just ask anyone who ever dated Pam Anderson. (Ba`dap, ching!)
But I want to talk about something that I think is far too often ignored in the home kitchen. While every one is seasoning this, and garnishing that, and piling shoestring potatoes into towers of phallic food porn, the home cook, and sadly a lot of restaurants, overlook the importance of what temperature a dish should be when you serve it. Flavors change incredibly when a dish is served at different temperatures. For example, have you ever made ice cream, and noticed how muted the vanilla tastes when it is rock solid verses when it was still an unfrozen custard? What about eating refrigerated cheese versus the same cheese at room temperature? What about coffee? Iced Tea?
And my favorite example of temperature as a factor in flavor… Soup. Go make this recipe:

FRENCH ONION SOUP
8 Large or 16 small onions (lyonnaised)
1½ sticks unsalted butter
¼ lb smoked bacon (diced)
½ tsp kosher salt
1/3 cup port wine
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1 qt chicken stock
1 qt beef stock
Bouquet Garni (3 stalks fresh parsley, 2 sprig fresh thyme, one dried bay leaf, 8 black peppercorns)

In the heaviest pot you’ve got, melt the butter over medium heat until it foams and starts to brown slightly. Add the onions and salt. Cook until the onions are deeply caramelized, reducing the heat to medium low and stirring very often (25-30 minutes). In another pan, slowly render the bacon and cook until just starting to crisp. Reserve the bacon fat for another recipe. Add the bacon lardoons to the onions along with the port wine and balsamic vinegar. Stir until most of the liquid has evaporated (3-5 minutes). Add the chicken and beef stock along with the Bouquet Garni. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to low and cover for 45 minutes to an hour, being careful not to over reduce. Then take a high quality French bread baguette (not from Wal*Mart’s `fakery… come on!) Slice it into half inch slices. Top each slice with grated gruyere cheese and put under a pre-heated broiler for just a few minutes until melted and bubbly. Float the croutons on top of each bowl of the soup. Serve piping hot!

The reason I want you to make this soup, is so that you can see how much more luxurious and fresh a piping hot French onion soup tastes over a saggy cold one. When this soup is hot (almost too hot), the flavors jump across your tongue, and the soup seems bright and vibrant. As the soup cools, it goes from less interesting, to too strong and rusty, to plain limp and fruity. I am almost sure you could leave out most of the salt, cool this soup, and serve it as a desert course with whipped cream and a donut it gets so fruity as it gets cold.

Now contrast that with a Potato and Leek soup. A steaming hot bowl of potato soup will taste bland, sharp and well, simply HOT! Let it cool by ten degrees, and you are in the game! Chill it to an iced Vichyssoise temperature and you are really starting to get the picture of how temperature affects flavor.
So, plan your meals out wisely. The next time you are serving up some eggs for breakfast in bed for that special someone, keep serving temperature in mind. Remember to cook the eggs last. Slightly room temperature bacon is okay if not preferable, as soon as your eggs the pan you’ve pulled the pin on a culinary hand grenade. Your masterpiece is fading fast as you walk the tray up the stairs.