What is Flavormaxing and Will it Impact Recipe Writing?
We are living and eating in the hyperflavor era, according to The New York Times. Does that mean recipes will get more complicated?
Have you stood in line recently for a matcha mango morning bun? A shakshuka focaccia? Or a French onion soup croissant? These are just a few of the multi-hypenate baked goods that “…we all appear to be craving,” according to a New York Times article titled How Did Our Taste Buds Get So Spoiled? (This is an unlocked gift article, so please enjoy.)
This trend of flavorful mashups in baking and cooking is called “flavormaxing,” says the author, Marie Solis. It’s about using trendy ingredients to jazz up familiar foods in a new way, such as:
Earl Grey
Brown butter
Kumquat
Matcha
Yuzu
Tahini
Saffron
Pistachio (currently experiencing a worldwide shortage due to the Dubai chocolate bar craze on social media)
Yuzu
Za’atar.
Consumers are looking for more adventurous, globally-influenced flavors, especially Asian-inspired tastes. The focus is on creating dishes that feel current, such as matcha tiramisu, or pairing nostalgic ingredients with more unusual ones. People now put miso paste in everything from ice cream to salsa, for example.
Playing with these flavors is not just happening in restaurants and bakeries. It’s going on in recipes too, writes Solis. She mentions cookbooks by Yotam Ottolenghi and others that introduce readers to new ingredients and ways of building flavor.
Also cited is the influence of The New York Times Cooking section and food magazines such as Bon Appetit. Food media shapes the tastes of young people. “That’s how you get turmeric chai coconut, churros s’mores and berry hibiscus…” writes Solis.
Of course, there’s also the coolness factor. After I cut a huge $8 Dubai chocolate bar-style macaron four ways so my friends and husband could taste it, I could be the first to tell others about this cutting-edge craze.
So, if there’s a bakery that sells a “candied kumquat black sesame buttermilk sourdough cake donut” (wayyy too many adjectives), how does this hyper-flavor trend affect recipe writers?
I have a few thoughts:
I’m wondering who gets to write flavormaxed recipes. They often use a mashup of Asian and Middle Eastern ingredients. Will the court of public opinion say that you must be a third culture recipe writer or person of color to qualify? Will white people have to stick to… (wait for it) paler add-ins such as Earl Grey and brown butter?
Recipe developers will feel more pressure to flavormax recipes. You can’t just put out a recipe for blueberry muffins (unless you’re Alison Roman).
Even so, a “candied kumquat black sesame buttermilk sourdough cake donut” requires a recipe with many more ingredients, and potentially sub recipes for such things as sauces, stuffings, toppings and infusions. Most recipe writers don’t want to make their recipes more complicated for home cooks. This creates a quandary for cookbook publishers who want to jump on the hyper-flavor bandwagon.
Tell me!
Are you a recipe writer? How does this trend affect your recipe development, or does it? Are you someone (especially a millennial) who stands in line and seeks out these new flavor mashups? Do you think this trend will last? Let me know in the comments.
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What I’m Reading
On the first of every month, I bring you irresistible links like these:
Thomas Keller asked me to leave the French Laundry. It turned into my most extraordinary night as a critic. I’ve never read a “review” like this, and it’s fascinating. (You’ll need to turn off your ad blocker settings.)
Introducing the 2025 James Beard Media Award Nominees. The categories include book, broadcast media, and journalism. Winners will be announced June 14.
The 35 Best Cookbooks of All Time, According to Chefs and Our Editors. Food & Wine magazine explores the classics and more.
What No One Tells You About Writing a Cookbook. Zaynab Issa suggests you get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
How Cookbook Writing Has Changed Me. Clarissa Wei says she’s different now, especially since she became a mom.
Pizzle, Pluck and Bung - and the inside of Bourdain's fridge. Victoria Granof’s experience as Anthony Bourdain’s food stylist.
We’re Living in the Age of the Culinary ‘-Ish.’ New diasporic cookbooks and their impact, from Saveur.
You May Ask Yourself...Author Michael Ruhlman ponders life as a writer in New York.
Joan Nathan’s Guide to Essential Jewish Cookbooks. Her top 10, from Saveur.
Has the DEI Backlash Come for Publishing? And UK publishing less accessible to Black authors now than before 2020, industry names say. Some improvement in the U.S.
Ruth Reichl’s essential cookbooks. Including a few older ones that intrigued me.
Replacing cookbooks lost in the L.A. fires is a meaningful act for this local shop. You can help. Now Serving bookshop says customers can buy books or participate in raffles.
The Paradox of the Restaurant Cookbook. Siobhan Phillips relishes cookbooks that are full of contradictions and pleasures.
Why Marcella Hazan is Still Teaching Us How to Cook Italian. Pete Wells says “That voice — brusque, solidly accented, cured in cigarette smoke, marinated in Jack Daniels — comes to me all the time.” (Unlocked New York Times article)
About publishing: Query Letters. Agent Kate McKean explains. How Much Does Publicity Cost? Kathleen Schmidt explains.
The Everything Cookbooks newsletter. So good! For the cookbook-obsessed who also want to write their own.
Great content from Food Blogger Pro: 5 Ways Food Content Creators Can Be Successful on Substack, and Preserving Tradition While Scaling a Modern Business with Shen Chen from Just One Cookbook.
Workshops, Consults and Appearances
Only two spots left at this Late-Summer Food Writing Workshop in Sicily
September 19-23, 2025
$2990 double occupancy, $3510 single occupancy
There’s still time to book your plane ticket to join a small group of students (currently nine) in Sicily for great food and wine experiences and food writing. Read more here. We’ll stay at a gorgeous seaside hotel and visit a winery, a farmer’s market, and a farm. We’ll discuss voice, improving the quality of your writing, and storytelling, among other topics.
Before or after, add a few extra days in Sicily, a crossroads for ancient cultures and cuisines. Some say the quality and variety of food and wine has earned it the nickname “God’s Kitchen.”
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News from Clients and Students
Literary Agent Rica Allannic at David Black Agency will represent food blogger Izzah Cheema to publishers. (I coached her on her cookbook proposal.)
Chef Taffy Elrod shared a Juneteenth-inspired recipe in the June/July issue of Cook's Country magazine.
Writer Melissa Uchiyama will teach a food writing camp for kids in Tokyo July 6-18.
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I’m at that fabulous stage of life where I cook and write about whatever actually delights me; not what’s trending, not what everyone else is doing, and not what the algorithm thinks will go viral.
Does it hurt my views? Maybe.
Do I care? Not even a little.
I'm not a recipe writer, just an occasional home cook. I ran across one of these mash-up recipes recently and decided to give it a try. It required two trips to Berkeley Bowl and one to Oakland Spice to round up all the ingredients. End result was fine but not worth the bother. We've got specialty stores for every slice of diversity that the Bay Area offers, but I'm hard pressed to imagine how I'd source these when living in my small hometown in Wisconsin.