Traditionally, pastry chefs have worked mainly with a sweet flavor
palette, leaving savory tastes and techniques to their culinary
colleagues. Today, fusion cuisine promises new blends of the savory
and sweet. For pastry chefs, this means a new world of flavor
opportunities?as well as the need to integrate them into
dynamic dishes and cooking practice.
The pastry chef's key to the culinary side of the kitchen,
Savory Sweets offers a complete, systematic
discussion of flavor, techniques, and ingredients, then puts the
discussion into practice using specific plated desserts. Author,
chef, and acclaimed teacher Amy Felder brings together the culinary
and pastry realms, giving students and professional chefs a new,
up-to-date approach to flavor. Though the book comes from a baking
perspective, culinary chefs will also find the discussion of savory
flavors and fusion cuisine extremely useful.
Savory Sweets is divided into four parts:
Vocabulary starts with a scientific explanation of taste, then
establishes concepts of flavor and overall plate profile
Culinary Skills looks at cooking methods other than baking and
what they have to offer plated desserts; these techniques include
sauce work and manipulation of texture
Ingredients examines an assortment of vegetables, herbs,
spices, dairy products, and dry pantry products with regard to
flavor and partner flavors for each ingredient; plated dishes
showcasing each ingredient are also provided
Plated Desserts applies the information from the previous three
sections in the form of eight specific desserts, each with its
individual personality, plate and flavor profiles, theme, and
integration of pastry and culinary practice; recipes for all of the
plates' components are included
Filled with helpful figures and brilliant color photographs,
Savory Sweets offers advanced baking students a
unique, sophisticated, and practical classroom text, while also
providing professional chefs and culinary students with an
organized and detailed approach to flavor.
Author Biography
Amy Felder is a Certified Executive Pastry Chef and is Associate Instructor at Johnson & Wales University, College of Culinary Arts in Charlotte, North Carolina. She has won numerous accolades for her work in the Baking Department and has taught both the associate- and bachelor-level students for over eight years.