Reddit reviews Taste Buds and Molecules: The Art and Science of Food, Wine, and Flavor
We found 3 Reddit comments about Taste Buds and Molecules: The Art and Science of Food, Wine, and Flavor. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
I use The Flavor Bible regularly as a cocktail reference. Rather than just looking for pairings with the spirit as an ingredient, try looking for pairings for the flavor profile of the spirit/liqueur. For example, I was in a cocktail competition and knew that I wanted to incorporate Falernum, so I checked through the pairings for lime, ginger, clove and allspice to get a little inspiration. I haven't yet, but it would be fun to take a unique gin and look through the flavor pairings for each of its botanicals.
The other Page and Dornenburg book What to Drink with What You Eat is more focused on drink pairings for food and not so much on looking at what drink components go with what.
Not quite what you're looking for, but Kevin Liu's Craft Cocktails at Home has a very nuanced discussion of balancing drinks and the interactive effect of sweet, sour, bitter, and salty (I'm going to start in on my sub-threshold salting experiments once Graduation weekend (anyone who has worked in a college town will understand) is over).
A book I've seen but not read that you might find interesting is Taste Buds and Molecules: The Art and Science of Food, Wine, and Flavor by Francois Chartier. This is more geared toward wine pairing, it seems, but I believe discusses the molecular explanations for flavor affinities which would likely have some cross-application to cocktails.
To free is creative mind, http://www.amazon.ca/Taste-Buds-Molecules-Science-Flavor/dp/1118141849/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412591473&sr=1-9 .
Taste Buds and Molecules talks about how families of flavor molecules are related and why this leads to excellent food and wine pairings, like Sauvignon Blanc with lamb and mint (they all share a common flavor molecule).