The Flavor Atlas
Every note your food can hit — and the taste it makes you.
The eighteen flavor notes the engine measures in every dish, and the twelve taste types they make. Learn to hear them and you'll cook the food you actually crave.
In one paragraph
Palate measures every recipe on the same eighteen flavor notes — umami, sweetness, sourness, bitterness, heat, richness, salinity and eleven more — grouped into six families for the hexagon "X-ray", and classifies palates into twelve deterministic taste types (the same palate always maps to the same type). This page is the lexicon: each of the eighteen notes with the ingredients that define it, and example dishes selected live from the 4,566-recipe corpus by their measured value on that note. The note values are computed by the engine from ingredients, masses and cooking steps; no model is asked its opinion for any number here.
Twelve ways to taste
The taste types
No two palates are the same, but they rhyme. These twelve are the constellations we've mapped — an honest read of what you reach for. Open any one to see its shape, the dishes it loves, and where it wanders next.
The lexicon
Eighteen notes, six families
The hexagon on your palate profile groups these eighteen notes into six families. Here's what each one actually tastes like — in ingredients you know, and in the corpus dishes where it sings loudest.
Umami & Savory
Savory depth — salt, ferment, and the sea. The notes that make a dish taste finished.
Umami
The flavor under the flavor — what a long-simmered stock, an aged cheese, or a spoonful of miso leaves behind. Hard to name, but you notice the moment it's missing.
Salinity
Sea salt, soy, a briny caper. Salt makes food taste like itself, only louder — get it right and you stop noticing it's there.
Funk & Ferment
Blue cheese, kimchi, fish sauce, aged salami. The pungent, alive edge that fermentation gives food.
Marine & Briny
Oysters, seaweed, anchovy, a splash of brine. Clean and mineral — the taste of the sea.
Loudest in the corpus
Sweet & Fruity
Sugar, honey, ripe fruit. The round notes that give a dish somewhere soft to land.
Sweetness
Caramelized onion, roasted squash, ripe pear — sweetness from more places than the sugar jar. It rounds a dish's edges and softens everything sharp.
Fruity
Stone fruit with pork, pomegranate over a stew, apple in a slaw. Ripe fruit where you don't expect it, rounding out a savory dish.
Sour & Bright
Acid and citrus — the sharp notes that cut richness and wake a dish up.
Sourness
Vinegar, yogurt, a ferment's tang. Acid wakes a dish up and makes it taste like more of itself — it's what a cook reaches for when something tastes flat.
Citrus
Lemon, lime, orange zest, yuzu. Bright, perfumed acid that cuts through richness — a little zest can lighten a heavy dish.
Bitter & Earthy
Char, coffee, roots, greens. The grounded notes that give a dish structure.
Bitterness
Char, black coffee, dark chocolate, a bitter green. It keeps richness and sugar in check — a taste worth acquiring.
Loudest in the corpus
Smoke
Charred edges, smoked paprika, bacon. The taste of food that met real fire — nothing else can fake it.
Earthy
Mushrooms, beets, lentils, a dusting of cumin. The taste of things grown in soil — it gives a dish weight.
Rich & Fat
Butter, cream, olive oil — the fat that coats the tongue and carries every other flavor.
Richness
Butter, cream, egg yolk, marbled meat. Fat carries flavor and makes a dish feel generous.
Nutty
Almonds, sesame, browned butter, tahini. The flavor of things toasted to golden — round, warm, comforting.
Aromatic & Spice
The fragrant top notes — alliums, herbs, warm spices, blossoms, and fire. The part of a dish you smell before you taste.
Heat
Chiles in every form — fresh, dried, fermented, flaked. Heat sets the pace of a dish: it decides how fast you eat.
Herbaceous
Basil, cilantro, parsley, mint, dill. Torn in at the end, they lift a dish and make the whole plate taste fresh.
Allium
Garlic, onion, shallot, leek. Raw, they bite; slow-cooked, they turn sweet and deep. The first thing to hit the pan.
Floral
Rose, orange blossom, saffron, lavender. Delicate and perfumed — a note you use with a light hand.
Warm Spice
*Lisan al-GaibCumin, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, clove. Toasted spices that fill the house and give a dish its fragrance.
Which of these is you?
Take the short taste test to get your type and the dishes that fit it.
Take the taste test →