Cook Something Bold Day

What the day is

Cook Something Bold Day is observed on November 8. The suggestion is to cook something strongly flavored and strongly scented, and the November timing is the clever part: houses are closed against the cold, so cooking smells stay in rather than drifting out of open windows.

It is one of a large family of novelty observances created and promoted commercially rather than arising from tradition.

Origin and background

The premise has a real basis. Aroma accounts for the large majority of what people experience as flavor, and the sensation of taste in the mouth is limited to a handful of basic qualities. Almost everything else arrives through the nose, either directly or retronasally as volatile compounds travel up from the back of the mouth while eating.

Long cooking is what produces those compounds in quantity. Braises, roasts and slow stews run reactions that fast cooking cannot: Maillard browning between amino acids and sugars, caramelization of sugars, and the gradual breakdown of connective tissue into gelatin. Those reactions generate hundreds of aromatic molecules, and an enclosed house concentrates them.

Smell also has an unusually direct route to memory. Olfactory signals reach areas associated with emotion and recollection with fewer intermediate steps than other senses, which is why a cooking smell can return someone to a specific kitchen decades later. A house that smells of a long-cooked dish is doing something a plate of food alone does not.

How to take part

• Choose something that takes hours rather than minutes. The smell is the point as much as the meal.
• Brown the meat or vegetables properly first. Skipping that step removes most of the aroma.
• Bloom whole spices in fat before adding liquid, which releases far more than adding them ground and late.
• Cook something from a cuisine you have never attempted rather than an ambitious version of what you already make.
• Invite someone over for the end of it, since a house that smells like that deserves an audience.