I stumble over his Kryptonite.
On a recent visit home, my younger son — the one I used to challenge in driveway basketball, the one who now dunks the ball, guaranteeing no more mother-son pick-up games — hangs around the kitchen as I make a quick lunch for myself.
I slap together my go-to sammie of late: natural peanut butter, chunky, of course, with bread-and-butter pickles, topped with a squiggle or three of sriracha.
On pumpernickel.
Toasted.
Yes, really.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” he asks, looking over my shoulder.
“Making a sandwich,” I answer. “Want one?”
“No.”
“It’s good. Try it.”
“No way.”
I take a bite, issue a loud mmmm and hold out a cross-section of gleaming earth tones for him to examine.
“It’s pretty, too. C’mon, take a bite.”
“Nope,” he says, taking a few steps back.
“The recipe came from The New York Times cooking app,” I say, offering a pedigree.
“I don’t care,” he protests through a budding smile.
I do what any loving mother would do. I hold out the sandwich at arm’s length, wave it like a light saber, and chase him around this house with it.
“Tryyyy it! You’ll liiiike it!” I urge, echoing a 1970s Alka-Seltzer commercial in which a bistro customer recounts being pressured by a waiter to sample a new dish.
Obviously, my baby, who was born in 1997, has not seen this TV ad.
“Get away from me with that thing!” he insists, weaving and bobbing as if the sandwich might bite him.
We’re both about to fall over with laughter when he finds a door.
“I’m going to the gym,” he calls out over his shoulder.
“Saving you half, kiddo!” I holler after him.
This passes for love — and maybe motivation to exercise — in my family.
Later, as I eat his half of the sandwich, I wonder: How could he, or anyone, not like this creation? To me, it’s the perfect union of flavors and textures: warm and tangy pumpernickel slathered with the subtle sweetness of peanut butter, spiked with the sweet-tart crunch of pickles, and swaddled by an after-burn that’s relatively mild on the Scoville scale.
What more could your taste buds want than to be pleasantly surprised by an unexpected combo?
Of course, every person’s idea of “pleasant” is different.
I poll a few friends on favorite food pairings that make others cringe.
Bee likes a peanut butter sandwich with fresh tomatoes and Miracle Whip.
Trish reports that, as a child, she enjoyed post-Thanksgiving dark-meat turkey smeared with peanut butter on a saltine cracker.
“My family looked at me like I was crazy,” she says, laughing at the memory. “I wouldn’t be afraid to try it again.”
I would hop on that crazy train with her. In peanut butter we trust.
In pickles, too, though I pause when Donna reports that her late father-in-law, whom everyone called J.E., used to eat homemade cocoa pound cake with home-canned dill pickles.
How did that occur to him?
No one in the family seems to know the origin story, so Donna asks Google AI: Is eating dill pickles with cocoa pound cake a thing?
The answer: “Eating dill pickles with chocolate cake is a recognized, albeit niche and often surprising, flavor combination that has gained traction as a ‘sweet and savory’ pairing.”
J.E. was ahead of his time.
Speaking of sweet and savory, David, perhaps the most adventurous eater I know, says one of his daughters recently gave him some artisanal chocolate with anchovies.
“The salt and umami against the dark chocolate was a fortunate combination,” he says.
Full disclosure: David also likes what he describes as an old Southern favorite: liver mush topped with artificial maple syrup.
Artificial maple syrup? Because real maple syrup would ruin the experience?
“Yeah, it needs to be Log Cabin,” he explains. “Made with corn syrup, of course, and a lot of artificial maple flavoring. Real maple syrup is way too mild to counter the funky mildew flavor of liver mush.”
Take that, funky mildew flavor of an optional dish.
This reminds me of a meal I once shared with a friend at a Japanese restaurant in Pinehurst. Miso soup came with dinner.
“What is this?” she asked, not enthusiastically, after sipping from a long, plastic spoon.
“Miso,” I answered. “Made with fermented soybeans”
“Me-so-no like this,” she said.
Honestly, the soup tasted a little gym-socky to me, too, but it was nicely balanced by a salty broth garnished with scallions and puffed rice.
I slurped away.
There’s no accounting for taste, as the old saying goes, but scientists do know a lot about what makes certain foods attractive to some people while others cringe at the thought.
Roberta Claro da Silva, an associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at N.C. A&T State, says several variables — culture, psychology, genetics and age — go into the experience of flavor.
For example, when Silva was growing up in Brazil, she ate sugar on avocados. Salted avocado was a no-go.
“There was no guacamole,” she says. “It didn’t exist.”
However, salted lemons, limes and green mangos were common treats.
“Salt breaks the astringency and makes it more sweet,” she explains.
So food culture — what’s available and eaten in your area — influences your idea of what’s appetizing. But there’s more to the recipe: memories and associations, the psychological aspects.
“If you have a very good memory of your grandma cooking food with specific spices, you will relate this with comforting food,” Silva says.
By the same token, if you’ve ever gotten sick after eating a particular food, you’ll probably avoid it because of the negative association.
Visual biases creep in, as well. People generally like foods that are aesthetically pleasing. That’s why plating is a big deal in fancy restaurants.
Some parts of flavor are not as malleable. Genes partly determine the number of taste buds a person has, as well as their sensitivity. So-called “super-tasters” detect bitterness at lower thresholds than others. Often, they cannot tolerate dark chocolate and strong coffee.
Genes also influence our sense of smell, a huge contributor to what we call flavor. One genetic variation, which affects chemical receptors in the nose, determines whether a person finds the flavor of cilantro pleasantly herby or disgustingly soapy.
Age figures into the stew, too. Taste buds decline, in quality and number, as the years go by. That’s why older people often lean toward stronger flavors and saltier food.
The upshot: Yummy and yucky are moving targets over a lifetime.
I ask Silva an academic question: Is it possible that my son will try a peanut butter-pickle-and-sriracha sandwich one day, despite, you know, the possibly negative experience of having been chased around the house with one?
“I believe so,” she says kindly.
Saving you half, kiddo.
