What’s on the Tasting & Adjusting poster
A 7-row table: Tastes · Try · Because.
The symptom and the usual fix.
- Flat, dull — Salt — Amplifies everything
- Still flat — Acid — lemon, vinegar — Lifts and brightens
- Harsh, too sharp — A little sugar — Rounds the edges
- Thin, watery — Reduce, or add fat — Adds body
- Too salty — Add bulk, acid, or fat — Never just water
- Too spicy — Dairy, fat, sugar — Capsaicin is fat-soluble
- Too rich — Acid — Cuts through
Taste with a clean spoon every time, and taste on the tip and the back of the tongue. Salt and acid register differently.
Questions about the Tasting & Adjusting poster
- What’s on the Tasting & Adjusting poster?
- A 7-row table: Tastes · Try · Because. The symptom and the usual fix. Flat, dull — Salt — Amplifies everything; Still flat — Acid — lemon, vinegar — Lifts and brightens; Harsh, too sharp — A little sugar — Rounds the edges; Thin, watery — Reduce, or add fat — Adds body; Too salty — Add bulk, acid, or fat — Never just water; Too spicy — Dairy, fat, sugar — Capsaicin is fat-soluble; Too rich — Acid — Cuts through. Taste with a clean spoon every time, and taste on the tip and the back of the tongue. Salt and acid register differently.
- Who is the Tasting & Adjusting poster for?
- Tasting & Adjusting belongs to the Kitchen section rather than to a school year, because food is not something one grade owns. Anyone learning technique can pin it up — a beginner, a student mid-course, or someone revising years later.
- When should you use the Tasting & Adjusting poster?
- Work through in order: salt, acid, sweet, fat, heat. Stop when it tastes right. A wall chart earns its place by being glanceable from where the work is happening, so Tasting & Adjusting belongs on the wall where that food work actually happens, within glancing distance, rather than filed away.
- What other posters go with Tasting & Adjusting?
- Batch Cooking, Blanching and Braising sit alongside Tasting & Adjusting in the Kitchen section. Printed together they make a wall rather than a single sheet, which is how a reference set actually gets used.Batch CookingBlanchingBraising
- Is the Tasting & Adjusting poster free to download and print?
- Yes. Tasting & Adjusting downloads as a free PDF with no account, no email and no watermark, like everything else in the Kitchen section. Print as many copies as you like for a home, a classroom, a library or a tutoring group; reselling the file is the only thing the licence rules out.Read the licence
- What size does the Tasting & Adjusting poster print at?
- Tasting & Adjusting is a vector PDF laid out for US Letter, and prints on A4 with Fit to page — the same file, no separate download. Because every mark on it is drawn rather than photographed, it stays sharp enlarged to A3, A2 or A1 at a copy shop. Colour carries emphasis only, so a greyscale print of Tasting & Adjusting loses nothing.Printing guide
Related posters
Charts that sit alongside Tasting & Adjusting on the same wall.
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