In the not too distant past, when natural wine was gaining a foothold, it was common to hear the sentiment that wine makes itself. The winemaker should just stay out of the way and let a wine do its thing. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. While there might be virtue in laying off the oak, minimizing the use of additives to fix problems, or minimizing filtering, wine growing and winemaking require a whole lot of care and attention to detail to make good wine year after year. It’s been awhile since I’ve heard anyone say wine makes itself.
The food world often expresses a similar sentiment albeit one with a longer history. The French food writer Curnonsky, dubbed “the prince of gastronomy” in the early 20th Century, wrote that “things are good when they taste like what they are.” The idea is that a chef should not seek to manipulate the flavor of an ingredient; she should allow the ingredients to speak for themselves. Good ingredients stand on their own without intervention from the chef. This sentiment gets repeated like a mantra and taken to be so obvious it requires no reflection.
But it’s nonsense.
If we were to follow this advice, all roast chickens should taste the same unless the differences can be attributed to the quality of the bird and the way it was raised. Good cooking is really just good shopping. But this ignores the importance of the personal touch that a cook brings to a dish. Cooks will make different roast chickens because they have different sensibilities, will use different roasting techniques, seasonings, or will accompany the bird with different ingredients. A dish has value to the degree the cook takes care with it, pays attention to detail, with an eye toward giving the diner a memorable experience.
Of course, a good cook will not ruin an ingredient by covering up its virtues through adding meaningless complexity. Sometimes simple is best because that is what will give the diner the best experience. But even simple dishes require a touch of inspiration, something to set it apart.
Carried to the extreme, if we took seriously the idea that things should taste like what they are we would not bother to cook them at all.
I suppose this ideology that human intervention should be avoided is meant to honor what nature can do on its own. Of course, nature is impressive. In a world where nature, as a realm relatively untouched by human hands, disappeared long ago the sentiment is understandable. But that doesn’t make it coherent. It certainly cannot constitute an ideal for the practice of cooking which has, as its fundamental purpose, the radically restructuring of what nature gives us via the application of heat.
Exploring the Philosophy of Food and Wine 