From the article:
In the realm of savory cooking, sugar and other sweeteners are treated like a spice—one of many ingredients used to make food taste delicious. In Cantonese cuisine, for example, “sugar is used as a tool to achieve balance, mostly to deepen savoriness,”
Across Asia, a touch of sweetness is essential for the ability to shift and shape other flavors, but sugar is, in theory, not an ingredient that should stand out on its own. It is merely there to reign in a pungent fish sauce in Thai and Vietnamese sauces or to tamp down the spice of a Sichuan stir-fry.
This philosophy of balance and equilibrium exists in kitchens across the region, from the five key flavors of Thai cuisine to the Japanese concept of gomi.
In Asia, indigenous ingredients like honey, glutinous rice, grain syrups, and fruit historically added nuance and character to a dish. In Korea, for example, pears and onions were the sole source of sweetness in a bulgogi marinade.
…catering to a global audience is like an act of translation where the source text risks losing its integrity or, worse, is rendered totally inaccurate.
The great sweetification, as I’m now calling it, also panders to a Westernized ideal, which Ponseca identifies in the Philippines’ reverence for colonial influences, like Spanish baked breads or American processed foods like spam and ketchup.
“That’s how many of us view the consumption of meat; it means we have money. I think the same thing could be said about sweetness,” she says. In this case, indulging in a sweet treat is not just about taste but is rooted in class and status, which is true across so much of Asia. “In Korea, we revere Western culture,” says Kim. From Manila to Hong Kong to Seoul, sweetness is driven as much by affordability as it is by the aspiration to be seen as modern and sophisticated.
But if the universal flavor du jour is sweet, we lose the meditative delightfulness of balance. We’re entering an era where the highest compliment once reserved for dessert in many Asian households—that it’s not too sweet—might now apply to dinner.
