Cooking Produces Flavor Loss

Appears in
Professional Cooking: 10th Edition
Professional Cooking

By Wayne Gisslen

Published 2025

  • About
Many flavors are lost during cooking by dissolving into the cooking liquid and by evaporation. The longer a vegetable is cooked, the more flavor it loses.
Flavor loss can be controlled in several ways:
  1. Cook for as short a time as possible.
  2. Use boiling salted water. Starting vegetables in boiling water shortens cooking time. The addition of salt helps reduce flavor loss.
  3. Use just enough water to cover to minimize leaching. Note that this rule contradicts rule 1 in that adding vegetables to a small quantity of water lowers the temperature more, so cooking time is extended. Save your questions on this until you have finished reading the sections on color and nutritional changes.
  4. Steam vegetables whenever appropriate. Steam cooking reduces leaching out of flavor and shortens cooking time.