The Cocktail Cabinet: The art, science and pleasure of mixing the perfect drink

Description

*** In THE COCKTAIL CABINET flavour expert Zoe Burgess demystifies cocktails, explaining and exploring the structures, flavour profiles and techniques used. In the first part of the book Zoe helps you understand why cocktails work, looking at the five basic tastes and other elements, including the flavour profiles of key spirits. She pulls apart classic recipes to explore their structure and explains why certain ingredients work together. Understanding these elements allows you to understand and build on your personal taste preferences, opening up a vast palette of options - including those of your own creation. The second part of the book puts that knowledge into practice, with more than 80 recipes for drinks organised by cocktail type - champagne-based, stirred, bitter, sour and long. In each chapter Zoe builds on the basic recipe, layering on additional ingredients and variations to ensure you go on the journey of exploration with her, and get under the skin of how the cocktails are built. Throughout the book informative illustrations show everything from the flavour profiles of spirits to the deconstructed building blocks of each cocktail. Cocktails are about enjoyment, of course, but what this ingenious book demonstrates is that the more you understand what you're drinking, the more you will enjoy not only that drink but the whole world of delicious options that understanding opens up.

Zoe Burgess, founder of independent drinks consultancy Atelier Pip, is one of the UK's most renowned flavour experts. Her passion is pushing the boundaries within the sensory and flavour-led sectors to help improve consumers' drinking experience. With a career spanning over 10 years, she developed groundbreaking cocktail menus for giants of the hospitality industry including Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal and has collaborated with some of the world's most respected sensory scientists, including Oxford University's Charles Spence.