Garnishes: the final flourish

Art Culinaire, Spring, 2007

Most people can correctly identify a garnish when they see one, precisely because it's there to be seen. It's usually green: the scattering of minced herbs, the sprig of parsley, the tangle of micro greens; or it can be a punctuation mark, the cherry on top as it were, or even a bit of whimsy, say, a cucumber carved into a whale. After serving their initial purpose these garnishes are often pushed aside and ignored.

But what about basil in mayonnaise, tomatoes in a green salad, or sea salt flakes melting away on a croquette? Though intuition falters at the thought of it, they are garnishes all, flavorful and inseparable from the dish.

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General dictionaries and encyclopedias today echo the former understanding of the subject, stating that a culinary garnish is primarily decorative, and may or may not enhance the flavor of the dish. It is an edible embellishment added to a prepared item for overall visual appeal.

In a sense, the decorative aspect of garnishing is a return to a much earlier time in Western dining history when certain dishes were as delightful to behold as to consume. From ancient Rome come numerous accounts of the lavish feasts of emperors and wealthy citizens who were eager to dazzle their guests with outlandish displays of culinary artistry and excess. Their penchant for transforming a food into the appearance of another inspired as much satire as awe. There are tales of cooks fashioning anchovies out of turnips, fish and birds out of cuts of pork, and an entire menu out of zucchini. Some dispensed with the art and served up wealth directly. It was said of the Emperor Elagabalus that he once served "peas with pieces of gold, lentils with onyx, beans with amber and rice with pearls."

Medieval rulers kept the tradition alive in their own way. In the court of Richard II, chefs erected castles out of pastry dough to cleverly conceal the pies beneath; they brought mythological beasts to life by sewing the fore part of one creature to the rear of another. More importantly, they applied color to food to make it more appealing. Parsley juice and saffron were commonly used for green and gold. Red came from sandalwood, purple from turnsole, a Mediterranean plant, and black from boiled blood. "Endoring" was the process of basting meats with a saffron-tinted paste of yolks and flour to give them something of a gilded look. In this way humble pork meatballs became "pomes dorryle," or golden apples. Food was decorated to look like something it was not.

To "flourish" was the closest thing to modern ideas of garnishing. An early blancmange recipe concludes with the direction "flourish it with anise in confit red or white and with almonds fried in oil and serve it forth." The word garnish does not come into English usage until the turn of the fourteenth century, and does not become widely understood in a culinary sense until the end of the seventeenth. It derives from the Old French verb "garnir," meaning to provide, to furnish, or to defend. Garnishing, then, became the term for furnishing a dish with additional items to shore up its appeal.

By the early 20th century, garnishing in classical French cuisine was important enough for Escoffier to devote an entire chapter to the subject, and then some. Explaining by example rather than strict definition, he demonstrates that a garnish can be made from virtually anything edible--vegetable, grain, eggs, olives, fish, shellfish, meat, offal--as long as it is appropriate for the dish. In general it is served with or alongside the dish to enhance the enjoyment of the whole. He also observes that flavoring items may be used as the garnish, such as the pearl onions, mushrooms and salt pork used in beef bourguignonne. In a case like this, the garnishes become so strongly associated with the dish, they end up regarded as ingredients. In other cases, they are the dish itself, as in choucroute garni, sauerkraut garnished with various cured meats. Overall, classical French garnishes are certainly meant to be visible, but the enjoyment seems to derive from the pleasure of seeing what is being offered; it's the anticipation of the taste to come.

Somewhere along the way, garnishing has gotten away from an emphasis on complementing or accompanying, and almost exclusively implies a striking visual component. Many garnishes today are meant to make a dish seem more appealing without adding anything significant to the flavor of the whole. Considering the original sense of the word, they're not garnishes at all, but decorations without any real connection to the dish, like pearls in rice. Because of their visibility, they have influenced the current definition of the idea. But there is yet a type of garnishing in practice that provides another dimension of flavor, scent and texture that is enjoyed first, but not only, by the eyes. It's closer to the classical French interpretation, the tasteful flourish that finishes the dish and becomes so much a part of it, the dish is, to say the least, disappointing without them. It can be as simple as the brightly colored droplets of an infused oil, as subtle as a sprinkling of finishing salt or as bold as gremolata. No mere afterthoughts, they are the garnishes that deserve a little more attention and their own definition in the lexicon.