Flavor, traced to its roots

I have a stubborn habit: I don't accept a fact until I've traced it to its very root. Mortar & Kettle began as that habit turned loose on the kitchen, my own way of learning what actually makes a flavor, and how food acts on the body.

So every recipe here is documented through the compounds behind it: the molecule that carries an aroma, the acid that brightens a dish, the alkaloid that warms you. Not folklore, but chemistry you can taste and remake at home.

It's an open index, kept by hand and free to all. If it sends you back to the mortar a little more curious than you came, it's doing its job.