The molecular magic of flavored oils

livemint.com:

One of the most delicious things I’ve eaten so far this year was a creamy soup made from sorrel, a lemony-sharp green leaf that is hard to get hold of unless you grow it yourself. Sorrel soup is a specialty at Castle Farm, Midford, a restaurant in the English countryside near the town of Bath, and when my companions and I took our first spoonfuls, our eyes widened. The soup itself was creamy and smooth: think Vichyssoise, only warm, not cold.

What lifted it to a whole other level was that in the bottom of each bowl was a pool of emerald green sorrel oil. The dark green oil marbled with the pale green soup, making it taste like spring in a bowl. Flavored oils are a much bigger aspect of restaurant cooking than they used to be.

Often the flavors are inventive, bordering on weird. Shrimp claws, pine needles, pomelo skin, coffee: anything you can think of, and a lot that you would never dream of, has been turned into culinary oils by clever modern chefs. Even ingredients that aren’t generally viewed as edible—including hay, ash and tree bark—can be turned into oils to use as a kind of perfume for food.

A last-minute spritz is a way to change the whole mood of a dish. Until recently, the reputation of oils with added flavors was mixed at best. Too many of us have memories of being given a thoughtful gift of some kind of flavored oil from a gourmet shop.