Savoury Dishes

Savoury Dishes
© Leclaire & Schenk

There will always be a debate about what tastes are involved in a savoury dish. Salty, spicy, sour, bitter, sweet, or a combination of these?

Savoury dish can be hard to pin down

Savoury dishes can be served hot, warm, room-temperature or chilled. They can be spicy, moderate or plain.

Soup is almost always a savoury dish. But the Italian word for soup is “zuppa”, and a famous Italian dessert is called “Zuppa Inglese” (“English Soup”), which is a type of trifle.

Does one count as a sweet, or a savoury, the sorbet served in between courses of a fancy meal?

What ingredients count as savoury?

There will always be a debate about what ingredients count as savoury ingredients. With some, it’s clear if only by convention: even though tomatoes are a fruit, we count them as a savoury ingredient. But can an item such as a banana, which is regarded in the West as a sweet item, be used in a savoury dish? Can chocolate be added to a savoury dish? It is in Mexico, where chocolate was “invented”, being used in their sauces called “moles.”

Some spices such as allspice, caraway seed, cinnamon, ground ginger and cloves have been relegated to desserts, though there’s no reason they can’t appear in savoury dishes. In the Middle East, allspice is almost exclusively used in savoury dishes, and in Eastern Europe, it is used in preserving meats. Cinnamon is also used in many savoury Middle Eastern dishes. Some vanilla fans say that it’s great in some savoury dishes.

One tends at first to think of fruit as not belonging to savoury dishes, but prunes appears in many Middle-Eastern stews, and raisins are added to some meat dishes in some parts of the world. In North America, pork with applesauce is common, and you’d be hard pressed to get away with not providing a sweet cranberry sauce on the table for Christmas dinner. Wine and cheese is generally regarded as a “savoury snack” to lay out for guests, but grapes, which are normally regarded as a sweet item, are often included. We glaze ham with a sweet sauce, cook it with pineapple, put pineapple on pizzas, and serve goose with red currant jelly. In England, lamb is often served with mint sauce. And Waldorf Salad could almost be served as a dessert.

Almonds were used in savoury dishes in the Middle Ages. Now, they are mostly regarded as a sweet dish ingredient. But some Mortadellas still are made with pistachio nuts in them.

In Asia, sticky rice could be used in savoury dishes, but they tend to use it more in sweet dishes.

What constitutes savoury has changed throughout history

The definition of a savoury dish has changed over the course of time, and no doubt it will change again in the future. In European cooking from Roman times up to the end of the Renaissance, there was no firm distinction between sweet and savoury, until the development of a revolution in French cooking which defined sweet ingredients and banished them to the end of a meal. Still, up until the end of the 1700s, it was still not uncommon for sweet foods to be served anytime during a meal.

The Chinese don’t have a concept of a separate sweet course as opposed to a savoury course for a meal. In Chinese cooking, there’s no dessert per se — which is why Chinese restaurants in North America leapt on the idea of serving fortune cookies to customers who expected a dessert. Sweet and savoury together are still the norm in Chinese and middle-eastern cooking, as they were in Roman cooking.

Types of savoury dishes

Aioli Garni

Aïoli Garni ("garnished Aioli") is a meal of items, usually cooked, arranged on a large plate and served with Aioli sauce. The meal is also called "le grand aioli" or "aioli monstre." Items that might appear on the platter include: boiled ...

Allumettes

Allumettes are narrow pieces of baked puff pastry, usually with a topping on them. To make them, puff pastry is rolled to 1/2 cm (1/4 inch) thick, then spread with a topping, then cut into rectangles 7 to 8 cm (3 inches) in width. The pastry rectangles...

Boiled Dinners

A boiled dinner takes tougher cuts of meat, or stewing chickens, and simmers them in a pot of water with vegetables (so really, it ought to be called a "simmered dinner.") A boiled dinner differs from a stew in two ways. In a stew, all the pieces...

Bread Dishes

Casseroles

Casserole is a word used to refer both to an ovenproof cooking vessel, and to a baked, savoury food item that is baked in it. The ingredients in a casserole recipe are usually bound with some kind of sauce. Often, the ingredients are leftovers, or...

Cheese Dishes

Curry Dishes

A curry is a dish cooked in a spicy sauce that is a mixture of spices. In India, a curry will have about 20 spices crushed in a mortar, then mixed. The spices are then "woken up" by heating them in a bit of fat such as ghee or oil. Curries can be...

Dan Dan Noodles

Dan Dan Noodles © Paula Trites Dan Dan Noodles is a dish from the Sichuan area of China. It is noodles served with a spicy sauce called "mala." Mala sauce is made of ground pork, Sichuan pepper, chile oil, preserved vegetables and green onion. ...

Darioles

Darioles are small moulded food items made with Dariole moulds. They can be savoury or sweet, and depending on what they are made of, can be described in several ways. They can be small pastries, miniature cheese flans, individual serving-sized babas...

Egg Dishes

Fish and Seafood Dishes

Fish and Seafood Dishes © Denzil Green The incredible variety of fish and seafood in the world means that there is also an incredible variety of dishes based on them. You could easily eat a fish and seafood dish every day for a month, and not ...

Fondue

A fondue is a collective meal with a pot at the centre of the table. Pieces of food are either cooked in the pot, or dipped into a prepared sauce in the pot.

Fritters

Fritters are a fried or deep-fried small cake or patty. They should be golden and crisp. They are usually savory, but can be sweet. They are best eaten hot right away. You make fritters either from a dough or a batter with chopped food in it,...

Kalakukko Bread

Kalakukko bread is a loaf of rye bread with a pork and fish filling made in eastern Finland, particularly the Savo region. The shape can be round or oval. The bread has a hard crust about 1/ 2 inch (1 cm) thick. Sometimes it will be up to 1 inch (2...

Meat Dishes

Roasted beef being served as a meat dish © Denzil Green A meat dish is a prepared item of food that consists either wholly or partly of meat. Meat dishes are considered distinct from dishes which are seafood, fish, insect or other animal based. ...

Pizza

Pizza © Paula Trites Pizza is a flat-bread with savoury ingredients on top. It can provide a quick-cook meal. All toppings put on a Pizza are already cooked, though some say the sauce shouldn't be. Ingredients almost always include cheese ...

Polpettone di Fagiolini

Polpettone di Fagiolini are Ligurian style Polpettone. They are generally round-shaped. They are made from green beans, potatoes, bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, egg, marjoram, oil, and salt. The Ligurians use the kind of slender green beans we call...

Porridge

Porridge is a dish of stewed grains. Though porridge can be made from any grain, oats are the most commonly used. Whenever someone just says "porridge" in the West, you can assume she or he means "oatmeal porridge" unless otherwise specified. In...

Potato Dishes

Potato dishes are those whose featured ingredient is potato.Such dishes now exist almost worldwide. They can be served warm, or cold, or room temperature like potato salad. They can be made from peeled or unpeeled potatoes. They can be as simple...

Relish Trays

Relish Trays are tempting platters of small savoury things placed on the table with dinner -- pickles, cheeses, raw vegetables. They require so little work to delight the eyes. They occupy guests while you sort out a last minute crisis in the kitchen,...

Rice Dishes

A rice dish is a dish whose primary ingredient is rice. Over 100 countries in the world grow rice, and consequently use it in their cooking. Most people think of Asian cuisines when they think of rice dishes, but in fact the most well-known rice...

Sandwiches

Sandwiches are a form of fast food. Their story has moved from something that you would make at home, or in the fields, as a casual lunch for working people, to being something acceptable to the upper classes, to being something available for purchase...

Savoury Pies

Savoury pies. © Paula Trites / 2010Savoury pies are non-sweet, "salty rather than sweet" pies served as meals or snacks, rather than as a dessert. The category includes dishes such as fish pies, Cornish pasties , chicken pot pies, Melton Mowbray ...

Soups

Soups can be hot or cold. They can be refreshing, such as a cold Vichyssoise is, they can be hearty and bracing, with dumplings, rice or pasta, or they can be as light as consommés or broths, nutritious when recovering from illness and useful when ...

Spring Rolls

Crispy Spring Rolls © Paula Trites Spring Rolls are long, cylindrical rolls made up of ingredients wrapped up in a dough wrapper. They are smaller and more delicate than eggrolls. Made throughout Asia, they are be served uncooked (in which ...

Stews

A stew is very similar to braising, but it uses meat cut into small pieces, usually bite-sized, and uses much more water than braising. The flavourful liquid after cooking is an important part of the dish. Stews can be "white" or "brown." Both can...

Timbales

A timbale is a moulded French dish made of a starch such as rice or pasta, or a ground meat. A timbale can be several things. It can be a round mould with high, straight sides, usually goffered ("crimped, wavy") that is lined with a pie crust. For...

Tofu Dishes

Tofu Dishes have been seen in the West as being just for vegetarians and vegans. In Asia, it's very different: not only are tofu dishes not seen as a vegetarian thing, in fact, many of the dishes also have meat in them as well as tofu. Many in...

Vegetable Dishes

Yakimono

Yakimono is a Japanese term referring to a range of dishes having in them meats that are either cooked by direct exposure to fire or heat, such as by grilling or broiling, or, fried in a pan. A Yakimono dish is often cooked as small pieces of meat...

Yakiniku

Yakiniku is a Korean-style meal that the Japanese have adopted. When you order Yakiniku at a restaurant, a small grill with a charcoal or propane gas burner in it is brought to your table. It is accompanied by plates of raw ingredients such as vegetables,...

Zakuska

A Zakuska is a Russian hors d'oeuvre. It can be something as simple as bread with a piece of fish or flavoured butter on it before a simple meal, or it can be an astounding collection of hot and cold items served before big, fancy meals. Such vast displays...