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What Purpose Does Salt Serve in Cake and Cookie Recipes?
Salt is a flavor enhancer that is just as important in sweet foods as it is in savory ones, so we assumed that a cake or cookie made without salt wouldn't taste as good as one that included it. Still, we wanted to understand exactly how the flavor would change. To do so, we tasted two batches of yellow layer cake and sugar cookies: one batch with salt, the other without.
The flavor differences in the cake, which called for 3/4 teaspoon salt, were astounding. The salt-free cake tasted sweet-"like cotton candy"-yet bland. Tasters called it "mild," "flat," "dull," and "boring" and could barely detect vanilla flavor. The cake that included salt was also sweet, but the flavors of butter and vanilla were much more balanced and pronounced. The differences were more difficult to nail down in the sugar cookies, which were coated generously with sugar and contained only 1/4 teaspoon salt. Still, some tasters could detect the flavors of butter and vanilla more readily in the "salted" cookies.
How does salt work its magic? While many cooks think of salt as simply a flavor enhancer, it can also mask less agreeable tastes like bitterness. We proved this theory true in the test kitchen by adding a pinch of salt to inherently bitter foods like coffee and eggplant, and the perceived bitterness was cut in half. By suppressing bitterness, salt allows more desirable flavors-including sweetness and spices-to come through. Ingredients that can contribute bitter flavors in baking include yeast, leavening agents, proteins in flour, bittersweet chocolate, and vanilla.
To summarize, if a recipe calls for a pinch of salt, don't be tempted to omit it. Otherwise, you might be left with a singularly sweet and sugary dessert with little complexity. Also, be sure when baking to use unsalted butter so that all the salt comes from a single source and the finished product doesn't actually come out salty.
ccoksillustrated.com
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