Exploring the connection between food and music around the world.
May 26, 2025
At first glance, not much. One you taste. One you hear. But spend enough time in a kitchen or studio and it becomes obvious: the creative process and experience reflect each other.
There's bass in fat, high frequencies in citrus. Chefs build dishes the way musicians build tracks. Layer by layer. With instinct, restraint, and feel.
These aren't metaphors, they're structural truths.
Before anything creative happens, there's a foundation.
In music: rhythm, key, structure
In food: ingredients, mise, tools
Both rely on preparation - not as a restriction, but as a launchpad. With structure comes fredom. The groove. The flow. The turst to go off-script.
Improvisation in jazz and cooking come from the same place: practice made fluid.
Musicians sculpt with timbre - how a sound feels. Chefs sculpt with texture- how a bite lands.
Fat is bass.
Acid is treble.
Bitterness adds dissonance.
A great song and a great dish both balance highs and lows. Movements of intensity, relief, restraint and surprise. They're sensory narratives. You build tension, then solve it.
Both food and music are built on layers - stacking elements with intention, not volume.
A quiet beat underneath a soaring vocal.
A dash of lemon zest over a heavy ragu.
A harmonic that only hits once, but you feel it.
A pickle on the plate that pulls everything together.
Layering isn't about more. It's about when. It's about balance - knowing when to hold back and when to drop the hook, when to leave room for silence or sourness. The best chefs, like the best producers, know that a single note - if placed right - can carry the whole piece.
Food and music are both time machines. A childhood dish. A song from a summer years ago. They take you back - not just to taste or sound, but to feeling. Music is also key part of the eating experience, to dine to the perfect collection of music can completely transform a meal. They live in the same emotional space.
