Tasting and olfaction sessions during sensory workshops on foods

Would you like to learn more about everything from spices and wild plants to chocolate and perfume? A former food journalist, Caroline Mignot organizes sensory workshops every Saturday in the heart of Paris's 2nd arrondissement, allowing you to explore all the opportunities offered by your nose and taste buds, for almost an hour and a half, while also discovering small producers!

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Rendezvous at Café Compagnon, at the far end of this friendly Sentier restaurant, where we're welcomed into a beautiful, bright room, alongside other curious guests. You choose your theme in advance, according to your tastes and favorite flavors: sweet, salty, bitter or sour? From September to December 2024, you'll be spoilt for choice, discovering more about pistachio, citrus, coffee, smoked or vanilla, through tastings and smells.

We attended aworkshop on wild herbs, the perfect way to gain a better understanding of the plants that surround us on walks in the countryside, and which are a treasure trove of culinary delights! Before each tasting, Caroline introduces us to the plant itself, so that we can smell it and then perceive the difference in taste. At 10 a.m., we get off to a gentle start with a yoghurt unlike any other, made with fragrant fluke!

It's aptly named, since its characteristic smell is reminiscent of hay, of the farm, even though it's found at the edge of woods and fields. But in this delicious yoghurt from Laiterie Sauvage, made near Camembert, which you can refill several times, it's a very strong taste of honey that comes through, with a hint of vanilla and bitter almond.

For the next, which is picked in May and was once used to perfume wardrobes, it's in cheese, a Swiss Gruyère from Taka et Vermo, that we discover its power! Thescented woodruff also tastes of honey, but to a much greater extent than in the yoghurt, which was very light on the palate. Here, between the tangy cheese and the woodruff, we're not about to forget the sensation on our taste buds!

Let's move on to sweet clover, known as the"poor man's vanilla"! Caroline has prepared two types of these yellow flowers in pots: a recent harvest and one from last year. And the distinction is obvious, since the 2024 version smells of hyper-fresh green beans, while the previous one is reminiscent of a hot, very dry summer.

We tasted it in a flan from the patisserie of the same name, melilot blending perfectly in pastry, where the most important notes are those of tonka bean and caramel! In a piece of chocolate, the melilot ganache and the bitterness of dark cocoa are so bright that our senses didn't really appreciate it, as we're more fond of sweet things...

During the workshop, we also learn to recognize Meadowsweet, with its highly acidic scent that almost stings the eyes. But surprisingly, this is far from the case, as we taste flavored sugar, which even replaces vanilla sugar and resembles almond. We finish with a 40% liqueur that contains it, and that definitely wakes you up! But it's hard to smell anything, given the alcohol content!

Aromas and flavors that often take participants back to their past, in reminiscences of dishes concocted by a grandmother, moments spent with a loved one, and more generally to childhood, also allowing them to exercise their memory, sometimes thanks to the feelings of others. A great convivial experience!