Expert knowledge.
Fish and lemon. Chips and vinegar. Cheese and pickle. These pairings are so well known that we tend not to analyse why they work – how the refreshing acidity of one neutralises the richness, fattiness or oiliness of the other. As a result, the important part acidity plays in making food taste great often gets overlooked when we’re in the kitchen. But in the same way a good cook will always season to taste with salt at the beginning, during and end of making a dish, an even better one will pay just as much attention to the acidity present.