Complement and Contrast
After considering weight, pairing the flavors and texture can be dealt with using one of two main strategies — complement or contrast.
The first strategy tries to bring wine together with dishes that complement each other such as an earthy, Burgundian Pinot noir with an earthy, mushroom dish.
The second strategy operates under the truism that "opposites attract" and brings together food and wine that have contrasting traits such as a crisp, acidic Sauvignon blanc and a fish with a creamy lemon sauce. The crisp acidity of the wine serves as a contrast that can cut through the creaminess of the sauce and give a different, refreshing sensation for the palate as oppose to what a complementary pairing, such as a creamy, buttery Chardonnay, would bring. For most of history, the "complementary strategy" was the prevailing thought on food and wine pairing. In the 1980s, as more people started to discover and experiment with pairings, the idea of using contrast started to gain more favor. It follows the same idea that the "salty/sweet" pairing does in cooking (such as salty peanut butter with sweet jelly).
The same food may be complemented or contrasted: a hard, nutty cheese such as Hirtenkase should have "a nutty, slightly sweet wine with it," or a full bodied red wine.
Read more about this topic: Wine And Food Matching
Famous quotes containing the words complement and/or contrast:
“A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“At this age [9–12], in contrast to adolescence, girls still want to know their parents and hear what they think. You are the influential ones if you want to be. Girls, now, want to hear your point of view and find out how you got to be what you are and what you are doing. They like their fathers and mothers to be interested in what they’re doing and planning. They like to know what you think of their thoughts.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)