My investigations the other day troubled me and made me melancholy. Is garlic sweet, savory, both, or neither?
There are sweet things - nothing need happen for the sweetness to be apparent. A strawberry is just sweet. Are there savory things which are just savory? Beef you might say? But no! The beef will not taste savory unless heated, or without sodium. Same for anything else one can think of as savory. So we must conclude that sweetness can reside as a self-manifesting property that certain foods posses, whereas savoriness only obtains from a process, be it through heat or interaction with another substance. Considering an interaction, the second substance added, for the same reason, cannot possess savoriness in and of itself, but only through interaction with the first substance, by which a reaction occurs, producing the quality of savoriness.
To return to the matter at hand - garlic - it must be the case that although sweetness can exist as an inherent quality, and savoriness must always be through a process, there is at least one substance - that substance being garlic - in which sweetness is not inherent but obtains through a process, as well. And not only that, but this very same substance - garlic - can transform into both sweet or savory!
Moral of the story: I want garlic bread.
