— Michael Baun

Okay, we're getting into, um, chemistry and probably some other aspects, some of the other fields of science here. Um, I'm gonna sort of redirect this back to really just, just cooking. And, um, I'm not familiar with vapor pressures of foods and, um, uh, when it comes to serving temperature, um, I'll, I'll comment just very briefly that, you know, hot foods are gonna be molecularly more active, so they're throwing off more molecules. And so you're gonna get more aroma off of a hot food versus a cooler food, and especially, you know, compared to something that's chilled. Okay? So this is, um, um, why, um, when we eat a cold food, we tend to flavor it a little bit more strongly than a hot counterpart. Okay? Um, now, other than that, when it comes to, let's see, spices, a common way to, uh, to handle spices, and this is sort of a general, uh, uh, a pattern you might see in a lot of Indian dishes is to, um, to use whole spices at the, at the first step. And we, we get those in the pot, um, uh, hit traditionally with oil, but if you don't want to use oil, you don't have to. But that's going to bring out some, uh, some subtle flavors, um, from the whole spices, because relatively speaking, relative to ground spices, there's less surface area. Okay? And then later on in the cooking process, um, ground spices are used to add a, a, a, a little more, uh, stronger punch, or in the form of the next layer of flavor, okay? With ground spices that continues its simmering process. And then very often to finish a dish, whole spices, sometimes in combination with ground spices, okay? Are gonna be bloomed in hot oil and then added to the dish right at service time. And then you get the, the, the freshest layer of flavor or that hit of aroma, okay? As, uh, the, the dish consumed. And so this is one way to create layers of flavor, you know, using a single category of ingredient, in this case, spices, uh, and then thinking about whole versus ground. Um, so hopefully some of this is helpful to you, Michael. Um, you know, as you think about how to approach, um, a dish around, you know, in using spices, but I think for, for a lot of cooks who don't have experience using spices, simply adding spices to your food, whether it's a cold food room temperature or a hot food, uh, is gonna make a lot of difference, uh, to your, uh, eating experience and, uh, you know, the enjoyment at the table. So, uh, you know, without getting into vapor pressures, you know, hopefully this will get you, uh, down the path of, um, some more interesting and flavorful cooking.