The toasted flavour has a surname

When you brown a steak, toast bread or roast coffee, it's not just the colour that changes: an army of new compounds is born that smell and taste "toasted". That process has a name of its own: the Maillard reaction, after Louis-Camille Maillard, the French chemist who described it around 1912.

It happens when amino acids (from proteins) and certain sugars meet enough heat, mostly above 140 degrees. From that clash come hundreds of aromatic molecules that weren't in the raw ingredient. It's the difference between boiled meat and grilled meat, between raw dough and a crisp crust.

It's not the same as caramel: caramelising is just sugar burning; Maillard also needs protein. That's why cooking dry and with strong heat tastes so good. Half the world's cuisine leans, without knowing it, on one man's surname.