Which smoking wood should you use? Try three bites

Loading the Fumus chamber. Keep each wood in a separate container for the tasting. · Giamaio

A wood’s name only gets you so far. Smoking with orange wood does not put orange juice or zest into your dish. A better question is whether you can still pick out Pecorino, whether the aroma suits butter or whether it overpowers the botanicals in a cocktail.

Set out three bites of the same ingredient. Leave one plain. Smoke the other two with different woods using the same equipment and technique. For a first trial, a ready-to-eat cheese cut into three equal pieces works well.

Set up a comparison you can repeat

Choose two woods sold for culinary use and suitable for your smoker. Avoid DIY timber, treated wood and garden prunings of uncertain origin. Set aside similar quantities of each wood in labelled containers.

Cover and smoke the first bite according to the device instructions. Air out the cloche and prepare the smoker for the next wood as its manual directs. Keep the size of the bites and contact time consistent. Leave your plain reference away from the smoke.

Olive, oak and orange wood on the menu

In our Aviation delle Alpi, olive wood scents the coupe. Violet is one of the aromas to look for in the drink. If you lose it, reduce the smoke next time. Oak seasons butter with crisp guanciale, where a little plain butter lets you soften the finish.

For cacio e pepe, orange wood meets the grated Pecorino before the pasta is tossed. You can taste the cheese by itself before adding it to the dish. These three pairings from our book are starting points for finding combinations of your own.

Record what you taste

Taste the plain bite first. For each smoked sample, write down the first aroma you recognise and whether you can still taste the underlying ingredient. Come back to the sample a moment later. A welcome aroma at first can feel too dominant by the second bite.

If both samples seem identical, try a shorter contact time. If one stands out, repeat the experiment with that wood on another ingredient. Our aroma explorer also covers lemon wood, paired with scallops.