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How to season anything with five flavours plus pain

The five flavours are:

To this we can add, where appropriate, element X: masochism (spicy).

You want to season a thing—a salad, stir-fried vegetables, cookies doesn’t matter. Consider what flavours it’s already strong in, and add the ones it lacks.

For example, potatoes baked with skin get some bitter from the skin. So if you add salt, lime juice, MSG, and a pinch of sugar, they’ll be delicious.

Most of us were taught to recoil at the idea of putting sugar in savoury foods, or salty spicy seasonings on sweets. Yet that addictive paprika powder in Pringles has sugar in it. A small pinch of sugar won’t make it taste sweet-sour, it will just bring out the savoury tastes, and vice-versa. Adjust to your tastes and common sense.

Some simple ways to fill in each of the flavours:

Notice that several of these basic seasonings have other elements in them (mustard sauces, garlic flakes and onion powder often have added salt, for example, and roast garlic is umamy). Some popular sauces serve to close multiple gaps at once:

This is not the complete model of all flavourings, of course. Any specific spice like thyme or cardamom will have its own special personality that can’t be reduced to five attribute levels in a character sheet. The usefulness of this model is more in suggesting what else to add when you don’t have anything specific in mind. You’re oven-roasting tomatoes, they’re already sour and umami, you added salt ofc, look around your cabinets for what you have at hand, maybe put some rosemary and garlic flakes for the bitter, hmm a light touch of maple syrup?