Where less is more, and what to skip entirely

Most ingredients are forgiving. You use a little more or a little less and the dish moves a little in one direction. Then there's a short list that doesn't work that way: a few drops make a dish and a spoonful makes it inedible, with almost nothing in between.

The failure is always the same. You taste it, decide you can't detect it, add more, and cross the line in one go. The right move with everything below is to under-dose, taste, and wait a minute before adding.

Use a few drops, then stop

Truffle oil. The loudest example. Most of it isn't truffle at all but a synthetic aroma compound, which is why it smells like one note played very loudly. A few drops finish a plate of pasta or fries; a tablespoon makes everything taste like the same chemical. It also can't be cooked — heat destroys what little aroma it has. Finish with it, never cook with it.

Sesame oil, toasted. A finishing oil, not a cooking one. Off the heat, at the end, in small amounts. Cooked, it turns bitter and flat.

Fish sauce. A teaspoon disappears into a dish and makes everything taste more like itself. A tablespoon announces itself and doesn't leave.

Liquid smoke. A few drops read as smoke. Any more reads as an ashtray. Usually a sign you should have used a fire.

Vanilla extract, in savoury. A drop in a tomato sauce or a braise rounds the edges. Two and it's a dessert.

Rosemary. The most assertive common herb. Chop it finer than the others and use less than you think. Whole sprigs pulled out before serving are the safest way to use it.

Cloves, star anise, bay. Warm spices that take over. One star anise perfumes a whole braise. Three make it medicine.

Saffron. Expensive enough that people use it all, which is the mistake. A large pinch bloomed in warm liquid colours and flavours a whole dish; more turns it bitter and metallic.

Smoked paprika. Easy to overshoot because it tastes mild on the spoon and builds in the pan.

Chile heat in any concentrated form. Capsicum extracts, ghost pepper powder, a steeped sauce like my clear pepper sauce. Heat is cumulative and it arrives late, so you can add three times too much before the first dose registers. Wait a full minute between additions.

Baking soda in a braise or a sauce. A pinch speeds browning. More turns things slippery and soapy, and it's not recoverable.

MSG. Genuinely useful, and a quarter teaspoon per pot is the dose. More and food tastes flatly savoury in a way people notice without being able to name.

Buy the good version or skip it

Some things are worth their price and some are a different product wearing the same name.

Vanilla. Real extract or nothing. Imitation vanilla is a single compound where the real thing has hundreds.

Parmesan. A wedge you grate yourself. The pre-grated tubs contain anti-caking agents and won't melt properly.

Olive oil. A decent one for finishing, a cheap one for cooking. Finishing oil heated hard is money burned.

Black pepper. Whole peppercorns, ground when you use them. Pre-ground pepper loses nearly everything within weeks.

Cinnamon. Cassia is what most jars contain and it's fine for baking. Real Ceylon cinnamon is a different, softer thing worth having for anything where cinnamon is the point.

Skip entirely

Garlic powder pretending to be garlic. Useful in a rub, where it's doing its own job. Not a substitute for cloves in a pan.

Bottled lemon juice. It tastes like the bottle. Lemons are cheap.

Pre-minced garlic in a jar. The acid it's packed in makes it sour and slightly metallic, and it never browns properly.

Dried parsley. All the appearance of an herb, none of the flavour.

Cooking wine. It's salted wine, sold in the vinegar aisle so it can be sold without a licence. Use a wine you'd drink; you need half a cup and the rest is yours.

Truffle oil in anything cooked. Worth saying twice.

The rule underneath all of it

Add half of what the recipe says for anything on the first list, taste, and wait. Potent ingredients arrive late, particularly heat and anything aromatic, so tasting immediately tells you less than tasting a minute later.

And you can always add. That's the whole reason under-dosing is the right default: the second spoonful takes ten seconds, and there's no way back from the first one being too big.