KITCHEN PRACTICE 3 — Sesame Oil Before and After Heat
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Chapter: Chinese Cookery 1 — Foundations & the Chinese Pantry

TASK
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Taste a small amount of toasted sesame oil plain, then heat a little
of it in a pan until it just starts to smoke, and smell the
difference. Note how much aroma is lost once it's been properly
heated.

WHAT TO DO
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1. Pour a small amount of toasted sesame oil onto a spoon and smell
   it, then taste it plain. Note the real, nutty aroma and flavour.
2. Pour a separate small amount into a pan and heat it over
   medium-high heat, watching closely.
3. As soon as it just starts to smoke (this happens faster than most
   neutral cooking oils, since sesame oil has a relatively low
   smoke point), remove it from the heat immediately.
4. Let it cool slightly, then smell it again and compare against
   your first, plain sample.

WHAT TO EXPECT
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- The plain, unheated oil should smell and taste distinctly nutty
  and aromatic.
- The heated oil should smell noticeably flatter, sometimes with a
  faint burnt or acrid edge if it smoked for more than a few
  seconds — a real, tasteable loss of the exact aroma the oil is
  prized for.

WHY THIS MATTERS
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This exercise makes the chapter's own "finishing oil, not a cooking
oil" rule concrete rather than abstract — you're not just told
toasted sesame oil loses its aroma under heat, you smell it happen
directly. It's the same underlying lesson Italian Cookery's own
Chapter 1 teaches about reserving a good extra virgin olive oil for
finishing rather than frying, just applied to a genuinely different
ingredient with its own real, low smoke point.