If you grew up with a grandma who snapped the lid on a Tupperware and promised dinner would be even better tomorrow, you probably knew she was right. Then there’s the takeout that’s only been in the fridge for three hours, and somehow it tastes like fridge. What gives?
Scientists at Deakin University in Australia finally put the leftovers argument to a blind taste test. In a preprint that hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet, 65 adults tried four dishes people regularly claim improve overnight: beef lasagna, butter chicken, dhal, and apple crumble. Some were fresh. The others had been cooked the day before and reheated, and no one knew which was which.
Butter chicken was the only dish where the leftovers actually won. Tasters chose the day-old version nearly 64% of the time. They could tell fresh dhal and apple crumble from the reheated versions but didn’t strongly prefer either one. Lasagna was basically a wash.
Lead author Russell Keast, a sensory scientist who also trained as a chef, knows the appeal. “You have a takeaway curry one night, then eat the leftovers for breakfast the next morning, and somehow it seems even better,” he told New Scientist.
Why Some Leftovers Really Do Taste Better the Next Day, According to Science
The study looked at what people preferred, not what was happening inside the food. One theory is that spices and aromatics mellow out overnight. Food scientist Kantha Shelke of the Institute of Food Technologists has said those sharper flavors can become less pronounced with time, leaving the dish more rounded overall, as Daily Meal reported.
Reheated meat can be especially off-putting. It can develop something called warmed-over flavor, that stale, cardboard-ish taste caused by fats in cooked meat reacting with oxygen in the fridge. The Deakin researchers think butter chicken’s sauce could help mask some of that, although they didn’t test it directly. Pasta and rice also firm up overnight as the starch changes, which is probably why the lasagna didn’t perform well in the leftovers taste test.
America’s Test Kitchen also points to cooks’ fatigue. If you’ve been cooking and tasting the same dish for hours, your palate can get tired of it. Eating it the next day gives you some distance from all that stirring, tasting, and standing over the stove.
So there is some science behind the leftovers thing. Just not for every dish.
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