Meet The Team / Leslie Pariseau

Brillat-Savarin recorded in his elegant and classic tome, The Physiology of Taste (1825), "I am...tempted to believe that smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose." Though lacking modern science to prove it, he couldn't deny the inherent, but elusive connection between aroma and flavor -- the subject of a weekend-long seminar at Astor Center in New York City.

"Most of what we perceive to be taste is actually smell," explained Audrey Saunders, lauded mixologist and owner of the Pegu Club (NYC). Friday evening at a panel discussing the alchemy of cocktail aromatics, Saunders revealed a few of her secrets to expressing fragrance through cocktails.

Saunders first began to experiment with aroma around the time she worked at the Carlyle Hotel while preparing for a week tending bar at the London Ritz. She wanted to create an aromatic cocktail using gin and tea -- the patron spirits of English imbibing. Her experiments faltered until she realized (with the advice of one Harold McGee) that egg white is an excellent conductor of scent and after a few iterations, created what is now a Pegu Club mainstay, the Earl Grey MarTEAni. Throughout the process she discovered a few key lessons about building fragrant cocktails that apply to any bar -- home or professional. See them after the jump.

What's the best nosh with beer? Here, from a couple of New York's finest beer experts, are five unique pairings. Following the gastropub tips are DIY dishes, with recipes, to bring the pairings home.

1. Dry stout and oysters. White wine and oysters seem the most genius flavor combination, especially when they're both briny, creamy and fresh. However, way back in the day, oysters weren't a novelty, but a cheap mainstay, its common bedfellow was a dry stout. At Jimmy's No. 43, a beer-focused gastropub in Manhattan, Long Island oysters are paired every Wednesday with stouts like the Irish Porterhouse Oyster.

DIY: Raw Oysters + Gritty McDuff's Black Fly Stout

2. Sweet pickles and Belgian Strong Ale. Pickle plates are increasingly popular among restaurants with a penchant for the local and the preserved. At one such venue, Beer Table in Brooklyn, New York, owner Justin Philips pairs sweet-potato pickles with a Belgian-style strong ale. "The sweet potatoes are soaked in orange juice and brown sugar which is great with the round, tropical flavors of The Bruery's Mischief."

DIY: Bread-and-Butter Pickles + Brooklyn Local 1.

Peach brandy may not seem like the most masculine of spirits, but it was one of George Washington's favorite cocktails. And who's going to argue with the Father of Our Country?

Not the five American distillers who met in Mount Vernon last week to brew a batch of this original American dram. Standing around buckets of bubbling peach juice, they occasionally stoked fires warming the high-proof liquid, much like George Washington's distiller may have done more than two centuries ago.This particular batch of peach brandy will be aged, bottled and sold similarly to the limited-edition rye whiskey that disappeared in a quick three-hour public sale this summer.

Lance Winters of St. George Spirits, in California, cut peach slices while David Pickerell of Whistlepig Rye dipped his fingers into a stream of brandy trickling into a wooden bucket. "We started with about 300 gallons of peach juice and will end up with about a fifth of that in brandy once it's ready for barreling," said Pickerell. This is almost the exact amount of peach brandy recorded in the Mount Vernon distillery's production ledger in 1799.

The lines were huge at Friday Night's Blue Moon Burger Bash (part of the annual NYC Wine & Food Festival), held in DUMBO's Tobacco Warehouse, but none as long as the one twisting around and bunching up in front of Bobby Flay's Burger Palace. Flay himself manned the table, passing out hundreds of Santa Fe burgers and hamming it up for the crowds. The hand shaking, photo ops and his Santa Fe burger (topped with poblano chiles, queso and blue-corn tortilla chips) added up to a winning combination for fans -- Flay took home the People's Choice award.

Shake Shack was this year's winner (no big surprise there). Sure, their burgers are incredible, but can we give a shout-out to the shakes and those crinkle fries? The stars of every Burger Bash are the burgers, of course, but sometimes the supporting cast deserves attention too.

Check out our favorite sides of the evening.

This weekend, the fifth annual Brooklyn Book Festival brought together a smattering of food writers from across the boroughs, including the Franks of Frankies Spuntino and Prime Meats; Rachel Wharton of Edible Brooklyn; chef Gabrielle Hamilton of Prune restaurant; Francis Lam, senior writer at Salon.com; and the Lee Brothers of Southern cookbook and boiled peanut fame.

There were many lively discussions on a variety of topics throughout the festival, but we've collected the most delicious quotes here:

On writing about food:

Gabrielle Hamilton: "It's a lot easier to cross off items on a prep list as opposed to figuring out the human condition."

Francis Lam: "I eat food because I love food. I cook food because I love food. I write about food because I love people."