It's an Italian digestive, a distinctively bitter blend of many herbs that, in my experience, restores that sense of equilibrium when you've had about all you can take.
The Aztecs called their bitter blend of cacao, water and corn meal xocoatl.
A barrel-aged cocktail called the Boulevardier, a smooth bitter blend of whiskey, Campari and Carpano Antica.
After a few months of aging, however, the whiskey, vermouth and bitters blend seamlessly to form one harmonious whole; it's virtually impossible to separate the flavors on the palate.
While you make the pan de muerto, letting the orange-scented dough rise in a warm window, stir together a big batch of champurrado, a rich, creamy drink enriched with Mexican chocolate (tablets of bitter chocolate blended with sugar and cinnamon) and spiked with more cinnamon.
In a chopped salad, there should be sweet, sour, salty and bitter parts to blend and balance.
Among starters, the shaved artichoke salad feels positively virtuous, blending bitter radicchio, artichokes and pine nuts in a citrus dressing.
Bitters are a blend of aromatic herbs, spices, roots, and barks macerated in high-strength spirit to draw out the flavours.
Left to its own devices, dolcetto offers what naturally makes it so winning: an object lesson in the very Italian push-pull of blending bitter and sweet flavors, along with an earthiness and a rounded, lightly tannic texture.
The best producers treat apples the way the best winemakers treat grapes, handpicking them if possible, blending bitter, sweet and acidic juices to reach the preferred balance of flavors and allowing slow, natural fermentation.
The beautiful girl next to me, a Japanese media correspondent, was clearly having a hard time finding pleasure in the curious blend of bitter and sweet.
