Wildan's Essay

Continental and Oriental Cuisines

Continental cuisine is a kind of food which originally comes from European countries and other countries such as America, English, Australia, New Zeeland and so on. It is also well-known as International or western cuisine. Meanwhile, Oriental cuisine is a type of dish which is originally from Central, East, North, South, Southeast and Western regions of the Asian continent. Both of them are very famous all over the world. Many restaurants dish up those kinds of foods and many cooking competitions focus on them. However, some people are still confusing continental and oriental cuisines. Some of them think that they are just the same while others consider them totally different. In fact, continental and oriental cuisines are similar and different in certain ways.

The first thing to start is the ingredient. Continental and oriental cuisines can have the same ingredients for protein such as chicken, egg, tofu, fermented soybean, cheese, meat and so on. However, cheese is more popular in continental cuisine while tofu and fermented soybean are more popular in oriental cuisine. For carbohydrate, bread and potato are used more often in continental cuisine whereas rice, corn and noodle are used more in oriental cuisine. For seasoning, spices are usually used very slightly in continental cuisine. Also, Continental cuisine contains less chilies and simple seasonings such as sugar, salt and cheese while oriental cuisine contains more chilies and many kitchen herbs such as onion, garlic, ginger, coriander, bay and so on.

Talking about cuisine also means talking about the way of cooking. Generally, both continental and oriental cuisines have the same cooking techniques such as boiling, frying, grilling, baking, mashing and etc. However, the application of the techniques is very different. Usually, continental cuisine needs only one cooking technique while oriental cuisine needs the combination of two or more techniques. For instance, fried chicken in continental style is made by only frying the chicken yet fried chicken in oriental style is made by boiling at first and then frying at last. In cooking vegetables, many kinds of fresh or rare vegetables are mixed in continental cooking style while only one, sometimes two, kind of vegetable is cooked in oriental style.

After talking about the way of cooking, the following is the way of serving. Basically, both cuisines are divided into three sections: appetizer, main course and dessert. However, they have different styles of serving. In continental cuisine, the food is served chronologically starting from the appetizer to the dessert. The eating utensils are changed in each section of the food. Meanwhile in oriental cuisine, all foods are placed on a table and people help themselves to take everything they want using only one eating utensil. This makes oriental cuisine sometimes have no appetizer section because people just directly go ahead to the main course. The serving of the main course is also different. Both cuisines contain carbohydrate, protein and vegetable but the serving is different in term of portion. In continental cuisine, the portion of the protein is served bigger than that of the carbohydrate whereas it is just other way around in oriental cuisine.

The last is the taste. Continental cuisine usually has one dominant taste such as sweet or salty. Unlike, it is quite difficult to determine the taste of oriental cuisine because many seasonings are mixed so that the taste becomes strong. For example, meatball soup is composed of the soup which tastes salty, tomato sauce which taste sour, soy sauce which tastes sweet and chili sauce which tastes spicy. In addition, continental cuisine tastes less spicy while oriental cuisine is preferably spicy.

All things considered, continental and oriental cuisines are similar-yet-different in terms of ingredient, the way of cooking, the way of serving and taste. Generally, the similarities are the basic components of the food and then they are developed differently in both cuisines.