Flavor Intensity Calculator
Estimate numbing, spicy, salty, umami, sweet and sour intensity for 72 dishes, or find dishes by your taste limits.
Cuisine-level labels are too coarse: not every Sichuan dish is numbing-hot, and not every Cantonese dish is mild. This tool works at dish level, scoring 72 dishes on six dimensions from 0 to 5 and adding a separate heat scale.
Look up a dish
Choose a dish to see its six-dimension profile, total intensity, heat level and three dishes with a similar profile.
Find dishes by your limits
Set a heat ceiling, choose the note you care about, and get dishes ranked by that note.
| Dish | Cuisine | Heat | Match |
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How these scores work
Scores are relative tendencies from 0 to 5, written for menu reading, not laboratory measurements. A dish scoring 4 for salty is saltier than most, not four times a threshold.
Heat level is separate from the spicy score: it describes how much chili heat you actually feel, while the spicy axis describes how much chili is used as a flavor. A dish can use chili for aroma without being painful.