Does cooking with alcohol extract different flavors than cooking with oil or water?

Question

Does cooking (e.g., onions) with alcohol (e.g., vodka, as in Pasta alla vodka, or wine) extract different flavors than cooking with oil or water?

^{cf. my question: "What's left of wine or vodka after the water and alcohol is boiled off?"}

Answer 1

The short answer is kind of.

From a chemistry standpoint alone, there are compounds that are soluble in alcohols or oils that are not soluble in water. This is a process known as extraction, and can be a part of how things like distillates and essential oils are generated.

This should in theory only affect the flavour if you are removing the source items from the food, but this is relatively uncommon. For example, you don't usually remove the onions from a sauce, but if you took the onions out after sauteing in a neutral oil vs water, you could have different flavour compounds.

Now it isn't quite as simple as that, because the flavours associated with foods can be soluble in a range of solutes, so might be soluble in both water and alcohol, so the differences might be subtle. In addition, the volatility of the substance plays a role here. Alcohol is more volatile than water, so evaporates quicker and as such can carry some of that flavour with it, which means it might hit your senses more quickly when eating. This could affect the flavour profile of the food as you eat it, while actually still having exactly the same flavour compounds present in the same concentrations.