How you cook is so often influenced by your family way: a tradition, but sometimes a tradition only nested amongst your kins, and to an extent, a region where you are from.
In this recording, our FSO colleague from Northern China recalled a favourite phrase his grandma often says when adding finishing touches to a dish.
小味儿，挠一下就上来了。
We have to use a literal translation to show how delightfully vivid it is:
“The flavour arises with a little scratch.”
Isn’t it similar to this image: You give your cat a little scratch under the chin; it purrs…and stretches…
