Okay, thinking this through further -- "savory" implies a richness to the food, and a particular mouthfeel that seems to come from fat content.

Add in not-sweet, and I guess that's savory to me.

savory = beef stew.

well, for me savory is not-sweet. however, It also means not spicy or salty either.

I think savory is a combinations of flavors.

savory = beef stew.

Right! But I would also call really melt-in-your-mouth biscuits (American biscuits, not cookies) savory, because of the mouthfeel.

I'm overthinking this, but it bugs me when I can't define a word that I actually use.

ok - a piece of cheese on its own is not savory. however in french onion soup it adds to the beef and carmalized onions to make a savory dish.

Thanks, Sox!

Jesse, my work angst is directed at the new teacher who Will. Not. Shut. Up. during student assemblies. Every time the dean makes a comment, Annoying!Teacher feels the need to add her two cents. Shutupshutupshutupshutuphutup!

I think of sweet and savory as antonyms. So yeah, savory encompasses a wider range of specific flavors (since you pretty much only get "sweet" from sugar in some form or another, but savory can come from almost anything else).

a piece of cheese on its own is not savory

And I'd disagree with this, since a cheese course can be considered "a savory" in the same way a dessert course is considered "a sweet."

Lemme see if I can find that Gourmet article about sweet/savory from a few years back.

Lemme see if I can find that Gourmet article about sweet/savory from a few years back.

Excellent!

All hail the great Google!

The savory is a little bite of something rich, salty, and piquant—a marrow toast, perhaps, or a stuffed egg, a talmouse (a kind of cheese tartlet), or a potted lobster. It was placed here and there in a meal that could run to as many as 12 different courses, but it eventually found its place at the very end. Very simply put, this allowed the gentlemen, if they wished, to eschew the sweet and round off the meal with something that was less cloying and led the palate more directly to the glass of brandy and the after-dinner cigar. Conversely, it was generally felt that the ladies ought to skip the savory and take the sweet. This naturally led to coffee in the drawing room, away from the fumes of alcohol and tobacco, where—as wine authority Darrell Corti recently pointed out to me—they could have first crack at the bathroom.

You are right with the exact definition Jessica - it is just ore the way I use the word. with a piece of cheese I have other words I'd use -nutty, earthy , etc. So I think I use savory when there are more different flavors to describe.