There are more than 7,100 islands in the Philippines, a nation slightly larger than the state of Arizona, and if you could devote your life to traveling through them asking questions about food, you would discover a different recipe for adobo on each one.

It is the national dish, many Filipinos say: protein braised in vinegar until pungent and rich, sweet and sour and salty at once, sometimes crisped at the edges in high heat, always served with the remaining sauce. Its excellence derives from the balance of its flavors, in the alchemy of the process. Cooking softens the acidity of the vinegar, which then combines with the flavor of the meat to enhance it. Whether consumed in Manila’s heat or on the edge of a New York winter, adobo holds the power to change moods and alter dining habits.

It is a difficult dish to cook just once. For the adobo neophyte, there are always adjustments to be made to increase a diner’s pleasure in one direction or another — a touch more salt or sour, sweet or fire.

Until there is not. Then the recipe — your recipe — becomes set in stone.

As a result, there is great fun to be had in asking Filipinos how to make adobo, particularly when they are in groups. Filipino cooking is an evolutionary masterpiece, a cuisine that includes Chinese, Spanish, American and indigenous island influences, all rolled into one. But where for one Filipino the most important aspect of the dish is Spanish, for another it is Chinese, or both, or neither. (The journalist and food historian Raymond Sokolov has made the point that the ingredients for adobo were present in the Philippines before Magellan — only the name, which comes from a Spanish word for sauce, came later. “Lexical imperialism,” he called this process.)