The Hows and Whys of Taste and Flavor

Everyone knows that you can’t taste much when you have a clogged up nose, but most people don’t know why. I remember a class we had a year back in sensory that related to this.

Our lecturer brought in nose clamps and small tubes of a powder, she handed us one each, told us to put on the nose clamps and pour the powder into our mouths. As we did all we felt was a very sweet flavor, that was it, absolutely nothing else. Then she told us to remove the clamps and as we did our mouths were filled with a strong cinnamon flavor (the tube contained cinnamon powder and sugar).

Now, you would think that with such a strong flavor, it would shine through, but it really didn’t, we had absolutely no idea what was in our mouths until we removed the clamps.

So how was it that we could taste the sweetness of the sugar but not the cinnamon?

To start off we have our taste buds that are situated on the tongue. They register the five basic tastes that are sweet, salt, sour, bitter and savory/umami*. These can all be registered even if your nose is clogged up**, they also have in common that they are water soluble, this is the reason you can taste them the moment they hit your tongue.

The rest are however fat soluble which means that you will need to smell them in order to taste them. If you combine the basic taste of a food and the smell of it, which is registered by the olfactory epithelium, you get a flavor. In order to completely register this flavor you need to be able to both smell and taste your food.

An unknowing test person was served a delicious chocolate mousse, while he was eating someone passed him with a piece of cloth smelling of garlic, the test person swore that there was garlic in the mousse.

*Umami is a relatively new taste that was added to the basic tastes,  you get it mostly from the chemical MSG (monosodium glutamate), a kind of salt that is added as a flavor enhancer, it used to be more common in asian food, today it’s used throughout the western world too though, mostly in pre-made food, MSG exists naturally in mushrooms.

** Here it could be discussed where the spicyness, the heat, that you get from spices such as chili and peppers should be placed as the heat is noticeable even if you can’t smell it. I will say that I don’t know, but I intend to find out.

This business of food

I wanted a food blog, I study food science and I learn the most curious things sometimes, this is my way to share my knowledge, interest, thoughts and ideas. This blog will be updated every Monday unless something happens, but at least weekly.

I am writing about flavors, taste buds and the difference between water soluble and fat soluble flavors, it’s one of many things that has been discussed in Sensory classes and there will be an update on it as soon as I’m done with it.

I’ve studied food science since -04 and have been working as a chef before that, I went to culinary school as well to become a trained chef, but decided, when I was done, that I’d prefer working as something else (after having worked for 8 years as a chef) within the food business. The plan right now is to work with Swedish food culture and to help spread it, preferrably in the U.S.