A Matter of Taste

Taste is one of the most interesting sensations, because there are so many different flavors and possibilities, which seem to stem from just four basic building blocks: sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. I find it amazing that such variety is possible simply with these four flavors in different amounts.

One common misconception about the tongue is that each flavor sensation is limited to a certain part of the tongue. To the contrary, the myth seems to have sprung up since the sensations are typically more powerful in those areas. Either the tongue sensors in those areas are more developed/sensitive, or there are simply more of them.

A great example of the complexity of flavor is champagne. While made mostly like wine, the primary difference is that many different wines are combined to make a more interesting flavor, and the yeast and and fermentation byproducts are removed, which makes the flavor sweeter. What is so fascinating about this is that there are teams of taste-testers dedicated to ensuring that the new batch of champagne has the exact same flavor as the old one. Why is this necessary? Each crop of grapes will naturally have ever-so-slight variances in flavor, and this is something only such world-class taste-testers would notice!

One pro tip for tasting anything liquid, particularly wine - smell it first with both your mouth and nose open. This imprints the scent and part of the taste (since smell is apparently 70% of the taste anyway) so that when you actually taste it, you get more out of it. In addition, while tasting it, swirl it around and savor it, rather than swallowing immediately. Keeping your nose open here helps as well. Most people tend to unconsciously close their nasal cavity when drinking - it's a reflex designed to prevent you from inhaling instead of imbibing. Just suppress the reflex long enough to get more out of the taste, but only before you swallow. When you swallow, this reflex is a very good thing!

I imagine these tips might also help for solid foods, but are probably not as effective, especially when it comes to drier foods like bread. Scent is transmitted via microscopic particles and/or vapors, and vapor is produced more readily by liquids, especially at higher temperatures. Higher temperature simply means more movement in the atoms and thus a greater chance of particles vaporizing.

Why then does a bakery smell so good, if dry foods don't produce as many particles? An increase in heat causes motion in the air. Heat wants to move and rise up, and this includes air from the oven. As the bread bakes, yeast in the bread produces gas, causing the dough to rise. Some of this gas will escape the bread, and since it is very hot, it will act just like any other hot gas and try to escape the oven, building up pressure if it cannot do so. When it does escape, wind will then carry this hot air, which then brings the smell of baking bread along with it.

Another fascinating mystery in the realm of taste is the compound known simply as miracle berry (literally, as the molecule causing the effect is known as miraculin). Apparently, it changes the flavor of oranges and other citrus fruits when eaten beforehand, making them sweet instead of sour. I've never tried it, but I imagine it would be quite interesting and stimulating. One also wonders at its effect on other foods!

Now, taste gets really interesting when you combine two flavors together, even if you are not experiencing them at the same time. The effect is much stronger in that case, however. For instance, if you take a bite of something, then after you've swallowed that, take a bite of something else, the taste from the first food is still imprinted in your memory. Some of the liquids or particles from that food may still be on your tongue, as well. Either way, upon tasting the second food, you experience both the flavor of the new food, the flavor of the first food, and most importantly, the difference between the flavors. This is what really makes things interesting, as you'll see more of in a minute.

In this case, you've experienced what I like to call a one-way flavor delta. Delta is the Greek character that looks like a triangle, and is used in mathematics to represent change or transition; more specifically, the amount of change. In this case, you have now tasted both flavors at the same time, though a lesser amount of one than the other. Due to this discrepancy (tasting less of the first flavor), this is only a one-way delta, meaning you experience the difference between the flavors in one direction. You taste more of the second flavor, so you can tell more about how that flavor differs from the first, but not vice versa. The first flavor is now all but gone, though for a brief moment both of the tastes were there. After a couple more bites of the second food, the first flavor is wiped out completely, and the taste of the second food becomes far less interesting.

Taste the foods in reverse, and you will understand why I call it a one-way flavor delta. The difference between food A and food B is not the same thing as the difference between food B and food A. You have to experience this personally to know what I'm talking about, but I'm certain that any good taste tester would agree with me here. The second flavor is always stronger (unless you try them both at once) and this creates a discrepancy in which your taste buds must tell you more about one flavor than they can about the other, causing this one-way difference.

When you have two different foods at the same time, that is when things get really magical. Not only are you now tasting flavor A and flavor B at the same time (in roughly equal amounts), but you are also tasting what I call a two-directional delta. You can now taste the complete difference between both flavors, and this is one of those cases where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. That's why a sandwich tastes so much better than just eating the individual things one at a time, even though the parts are all the same. The average sandwich has (I would estimate) about 10 different flavors in it, so this means you are actually tasting ten flavors as well as C(10,2) two-way flavor deltas! That's an incredible combination of 55 flavors and flavor deltas at once. I bet you never knew that 5 plus 5 on a sandwich equals 55! (Heh, actually if you write '5' on the crust of both pieces of bread and look at it sideways like the spine of a book, 5 plus 5 DOES equal 55!)

For those mathematically-inclined folks, C(n,k) is a combination of n items taken k at a time; in this case we have 10 distinct flavors taken 2 at a time, giving us 45 flavor delta combinations (plus the ten individual flavors themselves for a total of 55). A combination is very similar to a permutation, except order does not matter, similar to a hand of cards, but unlike a race where the racers finish in a certain order.

There Was A Stink Here

A strange smell enters your nose. At first it seems pleasant, but at some point it hits you that the smell doesn't normally belong there. You then recognize that it's most likely an air freshener, and your brain supplies the needed context; namely, that there was a stink here. This knowledge makes the air freshener somewhat less effective, doesn't it? Moreover, I think that air fresheners are mostly ineffective, and I will gladly explain why.

All air fresheners smell pleasant, and yet most of the time when you smell them, the scent actually comes off as annoying, or at least less-than-pleasant. Why is this the case? Doesn't a pleasant smell always smell pleasant? In fact, no. The connotation that comes with the smell indicates that something else likely happened to make the air freshener necessary.

Moreover, when would you choose an air freshener over fresh air? Only on a summer's day when it's too hot to open the windows, or a winter's day when it's too cold to do the same. Depending on where you live, these may vary in frequency. Either way, there will be some days where the air freshener just smells out of place, even if it wasn't there to cover up a stench.

In many cases the air freshener cannot even completely cover the previous odor. This is arguably worse than not using any air freshener at all. The rank smell mingles with the more pleasant aroma, creating a confusing and irritating environment. So either the air freshener couldn't fully eliminate the other scent (and therefore, pointless), or the other scent was already gone, and the air freshener only serves as an ironic reminder of the incident (again, pointless). It's ironic because the pleasant smell hints at something unpleasant. In either case, we see that the use of the air freshener, at least as a remedy, was completely futile.

Also there is something to be said about the oils. If given a choice, I'd prefer fresh air over freshened-air any time. Most air fresheners use oils which either drift down to the floor, or float around. Either kind introduces particles into the environment (albeit, pleasant-smelling ones) that would not have been there otherwise - at least, certainly not in the quantity dispersed. This may even have some negative health effects, but I've not researched the subject. I simply know that when I inhale directly from a thick fog of such particles, the effect is not exactly stimulating, but rather, cough- and sneeze-inducing.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for the use of air fresheners. However, I don't kid myself into thinking that they are effective. At the very least, all they do is kick your olfactory into gear and remind you that "there was a stink here."