Taste: Surprising Stories and Science About Why Food Tastes Good (63 page)

For a few months at work, someone was stocking the Mattson bathrooms with beautiful, froufrou bottles of hand soap. During this time, one of our food technologists brought a sample of a slow cooker meal to my office for my evaluation. I could have sworn I caught a whiff of errant lemongrass in the sample of chicken cacciatore I was about to taste. I lifted my hands to my face and there it was: a noseful of Bangkok emanating from the skin on the front and back of my hands, thanks to the hand soap.

Cooking generates lovely aromas that stimulate the senses. If you’ve been doing the cooking, it’s likely that you won’t smell them after a certain amount of time, due to adaptation. Treat yourself by putting down your apron and walking around outside for a few minutes. When you return to the kitchen you will smell your creations anew.

In closing, I’d like to quote the immortal restaurant critic Anton Ego, from my favorite animated movie,
Ratatouille.
Ego is a wise man. He gives the best imaginable advice in response to the snarky comment that he’s mighty thin for someone who likes food: His reply, “I don’t like food, I love it. And if I don’t love it, I don’t swallow.”

Many of the facts and quotes in this book came from personal interviews I conducted over the course of writing this book. These conversations were also supported by the following published research.

What Are You Missing?

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin,
The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy
(Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002).

———, trans. M. F. K. Fisher (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978).

Gerard J. Musante,
The Structure House Weight Loss Plan: Achieve Your Ideal Weight through a New Relationship with Food
(New York: Fireside, 2007), 215.

Tip of Your Tongue, Tip of the Iceberg

Michael Macht and Jochen Mueller, “Increased Negative Emotional Responses in PROP Supertasters,”
Physiology & Behavior
90, nos. 2–3 (2007): 466–72.

Danielle R. Reed, “Birth of a New Breed of Supertaster,”
Chemical Senses
33, no. 6 (2008): 489–91.

Paul Rozin, “Taste-Smell Confusions and the Duality of the Olfactory Sense,”
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
31, no. 4 (1982): 397–401.

Chapter 1: Taste

Grant Achatz, The Chef Who Couldn’t Taste,
Fresh Air
from WHYY (interview originally broadcast on March 3, 2011).

Linda M. Bartoshuk, “Taste Mixtures: Is Mixture Suppression Related to Compression?,”
Physiology and Behavior
14, no. 5 (1975): 643–49.

Paul A. S. Breslin and Liquan Huang, “Human Taste: Peripheral Anatomy, Taste Transduction, and Coding,”
Advances in Otorhinolaryngology
63 (2006): 152–90.

Paul A. S. Breslin and Alan C. Spector, “Mammalian Taste Perception,”
Current Biology
18, no. 4 (2008): R148–55.

Jianshe Chen, “Food Oral Processing—A Review,”
Food Hydrocolloids
23, no. 1 (2009): 7, 1–25.

Henry B. Heath,
Source Book of Flavors
(Westport, CT: AVI, 1981), 157–63.

Juyun Lim and Maxwell B. Johnson, “Potential Mechanisms of Retronasal Odor Referral to the Mouth,”
Chemical Senses
36, no. 3 (2011): 283–89.

P. W. Lucas et al., “Food Physics and Oral Physiology,”
Food Quality and Preference
13 (2002): 203–13.

Michael Macht and Jochen Mueller, “Increased Negative Emotional Responses in PROP Supertasters,”
Physiology & Behavior
90, nos. 2–3 (2007): 466–72.

C. Michon et al., “The Investigation of Gender-Related Sensitivity Differences in Food Perception,”
Journal of Sensory Studies
24, no. 6 (2009): 922–37.

Michael O’Mahony, “Sensory Adaptation,”
Journal of Sensory Studies
1, nos. 3–4 (1986): 237–58.

Paul Rozin, “Taste-Smell Confusions and the Duality of the Olfactory Sense,”
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
31, no. 4 (1982), 397–401.

Paul Rozin and Hely Tuorila, “Simultaneous and Temporal Contextual Influences on Food Acceptance,”
Food Quality and Preference
4, nos. 1–2 (1993): 1l–20.

Derek J. Snyder, Katharine Fast, and Linda M. Bartoshuk, “Valid Comparisons of Suprathreshold Sensations,”
Journal of Consciousness Studies
11, nos. 7–8 (2004): 96–112.

A. I. Spielman, “Interaction of Saliva and Taste,”
Journal of Dental Research
69, no. 3 (1990): 838.

Josephine Todrank and Linda M. Bartoshuk, “A Taste Illusion: Taste Sensation Localized by Touch,”
Physiology & Behavior
50, no. 5 (1991): 1027–31.

Paul B. Whittemore, “Phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) Tasting and Reported Depression,”
Journal of Clinical Psychology
42, no. 2 (1990): 260–63.

Jeremy M. Wolfe et al.
Sensation & Perception,
2nd ed. (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2009), 360–83.

Chapter 2: Smell

Malika Auvray and Charles Spence, “The Multisensory Perception of Flavor,”
Consciousness and Cognition
17, no. 3 (2008): 1016–31.

Elizabeth A. Baldwin et al., “Flavor Trivia and Tomato Aroma: Biochemistry and Possible Mechanisms for Control of Important Aroma Components,”
HortScience
35, no. 6 (2000): 1013–22.

Elizabeth A. Baldwin et al., “Flavor Trivia and Tomato Aroma: Biochemistry and Possible Mechanisms for Control of Important Aroma Components,”
HortScience
35, no. 6 (2000): 1013–22.

René D. Balogh and Richard H. Porter, “Olfactory Preferences Resulting from Mere Exposure in Human Neonates,”
Infant Behavior and Development
9, no. 4 (1986): 395–401.

Mats Bende and Steven Nordin, “Perceptual Learning in Olfaction: Professional Wine Tasters versus Controls,”
Physiology & Behavior
62, no. 5 (1997): 1065–70.

Gérard Brand and Laurence Jacquot, “Quality of Odor and Olfactory Lateralization Processes in Humans,”
Neuroscience Letters
316, no. 2 (2001): 91–94.

Paul A. S. Breslin, “Multi-modal Sensory Integration: Evaluating Foods and Mates,”
Chemosensory Perception
1, no. 1 (2008): (electronic pub.) doi:10.1007/s12078-008-9021-5.

“Dutch Winemaker Ilja Gort Insures His Nose for £3.9 Million,”
Times,
March 19, 2008.

Johannes Frasnelli, Mary Ungermann, and Thomas Hummel, “Ortho-and Retronasal Presentation of Olfactory Stimuli Modulates Odor Percepts,”
Chemosensory Perception
1, no. 1 (2008): 9–15.

Boyd Gibbons, “The Intimate Sense of Smell,”
National Geographic
170, no. 3 (1986): 324–61.

Avery N. Gilbert and Charles J. Wysocki, “The National Geographic Smell Survey Results,”
National Geographic
172, no. 4 (1987): 514–25.

Christopher H. Hawkes and Richard L. Doty,
The Neurology of Olfaction
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

T. Hummel, H. Guel, and W. Delank, “Olfactory Sensitivity of Subjects Working in Odorous Environments,”
Chemical Senses
29, no. 6 (2004): 533–36.

Harry Klee’s home page,
http://hos.ufl.edu/kleeweb/
.

Maria Larsson, Deborah Finkel, and Nancy L. Pedersen, “Odor Identification: Influences of Age, Gender, Cognition, and Personality,”
Journals of Gerontology: Series B: Psychological Sciences & Social Sciences
55B, no. 5 (2000): P304.

Brian London et al., “Predictors of Prognosis in Patients with Olfactory Disturbance,”
Annals of Neurology
63, no. 2 (2008): 159–66.

K. Marshall et al., “The Capacity of Humans to Identify Components in Complex Odor-Taste Mixtures,”
Chemical Senses
31, no. 6 (2006): 539–45.

S. Monnery-Patris et al., “Development of Olfactory Ability in Children: Sensitivity and Identification,”
Developmental Psychobiology
51, no. 3 (2009): 268–76.

Nobel Media AB/TWI, “Portrait of the 2004 Nobel Laureates in Medicine,” video, 7:00,
http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=638
.

Wendy V. Parr, K. Geoffrey White, and David A. Heatherbell, “Exploring the Nature of Wine Expertise: What Underlies Wine Experts’ Olfactory Recognition Memory Advantage?”
Food Quality and Preference
15, no. 5 (2004): 411–20.

Marcia Levin Pelchat, “Excretion and Perception of a Characteristic Odor in Urine after Asparagus Ingestion: A Psychophysical and Genetic Study,”
Chemical Senses
36, no. 1 (2011): 9–17.

Paul Rozin, “Taste-Smell Confusions and the Duality of the Olfactory Sense,”
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
31, no. 4 (1982), 397–401.

Gordon M. Shepherd, “Smell Images and the Flavour System in the Human Brain,”
Nature
444, no. 7117 (2006): 316−21.

Richard J. Stevenson, John Prescott, and Robert A. Boakes, “The Acquisition of Taste Properties by Odors,”
Learning and Motivation
26, no. 4 (1995): 433–55.

Ronald W. Visschers et al., “Crossmodality of Texture and Aroma Perception Is Independent of Orthonasal or Retronasal Stimulation,”
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
54, no. 15 (2006): 5509−5515.

Marvin L. Whisman et al., “Odorant Evaluation: A Study of Ethanethiol and Tetrahydrothiophene as Warning Agents in Propane,”
Environmental Science & Technology
12, no. 12 (1978): 1285–88.

W. Wippich, S. Mecklenbräuker, and J. Trouet, “Implicit and Explicit Memories of Odors,”
Archiv
fur Psychologie
141, no. 3 (1989): 195–211.

Martin R. Yeomans et al., “The Role of Expectancy in Sensory and Hedonic Evaluation: The Case of Smoked Salmon Ice-Cream,”
Food Quality and Preference
19, no. 6 (2008): 565–73.

Yaara Yeshurun and Noam Sobel, “An Odor is Not Worth a Thousand Words: From Multidimensional Odors to Unidimensional Odor Objects,”
Annual Review of Psychology
61, no. 1 (2010): 219–41.

Yaara Yeshurun et al., “The Privileged Brain Representation of First Olfactory Associations,”
Current Biology
19, no. 21 (2009): 1869–74.

Chapter 3: Touch

Lina Engelen et al., “The Effect of Oral and Product Temperature on the Perception of Flavor and Texture Attributes of Semi-solids,”
Appetite
41, no. 3 (2003): 273–81.

Kristin A. Gerhold and Diana M. Bautista, “Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms of Trigeminal Chemosensation,”
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
1170, no. 1 (2009): 184–89, doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.03895.x.

Jeb Gleason-Allured, “NEXT: Sensory Frontiers,”
Perfumer & Flavorist
35, no. 1 (2010): 18–20.

Barry G. Green, “Oral Astringency: A Tactile Component of Flavor,”
Acta Psychologica
84, no. 1 (1993): 119–125.

Jean-Xavier Guinard and Rossella Mazzucchelli, “The Sensory Perception of Texture and Mouthfeel,”
Trends in Food Science & Technology
7, no. 7 (1996): 213–19.

Pairin Hongsoongnern and Edgar Chambers IV, “A Lexicon for Texture and Flavor Characteristics of Fresh and Processed Tomatoes,”
Journal of Sensory Studies
23, no. 5 (2008): 583–99.

S. W. Medicis and K. H. Hiiemae, “Natural Bite Sizes for Common Foods,”
Journal of Dental Research
77, Special Issue A (1998): 295.

Susan S. Schiffman, Gerard Musante, Judith Conger, “Application of Multidimensional Scaling to Ratings of Foods for Obese and Normal Weight Individuals,”
Physiology & Behavior
21, no. 3 (1978): 417–22.

Salvador Soto-Faraco and Gustavo Deco, “Multisensory Contributions to the Perception of Vibrotactile Events,”
Behavioural Brain Research
196, no. 2 (2009): 145–54.

B. A. Stuck et al., “Chemosensory Event-Related Potentials in Relation to Side of Stimulation, Age, Sex, and Stimulus Concentration,”
Clinical Neurophysiology
117, no. 6 (2006): 1367–75.

Alina Surmacka Szczesniak, “Texture Is a Sensory Property,”
Food Quality and Preference
13, no. 4 (2002): 215–25.

———, “Textural Perceptions and Food Quality,”
Journal of Food Quality
14, no. 1 (1991): 75–85.

Alina S. Szczesniak and Earl L. Kahn, “Consumer Awareness of and Attitudes to Food Texture,”
Journal of Texture Studies
2, no. 3 (1971): 280–95.

———, “Texture Contrasts and Combinations: A Valued Consumer Attribute,”
Journal of Texture Studies
15, no. 3 (1984): 285–301.

Alina S. Szczesniak and Elaine Z. Skinner, “Meaning of Texture Words to the Consumer,”
Journal of Texture Studies
4, no. 3 (1973): 378–84.

Michael H. Tunick, “Food Texture Analysis in the 21st Century,”
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
59, no. 5 (2011): 1477–80.