8/9/2017 Why We Taste Things the Way We Do - FineCooking
Wh We Tate Thing the Wa We Do
Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami (we’ll explain in a minute) interact in
surprising ways
By Shirley Corriher | Fine Cooking Issue 52
We tend to use the words “taste” and “flavor” interchangeably, but scientifically speaking,
they’re not the same. We have physical taste receptors on our tongues and in our mouths
for only five primary tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and the savory sensation called
umami, which the Japanese have recognized for decades but whose receptor cells were
identified just five years ago.
Taste buds contain clusters of 50 to 100 receptor cells that represent all five tastes. Maps of
the tongue that show distinct tasting areas (e.g., sweetness on the tip and sour on the
sides) are incorrect. While some areas are more sensitive to certain tastes, we actually have
receptors for all five tastes on all areas of the tongue.
Why might we need receptors for these five tastes? In a basic biological sense, a sweet taste
rewards us with energy-producing sugars, bitter warns us of possible toxins (naturally
occurring toxins taste bitter), salty points out essential minerals, and umami (pronounced
oo-MAH-mee) indicates the presence of life-sustaining proteins.
“Flavor” refers to these five tastes plus much more—texture, aroma, color, even physical
irritation—all the things that help us recognize a food as being herby, nutty, spicy, fruity,
etc. Aroma is key to identifying these flavors, as our sense of smell is much more refined
than our sense of taste.
By knowing something about how the five tastes play off one another, you’ll become better
at manipulating them to make your food taste as delicious as it can.
Salt cuts bitterness, which enhances sweetness
Salt flavors food directly by triggering our salt receptors, but it also influences flavor in
other complex and indirect ways. As pastry chefs know, adding a pinch of salt to desserts
can actually highlight sweetness. Salt reduces bitterness in a dish, and this magnifies
sweetness. To test this for yourself, pour two samples of tonic water, which is both bitter
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(from the quinine) and sweet (from sugar syrup). Taste one sample straight and add a
pinch of salt to the other. The salted tonic water seems to lose its bitterness and taste
almost like sugar water. If you’ve ever sprinkled salt on grapefruit or cantaloupe and
marveled how the fruit seemed to become sweeter, you’ve tasted this phenomenon in
action.
Salty.
Sugar can draw out hidden flavors
Sugar stimulates our receptors in an interesting way, bringing out flavors that we
otherwise wouldn’t perceive. Researchers at the University of Nottingham in England
demonstrated this by asking volunteers to chew sweetened mint-flavored gum until the
flavor was gone. Although the volunteers couldn’t taste any mint, the researchers found
mint gas was still present in their subjects’ nasal cavities. Given sugar, the volunteers said
the mint flavor returned. For cooks, the point is simply this: A bit of sweetness can bring
out other flavors in food. Just a pinch of sugar in a savory dish can make a big flavor
difference. For example, I add a bit of sugar to my salad dressings.
Sweet.
Sour ingredients can correct imbalances
Acids can balance out flavors that have veered too far in a certain direction. You can
sometimes rectify a dish that tastes too salty by adding a mild acid like lemon juice or
vinegar. These types of sour ingredients can also tame a dish that’s too spicy.
Acidic ingredients have a marvelous ability to brighten food—a spritz of lemon or lime
often seems to make a dish’s flavor come to life. All sour substances have a single hydrogen
atom proton that directly triggers our sour receptors. This hydrogen atom is small and
reacts rapidly with many ingredients, giving acids their great power to quickly add zing to
our food.
Sour.
Umami ingredients build on one another
Just as sugar and salt stimulate certain taste receptors, many foods that contain small
protein pieces (such as nucleotides and salts of glutamic acid) stimulate our umami
receptors. Umami is hard to describe; it’s sometimes referred to as “tastiness” or
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“savoriness” or “mouth satisfaction.” Umami stimulators are abundant in wine, eggs,
spinach, ripe tomatoes, mushrooms, soy sauce, and aged cheeses, especially Parmesan, to
name just a few.
One very interesting property of umami-tasting compounds is their magnifying effect on
one another. Studies have shown that combining two umami compounds produces eight
times more flavor than you would get with a single umami compound tasted alone. Put
into a culinary context, this means that cooking with, say, either mushrooms or Parmesan
will give a dish some umami “tastiness,” but if you use mushrooms and Parmesan together,
you’ll have enormously more “tastiness” than you would get with either ingredient alone.
Umami ingredients.
Opposite tastes attract
Here’s one more tip for making food taste great: don’t let your taste receptors get bored. As
the food scientist Harold McGee has noted, repeated exposure to the same taste causes the
receptors to gradually lessen their response to the taste. Variation and contrast are key to
keeping our taste receptors stimulated. Playing sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami tastes
off one another—whether you’re serving sweet apples with aged cheese or a sweet-sour
sauce for meat—makes physiological sense.
Bitter.
© 2017 The Taunton Pre, Inc. All right reerved.
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