The Illusion of Flavour (From Times Series)
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The Illusion of Flavour
10:03am Tuesday 9th March 2010
By Denise Phillips »
Have you ever considered what flavour is or how it affects the enjoyment of the food that we eat. Recently I attended a lecture organised by the Guild of Food Writers entitled ‘The Illusion of Flavour’.
This fascinating talk, by MSK, a market leader in specialist ingredients, explained how the mouths detect and decode flavours. We have 5 flavours in our mouth ~ salt, sweet, sour, bitter and ………..umani,. Umani is the fifth tasting sense and lies beyond sweet, sour, bitter, & salty. It is the "savoury" sensation found in foods such as cheese, tomatoes, and mushrooms. We have taste buds all over our tongue, sweet in front, bitter at the back and they all refer back into our brain and transform information. However natural flavours can be manipulated for example Peppermint leaves are bitter but chewing gum manufacturers add sugar to it and now a new generation associate peppermint with being sweet.
And the brain can also be fooled – we ran an interesting experiment where a fruit juice coloured green was able to hide to us the fact that it was actually regular Strawberry juice.
But flavour is also linked to our ears. Yes, sound is another way we receive information that helps our brain to process the sensation of flavour. So for example if we eat crispy potato chips we expect the sound in our heads to be associated with a certain flavour. Smell and emotion are also instructively linked to flavour. Blue cheese and perfume are good examples of their effect.
It is also now clear, that a pregnant mother teaches her unborn baby flavours through her diet and this has a great impact on the child after birth. On a personal level this might explain why the child I was pregnant with whilst at Prue Leith’s cookery school is a gourmet child who eats anything while my second child was and is a very fussy eater!
Flavour is also able to evoke an emotional response. Some flavours such as coffee or chicken soup and can be associated with good times. The smell of home baked bread or a cake is often used to enhance a welcoming home when trying to sell a house. Try it!
Anticipation of flavour effects our expectations. Perhaps you have bought a bottle of Ouzo on your Greek holiday and then brought it home to enjoy. Somehow drinking it while the sun goes down on your picturesque island seems to give it far more flavour than when you have a glass in not so sunny Barnet.
Having taken on board all these ideas about flavour, I will certainly now think much more about how to accentuate the flavour of the recipes that I write and the food that I eat.
Next Article on: A Beginners Guide to Passover Cooking
