How Do We Taste?

You seem to be implying that the taste of fruit comes from sugar alone. I would strongly disagree, as there are many more components to flavor that just sweetness.

- Chris

3) Your tongue can taste sweet, salty, sour and bitter (and maybe "umame" ;-)). All the rest comes from your sense of smell in what is known as "retronasal olfaction." If you lose your sense of smell, your sense of taste is also greatly diminished.

Mark Lipton

We taste with different parts of the tongue for different types of taste, too. In the end, it is some part of our brain that is interpreting it for us. Suggestion can make something taste bad, even when it is not. Surroundings, even temperature of the body and the outside, can suggest to our brains something different. Swilling round the tongue gives us one sensation, and even the back of the mouth is there for a peppery after taste. A youthful taste can be very much different than an adult one, which goes on altering with age.

And "Raymond" wrote ......

Raymond, please understand, you can ONLY taste sweet, salty, sour, bitter and "umame = savoury ie MSG" - nothing else!

Everything else is olfactory = smell.

And you can only taste what you put in your mouth - so if you want to put shampoo in your mouth - well, silly you.

However, when it comes to the finer nuances of wine; your sensory perception is not one or the other - it is a combination -(including sight and [mouth] feel.)

Again, repeating what others have said, there is no such thing as fruity taste, and the expression "dry" means absence of sweetness, natural or otherwise

Of course not. How do you create apple-scented water? How many of the thousands of flavor components found in apples make it into that water? People in the flavors and fragrances industry would tell you that at best you try to simulate a flavor or smell because the real thing is just too damn complex.

But since smell is a natural component of what we think of as taste, it tastes fruity, too, except in the most nit-picky of senses (pardon the pun).

Have you tasted your shampoo? Have you properly aerated it by swirling it in your mouth and sucking air through it? Perhaps you need to do it several times to get a good statistical sample ;-)

Really, this is just a matter of semantics. To the average person, "taste" is what you sense when you put something into your mouth. If in fact the majority of that impression is formed by retronasal olfaction, does it really matter to anyone but us pedants?

Mark Lipton

You are of course literally correct, but in practice, most of what we perceive as taste (and *call* "taste") is actually smell. We can only taste sweet, sour, salt, and bitter (and umami, if you believe in it), but most of the differences we "taste" between foods are actually odors. If you take the word "taste" literally, there's probably little if any difference between the taste of a peach and a plum. But we can all clearly "taste" the difference, and regardless of the dictionary definition, we call the difference one of taste, even though it's our noses that do the distinguishing. Lose your sense of smell and a peach and a plum (and most other fruits) will be well-nigh indistinguishable except by texture; turn them into juice so the textural element is gone and they will almost all be identical to someone who can't smell.

Salut/Hi Mark Lipton,

le/on Fri, 08 Jul 2005 10:29:43 -0500, tu disais/you said:-

What about "hot"? I know that TomS can't taste it but most of us can!!

I'd argue that this is a valid 6th sense.

Absolutely right. And I'd also point out that it's somewhat naive to assume that the Oxford Dictionary is the bible when it comes to subtle and complex sensory matters. Just as I've seen several mistakes in the Larousse Gastronomique what it comes to defining obscure cooking techniques etc. Horses for courses.

Hey, wait a minute Ian! I certainly _can_ taste hot; I just happen to

*like* the effect. Gets those endorphins _flowin'_, know'msayin'? :^D

I'm not so sure that the perception of heat is a "taste" in the classical sense.

I made a large batch (several gallons) of hot sauce a week or so ago, working barehanded. After I was finished, my fingers had the same sort of tingly numbness that I get in my lips when I eat really fiery food. Does that mean that I was experiencing taste with my fingertips? FWIW, it wasn't unpleasant. Still, I knew well enough that it would have been unwise to have handled my contact lenses for awhile thereafter. =>8^O

Perhaps I'll have to reflect upon this topic over a (small) glass of my Habanero wine...

Tom S

Do we? I think you'll find its a rather moot point.

Durned new fangled science Phsaw!! Everywhere I turn, some scientist has found the "old" knowledge is now wrong. :-)