Sunday, July 6, 2008

Science Catches up With What We Already Knew

For a hundred years we/ve been told by food scientists that we taste only sweet, sour, salty and bitter. For thousands of years before that we knew that we tasted more than just those those four. How do you fit an herb into one of those categories? Or bacon, or coffee? Or a pork roast ( Boston Butt) on a cold winter's eve after you've been out in it ? Or ripe real tomatoes simmering on the stovetop? A good cognac,or a complex red wine, or various teas? Eggplant? Almost anything fried in butter, like fish finished off with wine, parsley and tarragon?

Maybe it is partly semantics. Smell and taste combined make flavor. We have known that forever. We sniff and breathe deeply thru our nose, taking it all in. We swoon to aroma. The Japanese have long added a fifth taste - that called umami, which is a savory meaty taste, that adds richness and depth and completeness to taste. Msg is the artificial version of it. That works. It really works.

Food scientists, acording to an article in this month's Gourmet Magazine, have recently discovered, as a spinoff of the human genome project, that we have about 40 taste receptors located everywhere in the mouth. Yes, finally. Also that we have about 300 olfactory( smelling) receptors. If you do the math you will now discover almost limitless combinations of taste and smell, hence flavors. Chefs, of course, and grandma, and many more of us have already known that.

It's like, duh.

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