THE SCIENCE of FLAVOUR

Why do some flavours work well together and others not? It’s all a matter of science, discovers JORDAN KRETCHMER.

- JORDAN KRETCHMER

It’s the sensory reaction that can deliver pure joy or abject horror. For chefs, it can define careers. And while it can’t be taught, you can train yourself to appreciate different flavours. So just what exactly happens when you put food in your mouth and why do we all experience it differently?

“Taste and aroma work together to make flavour, but they are in fact different things,” explains molecular nutritionist Dr Emma Beckett. There are five basic tastes that occur in the mouth, which we are all familiar with: sweet, savoury, bitter, salt and sour. At the same time, we experience aroma through our nose.“This gives you the rest of the complexity of the food flavour experience – all the unique flavours like vanilla, chicken or strawberry. These exist in our mind because of aroma.”

Beckett suggests a simple at-home experiment to understand the difference. “Get a bag of lolly snakes and close your eyes and hold your nose. Randomly pull out a lolly snake, without looking and while your nose is held. Take a bite from the snake and guess what flavour you have – if you are holding your nose properly then it will taste sweet but you won’t know what flavour you have – when you let your nose go then you will get the flavour and you can open your eyes and check.” You can also do this with apples and pears, or different types of citrus. This experiment demonstrates just how complex flavour is and how important smell or olfaction is.