Posts tagged with experience of eating
As The Flavor Bible describes it, taste is “what is perceived by the taste buds.” In common use, “taste” also includes what is we perceive through our noses while eating, but we’ll start by just addressing taste in the mouth. In the mouth, most taste buds are on the tongue (though taste buds have also been found throughout the mouth). Taste buds are visible to the naked eye by using a mirror and sticking out your tongue. (They’re the little bumps.)
This is a diagram of the inside of a taste bud:
From Wikipedia Images
While food is in your mouth, it is broken down by chewing and saliva. Some molecules find their way into the taste pore (labeled on the top of image). Read the rest of this entry »
To understand the experience of eating, one step is to define the components that go into that experience. Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg’s description of flavor in The Flavor Bible
(highly recommended!) defines the components more elegantly than I could:
FLAVOR = TASTE + MOUTHFEEL + AROMA + “THE X FACTOR”
Taste = What is perceived by the taste buds
Mouthfeel – What is perceived by the rest of the mouth
Aroma = What is perceived by the nose
“The X Factor” = What is perceived by the other senses — plus the heart, mind, and spirit
Scientific detail on each will follow in future posts, but the basics (summarized from The Flavor Bible and coursework):
Taste happens in the mouth, primarily on the tongue. The taste buds have 5 kinds of sensors (called receptors) which sense sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (savory).
Mouthfeel happens in the mouth. Exactly as the name implies, it’s feeling (or touching) with our mouths, just like we feel with our hands, feet, etc. The sensation include temperature, texture, piquancy (or spicyness), and astringency (causing puckering). Read the rest of this entry »
