Read Online Taste: Surprising Stories and Science About Why Food Tastes Good by Barb Stuckey - Free Book Online
Authors: Barb Stuckey
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every food should contain all five Basic Tastes. And not every food should contain all five in equal proportions. Take wine, for example. Most wines contain the sour and bitter tastes. Some wines are sweet. But almost no wines are salty. And this is a good thing: it doesn’t belong.
Sensory Snack
Salted wines exist in the world of food manufacturing. For good reason.
Adding salt to wine makes it undrinkable, which is exactly what you want when you’ve got huge vats of it sitting around a food manufacturing plant; you want to make it as unattractive to your employees to imbibe as possible. The government classifies salted wine differently from unsalted wines so that companies such as sauce manufacturers can use salted wine in their formulas without a liquor license.
When you’re cooking or seasoning a dish, it is important to make sure that one taste doesn’t dominate the others, whether all five tastes are present or not. When one taste (or aroma) dominates, we say that the dish is out of balance; the way the star would be if one of the points were bigger than the others. A wine that tasted salty would definitely be out of balance.
When one taste is out of balance, it throws off the whole food, dish, or drink.
It’s fairly easy to recognize a dish that’s out of balance from too much salt or bitterness, because it will be unpleasant (as a salty wine would be). What’s harder to identify is a dish with too much umami or savoriness. When you become more familiar with umami, you’ll be able to tell when there’s too much of it. Let’s review the five Basic Tastes very broadly; then for each Basic Taste we will go into more depth in its own chapter.
Sweet
Sweet is the term we use for simple carbohydrate compounds such as sucrose, more commonly known as sugar. Almost universally, people describe sweet tastes as pleasant. While sugar is the purest form of this taste, lots of other things naturally taste sweet, such as fruit (which contains fructose) and dairy products (which contain lactose). Sugar is a quick source of calories, so we are genetically predisposed to seek out sweet things.
Sour
We use the term sour to describe the taste of acidity. Lemon juice and vinegar are two of the most prevalent sources of sourness in food; both liquids are high in acid (citric acid in the case of lemon juice, acetic acid in the case of vinegar). Acidity is usually pleasant but can quickly become unpleasant at high levels; a squeeze of lemon can brighten up the flavor of grilled fish or a glass of iced tea, but straight lemon juice is mouth-puckeringly unpleasant. Some people, however, love the extreme sourness of lemons so much that they suck on lemons repeatedly. This can cause the enamel on their teeth to erode if they do it oftenenough for a long enough period of time. In a pretty nifty design—compliments of Mother Nature—most people find that foods with tooth-rotting acid levels are too sour to eat.
Some acids make foods and beverages taste fresh and bright, whereas other acids indicate spoilage and can trigger instant rejection of those foods. Acids also help preserve some foods, such as pickles.
Bitter
Individual tolerance varies more widely for bitter foods than for any of the other Basic Tastes. Bitter foods can be very unpleasant on their own if they are not balanced by other tastes and flavors. Coffee, tea, and red wine are common bitter beverages that can be delicious when carefully crafted. Most compounds with medicinal effects have a bitter taste—some at low levels, some at high levels. Our ability to taste bitterness has evolved to help us identify substances that can be toxic. Caffeine, for instance, is extremely bitter. It has a very real, well-recognized medicinal benefit—stimulation—but at high levels it can be toxic. Many poisons taste bitter and their medicinal effect—death—is one you probably want to avoid. That’s why it makes sense that humans have a complicated, distrustful view
Sensory Snack
Salted wines exist in the world of food manufacturing. For good reason.
Adding salt to wine makes it undrinkable, which is exactly what you want when you’ve got huge vats of it sitting around a food manufacturing plant; you want to make it as unattractive to your employees to imbibe as possible. The government classifies salted wine differently from unsalted wines so that companies such as sauce manufacturers can use salted wine in their formulas without a liquor license.
When you’re cooking or seasoning a dish, it is important to make sure that one taste doesn’t dominate the others, whether all five tastes are present or not. When one taste (or aroma) dominates, we say that the dish is out of balance; the way the star would be if one of the points were bigger than the others. A wine that tasted salty would definitely be out of balance.
When one taste is out of balance, it throws off the whole food, dish, or drink.
It’s fairly easy to recognize a dish that’s out of balance from too much salt or bitterness, because it will be unpleasant (as a salty wine would be). What’s harder to identify is a dish with too much umami or savoriness. When you become more familiar with umami, you’ll be able to tell when there’s too much of it. Let’s review the five Basic Tastes very broadly; then for each Basic Taste we will go into more depth in its own chapter.
Sweet
Sweet is the term we use for simple carbohydrate compounds such as sucrose, more commonly known as sugar. Almost universally, people describe sweet tastes as pleasant. While sugar is the purest form of this taste, lots of other things naturally taste sweet, such as fruit (which contains fructose) and dairy products (which contain lactose). Sugar is a quick source of calories, so we are genetically predisposed to seek out sweet things.
Sour
We use the term sour to describe the taste of acidity. Lemon juice and vinegar are two of the most prevalent sources of sourness in food; both liquids are high in acid (citric acid in the case of lemon juice, acetic acid in the case of vinegar). Acidity is usually pleasant but can quickly become unpleasant at high levels; a squeeze of lemon can brighten up the flavor of grilled fish or a glass of iced tea, but straight lemon juice is mouth-puckeringly unpleasant. Some people, however, love the extreme sourness of lemons so much that they suck on lemons repeatedly. This can cause the enamel on their teeth to erode if they do it oftenenough for a long enough period of time. In a pretty nifty design—compliments of Mother Nature—most people find that foods with tooth-rotting acid levels are too sour to eat.
Some acids make foods and beverages taste fresh and bright, whereas other acids indicate spoilage and can trigger instant rejection of those foods. Acids also help preserve some foods, such as pickles.
Bitter
Individual tolerance varies more widely for bitter foods than for any of the other Basic Tastes. Bitter foods can be very unpleasant on their own if they are not balanced by other tastes and flavors. Coffee, tea, and red wine are common bitter beverages that can be delicious when carefully crafted. Most compounds with medicinal effects have a bitter taste—some at low levels, some at high levels. Our ability to taste bitterness has evolved to help us identify substances that can be toxic. Caffeine, for instance, is extremely bitter. It has a very real, well-recognized medicinal benefit—stimulation—but at high levels it can be toxic. Many poisons taste bitter and their medicinal effect—death—is one you probably want to avoid. That’s why it makes sense that humans have a complicated, distrustful view
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