We all understand that there are five senses in taste (i.e. sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami), but can we quantify this information? For example, I would eat something and say it’s like 10% salty, 20% sweet, 15% salty, 15% bitter, and 40% umami. Is that right? I also recall, if that’s not the case, seeing something in terms of a radar chart which can show varying levels of the tastes in some foods.
Not accounting for other attributes such as texture, how do we differentiable things that “don’t have taste?” Like I can eat some celery and say it has no flavour, then I can see some ice and say it has no flavour, then I can eat some rice and say it has no flavour, etc…But in that case, they DO have flavour in a sense, right? How would you describe it then?
I’ve brought up this topic asking if there was such thing as a “taste constant” where you could base tastes relative to that uniform value. They would continuously tell me that taste is completely subjective and that you couldn’t do something like that. They would reference colour perception as another example of where we all perceive things slightly differently. Two things about that:
Taste isn’t subjective, FLAVOUR is (this isn’t me being pedantic, I just believe that taste can be expressed in terms of absolutes, although I am not completely sure).
Light has a sort of “universal constant” that you can base things off of.
In case you didn’t understand what I was getting at above, it basically boils down to:
[ul]
[li]To what extent can you compare tastes of food to each other?[/li][li]Can you describe/analyze taste using numbers or percentages?[/li][li]Is there really such thing as “no taste”?[/li][/ul]
Any insights on the matter?
There are many more attributes to food and it’s taste than just the ingredients and preparation.
Hunger lvl, Atmosphere, mood, hormone levels, company and other stimulations taking ace a outside of the plate.
Let’s say if your daughter makes her first batch of cookies or your Italian grandmother makes some sauce or a festive Thanksgiving, the classic amazing taste of camp/hiking food or the first meal a new partner makes you will have a significant impact on the dish. Food and eating mean much more than the parts. And the outside factors change the way you taste the food and derive satisfaction. Even down to the way we detect saltiness bitterness and the other flavors.
I like to say at least 51% of a plate is what is going on around it.
I know this is not what you are getting at exactly but I belive the lab experiments won’t translate to real life.
If something has what you described as no taste I call it neutral.
But can impact other flavors to a major degree depending on way to many factors for me to list.
Also, the tasting that happens on your tongue–the sweet/sour/salty/bitter/umami part–is almost insignificant in comparison to the tasting that goes on in your nose.
I used to work with a major food company and dealt with sensory data a lot. We had trained panelists who would taste our products, and rate them on a variety of flavor, aroma, texture, and aftertaste attributes. The panelists were initially screened to determine that they could differentiate flavors to a level that was deemed appropriate. Once on the panel, they would have training on basic tastes and flavors expected in the samples to be tested.
For the basic tastes, a scale was used to put a number against a solution of known strength. So a 2% salt solution was given, say a 4.0. With good training, they would be able to repeatedly rate foods for salt impact based on that scale. Same with the other basic tastes.
For the other flavors, aromas, textures, appearance, and aftertastes, they would get a group of samples similar to those that they would expect to sample. As a panel, they would discuss what flavors, etc. were present in the samples. Many common flavors have anchors given by commercial products or can be easily produced. For instance, egg yolk flavor could be a diluted egg yolk. Green flavor for tea could be as simple as a diluted puree of a common green plant, such as grass. After training, the panelists would test the samples and rate each on the strength of each of the attributes.
The trained panelists would not say how much they liked a sample, as that is not their job. Naive consumers are used to rate the samples for overall liking, as well as a variety of other attributes. The two data sets are then merged, analyzed, and hopefully some insight is gained as to what attributes are driving the overall consumer liking of a product. More often, insight is gained as to what drives consumer dislike of a product.
Well you are talking about how much one enjoys particular tastes on particular occasions, which is a different matter. However, flavors themselves (and other aspects of food, such as texture, that contribute to our enjoyment or otherwise of it) are perfectly quantifiable, just as for instance, colors are. As it is with flavors, some people might generally prefer, say, red, and others might prefer green, and this may vary in individuals as their moods and circumstances change, but color is perfectly quantifiable (though doing so is much more complex than many people recognize). Taste or flavor is no different. I can assure you that the food industry spends millions - maybe billions -on quantitative studies of flavor, what affects it, and waht combinations of flavors people tend to like (and when). It is very much worth their while to do so. These things have a huge impact on their bottom line.
I have to say that anyone who finds celery and rice only have flavor “in a sense” should keep on working on appreciating food more before worrying about quantifing that appreciation.
You certainly can quantifiably analyze the chemical composition of food. Acids are sour, bases are bitter, so by PH alone you could say a particular food is “this much sour” or “this much bitter”. For other tastes, smells and textures, you could have any number of measurements.
The problem is that it isn’t helpful. “Taste” as a human understands it, is by definition subjective. Knowing the chemical composition of food won’t tell you whether you’ll enjoy it, anymore than analyzing the spectrum of colors in a painting will tell you if the painting is art or a child’s scribble.
Can you elaborate on what you’re trying to get at? I meant that they do not have as vivid a taste (in terms of the five types) as most other foods; that’s what I mean by having no taste. I know they taste different but using the adjectives of taste alone, can you differentiate between then? Am I supposed to be tasting something different?
That’s what I was going to say, but it is possible at a large granular degree. Artificial smell making labs are very sophisticated these days. They can run the smell particles through a computer detector, which spits out a recipe for that smell, a lot of Phenols as I recall. And a lot of it is in your brain. A smell of 30% A, 40%C and 30%C might be mapped to Cherry, and 30% A 41%B and 29%C might be mapped to Apple, and processed as vastly different because you decided too remember them that way.
Then they can replicate it very accurately to the human nose(Fido or T-Rex may disagree with the accuracy assessment) I don’t remember the numbers, but there are something like 2 dozen very common chemicals, and 80 or so more uncommon ones that they can get most food and natural smells exactly. So You can “describe” a taste very accurately if you break down into the taste components, and 100 or so smell components.
I’m not **FrankJBN **, but here’s my take on what he’s saying:
Celery is anything but tasteless. It’s a fairly strong aromatic; the scent and flavor carry through things like soups, stocks, and sauces very clearly. It’s one of the three basic ingredients in a mirepoix, for example - something you might not have heard of, but you’ve had if you’ve ever had soup or a many sauces and gravies.
You might not be able to pick out “celery” as a taste on its own if you haven’t paid attention before, but if I made you a stock with and without celery, I think you could tell the difference. A lot of flavors are like that - it’s not so much that every single person can pick out each flavor in a dish that might contain dozens of ingredients, but a reasonably trained person could pick out that one sauce is flatter and not as herbaceous as another. It would taste like something is missing, and once you can detect that, it’s not that big of leap to be able to pick out just what is missing.
Rice is a bit more subtle, but absolutely has a flavor. I do think a lot of rice you get in the US is low-quality and/or has been improperly cooked. Asians get VERY picky about their rice, for example, as it’s one of the basics of a lot of Asian cuisines. Rice can be aromatic - Basmati, Jasmine, and other rices are considered high-quality and very flavorful. The standard short-grained, boiled-to-death or instant rice we get so often in the US, not so much.
Ah. Well that explains a lot. In that sense, you cannot really express the flavour in terms of the five tastes, but rather with different sorts of adjectives? I guess the problem for me is the fact that I don’t have the words to explain what I’m tasting. :dubious:
But back on-topic, thank you guys for the insights. I understand that in the end, all of this is totally subjective and that different people will like different compositions of food, but I was just wondering if you could “accurately” deduce what foods that people would like or not like based on the make of other foods they’ve tried (ex. this person will not like things above this sweetness level).
It probably doesn’t help that I can pretty much eat everything. Except mayonnaise. That stuff is nasty.
Not to put too fine a point on it, yeah, by definition taste is only one component of flavor. A bottle of vanilla extract doesn’t have much in the way of taste, but it’ll definitely change any food you dump it in! Aromas like vanilla don’t need to get anywhere near your mouth before you can sense them (imagine a bakery!), but you can’t taste a taste until it hits your wet tongue. If you’ve got a handful of salt or white sugar, you’re going to have to lick the granules to taste them.
Aromas are a lot harder to quantify than tastes are, because we have thousands of different aroma receptors and only those five tastes. It’s possible to describe aromas in a mutually intelligible way but unless you’re using pure extracts of familiar chemicals, like cinnamaldehyde in Red Hots, there’s still going to be some subjectivity in what particular words you use to describe it. Warm, sharp, fruity, floral, cheesy, and earthy are some terms often used to describe aromas, but the only good way to learn what they mean is to experience a lot of aromas and hear them described.
Beyond taste and aroma, there’s still a ton of other properties that affect the overall experience of food, from astringency to mouthfeel to particle size and way more that I don’t know anything about, but those two are probably the easiest to understand and mess with.
So going way back to celery and rice, yes, they don’t have much in the way of taste (celery is a little salty, rice is a bit sweet from the starch), but the have distinctive and even strong aromas. You could tell a strained celery soup from a strained rice soup without even tasting them.
Athena certainly has the point of what I was saying.
As for explaining using only the “taste” terms you listed, I will note(in the quantifiable arena) that celery is high in L-glutamate, identified as the majot component of umami, and in the non-quantifiable, I will go with umami as first described to westerners as savoriness a mere sensation of the delicious (umai) taste (mi). I can taste rice and it provides a pleasant sensation.