Many years ago I had read that there was a chemical that some people could taste and others could not. It had something to do with heredity but I can’t remember what the chemical was and what exactly caused some people in familes to taste it and others outside the family could not.
In a similar vein they are now finding that among the most highly skilled chefs there may be a genetic disposition towards olfactory sensitivity. This may be a central factor in their culinary abilities.
As to your specific question, I am extremely interested in any exact replies about this topic.
Was it 6-n-propylthiouracil?
Thank you for an extremely interesting link, cynic.
It is fairly common knowledge that children have something on the order of twice the tastebud density compared to adults. This has long been cited as the reason for foods not tasting quite the same (in memory) to grown-ups as kids. For this same reason, it may explain how children are much more sensitive to the simulated body odors associated with aged cheese and other stongly flavored foods. It is interesting to see it quantified in such a fashion. I appreciate the cite.
PS: What precise flavor or odor is associated with this exact chemical?
For the 25% of us who are supertasters, PROP is intensely bitter. Supertasters generally don’t like the flavor of many vegetables (cabbage, kale, turnips, spinach, etc.) and some fruits (grapefruit) because their bitter flavor is almost unpalatable.
Cynic, how do you find the taste of celery? I don’t know if I’m a supertaster or not (I find grapefruit very strong and bitter but love it) but I seem to be the only person in the world that finds raw celery an extremely strong, highly offensive flavour.
Put a tiny amount in a salad, smother it with strong vinegary dressing, mix in anchovies and olives - and lo! The entire concoction will taste of celery.
Anything that tastes through something as strong as anchovies is the devil’s food, surely?!
My understanding is that it actually goes the other way! Supertasters (who are a minority) make lousy chefs because they experience taste so differently than most people. They tend to like food that the average person would consider too bland and are, as cynic observed, really sensitive to certain compounds. They are also lousy at wine tasting for the same reason.
FWIW, I recall reading a several years ago of a study involving gourmet french chefs and their sense of smell. Much to the researchers surprise, these chefs scored below average. The researchers concluded that since people eating expensive gourment food tended to be older, the chefs were succesful because they had a lousy sense of smell similar to that of their clientele. Make mine a Whopper!
cynic
Do you know of any easy do-it-at-home test for being a supertaster? I read about a method of counting the tastebuds but I could never quite figure out how it would work.
I just found this - I don’t know if it works though: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucbhjsj/B31webpage/PROP.htm
Hmmm. I’ve always been sensitive to taste, and a picky eater because of it… and my tongue certainly looks like the picture of the “supertaster” tongue on that site… but I remember doing that taste-test thing at school (we used PTC), and I couldn’t taste the stuff at all - which, to judge by the language being used, was not the case with many of my classmates. But, for all I could tell, they might as well have dipped the paper strip in water. This would suggest that, whatever my level of sensitivity to other tastes, I am completely insensitive to that particular compound - it doesn’t taste tolerably bitter, or weakly bitter, it just doesn’t taste of anything.
So… does that mean that there are two different things at work here? A spectrum of response to taste in general, and an on/off sensitivity to PTC? (Or does it just mean I’m weird, or I have a faulty memory? … always valid options.)