I think few people order a cold cheeseburger.
And I think few people ask for a hot bologna sandwich.
So is there an actual physiological reason some foods taste good only when they are hot, or only when they are cold?
I mean, take chicken soup. Why does it taste better hot than cold - same ingredients in both bowls, only the temperature varies.
Most flavors are actually sensed by smell, and require the evaporation of volatile compounds to be detected. Some foods don’t have much in the way of pleasant volatile compounds, and are best enjoyed cold, so one can savor the saltiness/acidity/sweetness, combined with their texture and consistency. Others have some excellent flavors that are only released when they’re hot.
Also if chicken soup gets cold, the fat congeals, which is really nasty.
Nametag has the answer – the simplest example of this is probably coffee, and we can see exactly why it tastes like heaven when it’s hot and dirty ass when it’s cold.
The substance that gives coffee most of its flavour is caffeol. The taste buds are only sensitive to it when it is volatile (ie; evaporating.) Caffeol has a boiling point of around 145 degrees, so coffee at that temperature or above tastes like coffee. (Of course it tastes best between 165 and 175 degrees.) When coffee cools much below the boiling point of the creamy, wonderful caffeol, you only taste the other, bitter compounds in the solution. (Coffee that’s been left on a burner for too long tastes “burnt” because all the caffeol has boiled off.)
While that’s the main answer, to a much lesser degree things taste different depending on temperature due to a recently discovered mechanism called “Thermal taste”, in which the taste buds are stimulated by temperature alone, causing “phantom” perceptions of sweetness, sourness, or saltiness.
Also, in the case of meats, heating them up melts the fat, and fat not only spreads the chemicals which are responsible for flavor around, but because our tastebuds are designed to seek out fat, things which have a higher fat content tend to be more flavorful. A lot of low fat foods are actually loaded with sugar, since without the fat, they tend to be rather bland tasting. The cheapest and easiest way to correct this is to add more sugar.
Larry Mudd, but what about tiramisu and iced coffee and Kahluha? How ’ those work?
The bitterness of the cold coffee is hugely mitigated by sugar (and fat) in those goodies, Balthisar.
Bitter things can be very pleasant in a dessert. Cocoa is even more bitter than coffee, but the flavour is wonderful when it’s sweetened and loaded with fat. Chocolate ice cream is fantastic, but few people would be able to choke down a solution of pure cocoa in cold water at all, much less enjoy it.
It works the other way, too. Mangoes taste best when cold. A room-temperature mango has a nasty, medicinal note that no doubt is due to some chemical with a fancy name that is able to evaporate at that temperature 
cold water tastes better because at cold temperatures bacteria cannot grow in it
this statement might sound backwards but really it is the foward way to think
our bodies are so perfect and have either been created that way or evolved that way
so obviously there is gonna be mechanisms in our body to identify the best way and methods to eat food one of them being drinking water that is cold. warm water when in a river or a spring tends to be filled with higher levels of bacteria causing digesting problems like diarreah sp?. things like coffee and tea taste better (philosophically) because these things get that way by way of heat. YOU CAN NOT MAKE COFFEE OR TEA VERY EASILY WITHOUT HEAT. THINGS ARE HEALTHIER AND CLEANER WHEN CONSUMED SHORTLY THEREAFTER THEY ARE MADE OR PREPARED. so as a result of this our bodies adapted or were created(to be politically correct)to enjoy things like coffee and tea at higher temperatures because a sign that these things aren’t fresh is cold coffee and tea. the ideas of REASON and CAUSE are philosophical ideas, but it seems to me that so many people try to mix these in with pure science and think that no one will know.
also, if you go and think about all of the “foods” that taste okay at room temperature it is probably low in water content. ex dried fruit, nuts, bread, candy. the wetter something is the better is tastes hot but since fruit has a container or peel around it stays clean from bacteria growing in it and that it why it is high in water content but still tastes great at room temperature. if any of you guys has a type of food or an argument against what i am saying i would love the hell out of you if you replied
supporting comments would be appreciated also.
Okay, I think that was one of those stream of consiousness type posts.
Anyway, I think that we tend to associate certain types of food as hot/cold, and if they suddenly switch, they taste “weird”. Take for example, savoury soup. Most savoury soups are served hot, but Borsch can be served cold as well. The first time you try the cold Borsch, it’s going to taste pretty bad.
I think the “evolutionary adaptation” is largely incorrect. For the most part, animals rarely ever encounter food that is largely above body temperature and the relatively short time that we have developed cooked foods shouldn’t have affected out genetic makeup to any significant extend. I would wager that socialization has a lot to do with it as well as the aforementioned texture/taste factors. It may also be that we have a previous evolutionary adaptation that makes us seek food in the form that contains the most readily accessible nutrients, hence why we generally tend to eat fruits raw and relatively cook while meat is almost universally cooked.
But a surprisngly large part of it might be completely arbitrary as well. Several chefs are experimenting with the notion of taste not as a physiological response, but as a psycho-social response. What we expect food to taste like has a surprisingly large effect on what it actually tastes like. I believe Heston Blumethal in the UK and Ferran Adria in Spain have been doing quite a bit of work in this area.
That’s interesting, and reminds me of a story I heard of a person coming into the U.S. or Europe from — I want to say an African country, but I’m not sure. Anyway, most of the foods in her culture were cooked to some degree. She found raw vegetables disgusting. A raw cucumber slice, for example, she perceived as slimy, whereas her hosts considered it juicy and refreshing.
I wish I could recall more of the details.
I told that story here in some thread or another about what Americans do or eat that’s percieved as disgusting in other cultures. It was a friend of mine who grew up in The Democratic Republic of Congo. EVERYTHING is cooked there, including all vegetables. We hypothesize that it is due to the heat and the very real possibility of bacterial or insect infection in very little time, but the people of course simply cook everything because that’s what you do with food. One day, she went to a fancy-schmancy dinner at a friend’s house where a new Frech Chef was working. The cucumber was sliced thin and tossed in a light dressing. She actually threw up the cucumber later, IIRC.
12 years in Europe and America, and she can eat salad now, but cucumber’s still a little beyond her. She and I like to tease each other - she’ll catch caterpillars and ask me if I want them fried up for a snack (she’s never actually made them for me - she says the fuzzy ones we have around here get stuck in your teeth!), and I chase her around with cucumber slices from my salad! 
We’re very mature like that.
Thanks! I knew I’d read it somewhere! I even got most of the details right.
Ah, so Asian people are less evolved (or the Creator hates them,) since they prefer to drink water served at room temperature or warmer.
No, wait, that’s just silly.
I take it you’ve never had a fried bolongna sandwich? :eek: Hot AND delicious, I say. I’m guessing it’s a regional thing, but it’s quite popular where I grew up in Western NY. It’s the kind of thing you see on a menu in more old-fashioned family restaurants.
I agree with delphica regarding the fried bologna sandwich. Very popular here in Indiana, too!
I prefer cheese at room temperature. It seems to bring the flavor out.
I always assumed the answer of food aromas lied in the theories of brownian motion from botanist Robert Brown. The more you heat a substance, the greater the molecular energy and the greater and faster the “aroma” molucules diffused to human being’s sensory nerves. Certain foods have varying heat capacities, thusly when you heat ice cream, the heat threshhold is much lower and thusly the heat required to achieve brownian motion so that the molecules, or essence, of ice cream can travel to our receptors so that we may taste it, is too high and destroys or denatures the ice cream molecules before they reach our sensors. Thusly, ice cream tastes better cold than hot. Other substances, chili, have much higher heat capacities and allow the molecules to retain their structure and essence while achieving Brownian motion allowing the molecules to diffuse to our sensors still intact. It’s all theory, I understand, but for the right-brained it makes a lot more sense than “just because.”
I suspect texture has as much to do with it as anything - and research has shown that texture is a better predicter of what people will like than flavor is. It’s a major aspect to taste, and it can change a lot when things change temperatures. The example above of congealed fat in chicken soup is one example; in High Cheese’s bizarre and nonsensical post just above mine, he offers ice cream as an example without noting that ice cream’s texture changes radically if it warms up a little. A lot of foods are like that; the solidification of fats and so forth has a significant effect on a food’s perceived taste.
This explains it with more clarity. I misidentified the theory as Brownian Motion, which, clearly, it is not; but hardly nonsensical. Heat changes the structure (texture if you like) of the product thus changing its taste. Whether we enjoy the taste or not is dependant on our individual chemistry. Again, this is theory.