When we are seeking delicious food, we are seeking more than flavor. Besides our hands, the brain dedicates more nerve space to the face, especially the mouth and nose, than any other part of the body. Beyond the obvious seat of four out of five of our senses, the head is also the first part of our bodies to interact with the world at large. Whether we are looking for savory or sweet foods to stimulate our desires, we are actually seeking complex stimulation of a complicated evolutionary developed sensory system. It shouldn’t be a surprise that these senses are so deeply wired into our being. It is likely that our sensory abilities started with the very first organic cell consuming the first bit of food. But we are seeking more than that now. We have become refined in our desires, and have become savvy in editing our world to create the experiences that bring us the most sensual joy. A chef friend of mine once said that the act of dining is the only act we make in which we engage all five senses: seeing the setting and then taking in the decorated plates in from of us, we are hearing our surroundings, the soft music, the buzz of voices; we are smelling the myriad smalls from our own table and others; feeling the soft tablecloth or cold metal ware in our hands, and of course tasting the food in front of us. Seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling… these are familiar to any of us. But what is tasting? Most people confuse the term “to taste,” which has come to mean examining the flavor of the food, the sum total of what makes something phenomenal or just so-so. But scientifically and sensually, taste is a very specific set of chemical sensors isolated to the mouth parts of our body. Flavor on the other hand, which is what many people refer to when the mention taste, is much more involved than that. Flavor has to do with taste, one of the five physical senses that is specifically isolated to the mouth in combination with aroma. The tactile sense of the tongue is significantly entirely different from smell/aroma, which is the multifaceted and incredibly complicated realm of the nasal passages and olfactory system. It is here that thousands and thousands of aromatic molecules are parsed, read, and turned into electrical signals and sent to the brain for interpretation. Curiously, scents are wired more directly to the brain than any other sense, triggering emotions and memories often as vivid as deja vu. “[This] is likely due to brain anatomy. Incoming smells are first processed by the olfactory bulb, which starts inside the nose and runs along the bottom of the brain. The olfactory bulb has direct connections to two brain areas that are strongly implicated in emotion and memory: the amygdala and hippocampus. Interestingly, visual, auditory (sound), and tactile (touch) information do not pass through these brain areas. This may be why olfaction, more than any other sense, is so successful at triggering emotions and memories.” [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-babble/201501/smells-ring-bells-how-smell-triggers-memories-and-emotions] There is even some discussion now that the previous “lock-and-key” understanding of aromatic molecules and our sensory systems is still rather Newtonian--2D--in our equations, but could even be due to a far more complicated method of quantum field differences across the surface of otherwise identical molecules. Note this report in BBC Science (this is the field of Quantum Biology). Since new foods--and hence new flavors--are being found, bred and grown in our ever-shrinking world, the combinations of these aromatics due to the nature of fragrance and flavor are constantly toyed with and explored by both scientists and chefs alike. It is hard to imagine a more tactile and yet deeply personal exploration of almost anything on earth beyond the infinite combinations of flavors and the experiences of gustatory pleasures. As a result of the assumed “simplicity” of taste versus the incredibly convoluted sciences dedicated to identifying and replicating aroma, the complexities of the role of our tongue/mouth are still unfolding in both labs and consumer tasting panels everyday. As suggested above, Flavor is the combination of taste and aroma, and is thusly the subject of every kitchen and campfire from Antartica to Siberia, from prehistory into the distant future, and everywhere (and everywhen) in between. The experience of flavor is subjective in every way: With the connections of memories to aromas and the combination of tastes, physical sensations of the mouth, the experience of flavor is extremely personal. The experiences of taste, however, are molecular. Let’s take a look at how taste works. Long before we had institutions to tell us what to avoid, our tongues have long been on the job, letting us know that food we are tasting is rich in certain beneficial attributes. The various tastes of the tongue are actually sophisticated chemical receptors, capable of detailed analysis and quick reporting through signaling to the brain. The mouth is the first defense against infiltration of bad food, bad chemicals, and other poisons into our body. It is also the first sensory organ to sense incoming material for nutrition rich foods, as well as the first place that saliva secretion actually begins to enzymatically break down our foods. Our digestive organs, starting with our mouths, are the most integrated of any of our systems with the earth outside. As a result, they are incredibly complex in their immunity, their symbiotic relationships with bacteria, viruses and fungi, as well as with the nervous system. And all of this starts with the mouth. It is quite necessary that what we put into our mouths be thoroughly analyzed by the tongue before we swallow it and assimilate into our bodies. Looking at humans strictly as organisms concerned with survival, the nuances of taste is meant to be the first defense against the opposite: untimely mortality. In fact, both smell and taste are products of billions of years of evolution asking one question for each sense, since the first motile cell. For smell the question is “do I move towards this or move away from this?” and for taste: “should I assimilate this or spit it out?” Though simplistic, one could say that life on Earth has survived to become us by moving towards and eating the right things and spitting out and running away from the wrong things. Let’s take a look at the 5 tastes we know about (so far):
Taste, of course, is hard to isolate when combining foods and flavors. The flavor of food starts with the aromas hitting our nasal passage before the food ever touches the tongue, and our experience of the food is much more than its simple make-up of the five tastes outlined above. Beyond aroma, the mouthfeel of foods can affect the way the tongue interacts with the molecules of flavor. Mouthfeel is affected by starches, mucilaginous ingredients in plants and mushrooms, the temperature of the food eaten, from very cold to very hot, the crunchiness of an item, the crumb, the chewy-ness or suppleness, etc. etc. In addition to the physical feeling from the texture of the food, we also find chemical reagents, such as capsicum, which activates the same heat-sensitive cells as literally being burned, or the very odd molecule in szechuan peppercorns, used liberally in Szechuan cooking. This strange molecule activates the touch sensors of the tongue, and stimulates them to fire to the brain the same signal as being vibrated softly at 5o Hz. The science of taste (for now) is pretty basic. The science of aroma is much more convoluted. The science of flavor, therefore, is even more complicated again, combining the various smells and taste sensations. But truly our experiences of eating is much more than a simple combination of our senses, but a deeply personal experience of memories, new experiences, aromas, tastes, sensations, and textures. Science can tell us how to combine various aromas and textures to create the desired effect, but it cannot tell us what we subjectively like. That, dear reader, is up to you Zachary Hunter Zachary Hunter is a lifelong devotee to flavor, a professionally trained chef who has been obsessed with mushrooms and uncovering the unknown with regards to edible mushroom chemistry and physiology. He is a member of the NAMA's (North American Mycological Association) Culinary Committee. He lives in Oaxaca, Mexico with his wife Kim, where the run MycoAdventures in the mountains of Oaxaca and beyond.
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Zachary Hunter
Zachary Hunter is a lifelong devotee to flavor, a professionally trained chef who has been obsessed with mushrooms and uncovering the unknown with regards to edible mushroom chemistry and physiology. He is a member of the NAMA's (North American Mycological Association) Culinary Committee. He lives in Oaxaca, Mexico with his wife Kimberly Hunter--known collectively as the "Mushroom Hunters"--where they offer experiential immersions: artisan-maker intensives as Traveling Traders Bazaar and Mushroom adventures as The Fungivore. 2024 will be their sixth season curating adventures together in Mexico. Learn more at TheFungivore.com or TravelingTradersBazaar.com Archives
April 2024
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