While your sense of smell plays a larger role in deciphering specific taste differences, your sense of taste categorizes the food into one of five basic groups: savory, salty, sweet, sour, bitter. Anything that doesn’t fall under those five flavors is considered an odor.
Somewhere between middle school and high school I heard a rumor that your tongue had specific zones for each flavor. It sure made a lot of sense to me … not! Turns out, it’s a freakin’ myth. As in not real. Jokes on me. All five tastes can be sensed on all parts of the tongue.
For those who aren’t sure exactly what the five tastes are, here are a few examples of each.
Sweet: fruit, honey, sugar, grains.
Sour/acidic: limes, lemons, yogurt, vinegar, fermented foods.
Savory: beef, chicken, pork, mushrooms, soy sauce.
Salty: cheese, ham, salty s*%*.
Bitter: coffee, unsweetened cocoa, dark leafy greens (i.e. parsley and collard greens).
Our sense of taste is actually pretty extraordinary. There is this well-known thing call food pairing. It’s a bit of an art. No wait – it’s actually a science. I won’t pretend to know how to do it because it’s broken down on the aromatic level. But our tongue’s flavor senses respond very well to properly-paired foods. Strawberries have fruity, green, citrus, roasted and cheesy aromas. These aromas pair well with basil (citrus), cottage cheese (cheesy) and chocolate (roasted).
The same can be said for white wine and cheese. Methyl-hexanoic is a compound found in both. This shared compound allows for these two flavors to go together like peanut butter and jelly.
The term “taste” is actually just a combination of a food’s taste, smell and touch into one single experience. And since I need every one of my senses to plow through a bag of cookies, demolish a box of doughnuts or backhoe a pint of ice cream I’ll make sure I put plenty of practice in to keep those babies sharp.