Edible Vancouver Island Jan/Feb 2023

C U L I N A R Y S C I E N C E

WORDS LIISA SALO Exploring the connection between smell and taste Smell to Taste

A well-known adage attributed to the first-century Roman gourmet Marcus Apicius, is that we “eat first with our eyes.” In this digital age of instant ac cess to mouth-wateringly gorgeous food photography and video, we are given plenty of opportunities to imagine the flavour of food through our eyes alone. However, if we remove sight en tirely (eating blindfolded, for example) there is unlikely to be much impact on the flavour of the dish. In contrast, removing the sense of smell has a direct impact on one’s experience and enjoyment of the flavours of food. The re cent phenomenon of loss of smell due to COVID-19 raises the question: how much does our sense of smell impact our experi ence of tasting food? And what’s the difference between taste and flavour anyway? First, let’s look at what is happening biologically during the pro cess of eating and the interplay between our senses. DEF I N I NG TASTE VS . FLAVOUR Taste refers specifically to what occurs in the mouth, with thou sands of taste buds on our tongue and soft palate detecting five categories: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (savoury). These fundamental starting points for flavour can remain even when our smell is compromised, such as when you have a stuffed-up nose from a cold. Flavour is a more complex composition of taste and smell work ing together. Before food even enters our mouth, our noses de

tect aromas via olfactory sensory neurons with receptor proteins that send messages to the brain. Chewing further enhances this process as the mastication of food releases more odour molecules (think of how the scent of mint leaves is amplified when you rub them between your fingers, for example) and more air is passed directly to the nasal passages. The separate taste and smell messages interact, enhancing our perception. We then form an opinion about the flavour: “delicious,” “bland,” “too much nutmeg,” “not as good as Grandma used to make,” or whatever the case may be. Eric Holbrook, MD, Eye and Ear Surgeon at the University of Massachusetts, summarizes the process: “Taste and smell together—in addition to color, texture and tempera ture—is what gives you a sense of what you’re eating. Flavour is what you experience when all of these senses are activated at the same time.” LOS I NG YOUR SENSE OF SME LL Since smell and taste are so intimately entwined, how does a lack of smell impact the experience of eating? During the height of the pandemic, a common symptom (more so with the earlier variants) was losing one’s sense of smell. My friend Lori Wood house was willing to share her experience of COVID-related loss of smell with me. “It sucked,” she recalled with a laugh, summing it up in just two words. “It started about four days after coming down with the usual cold and flu-like symptoms. There was a dwindling and

36 JAN/FEB 2023 EDIBLE VANCOUVER ISLAND