A Pinch of Culinary Science

by Anu Inkeri Hopia

  The liking votes were, as usual, rather mixed, and an interesting result was that the high-salt pastas received approximately the same number of votes for most and least preferred. The high-salt regular wheat pasta appeared as particularly controversial in this respect. Yet again, we learnt that even though analytic tasting can give pretty clear results, we part when it comes to personal preference.

  Which recommendations could we give to those appreciating a good, al dente structure in their pasta, while at the same time maintaining a low salt intake? It seems that the Italians do have good reasons to recommend a relatively high amount of salt in the water. But it helps if you use durum wheat pasta high in gluten-forming proteins, and make sure to limit the cooking time, as using low-salt water might more easily give overcooked pasta. Even if you do, an Italian still might choose to throw the pasta at the kitchen wall.

  Can we avoid sticky pasta if we add oil into the pasta cooking water? It is often suggested that oil in the cooking water would give an oily surface to the pasta which would then prevent the individual pasta strands or pieces from sticking to each other. However, the oil floats on the surface of the water and cannot reach the pasta immersed in the water. Oil will help against sticking if added after draining off the water. The oil will also contribute to depth and richness of flavor and a smooth texture. If you want to avoid sticky pasta, use copious amounts of water, enough salt, and stop the cooking in time. ×

  16

  You Can See It, Hear It, Taste It and Feel It—What Is It? It Is the Taste of Food!

  Let’s begin with a story. Once, not very long ago, in a restaurant, a sommelier poured Anu two different red wines and asked her to tell which wine went better with the main course. Already, as she watched the wine gushing from the bottle into the glass, Anu knew which one she would prefer. The decision, made unhesitatingly in a split second, proved right. The wine she had chosen went beautifully with the dish while the other wine tuned both the wine and the dish down to somewhere between ordinary and bland.

  What did the chemist base her decision on? The color of the wine, the viscosity, the shape of the glass or the sound of the wine being poured? Did her eyes, ears or nose register something that her analytic self did not have time to parse or analyze? Perhaps the decision involved all of those sensory modalities at one and the same time. What she knew for sure was that the unhesitating decision was made by someone else than her conscious self. Her rational half had willingly taken the role as passenger in this multisensory trip where someone else was doing the driving. That “someone” guided her through the stream of senses where she could not tell where one perception started and another faded away. But whether the driver was her mythical subconscious self or some yet unexplored neurochemical phenomena, the trip was nevertheless an enjoyable flow of senses. To everyone who claims to be a rational and analytical person we recommend these types of moments, to leave the intellectual mind behind and let the sensations and emotions be the guide. A welcome change from the routines of everyday life!

  Food, and why not all other pleasures as well, are produced by the joint effort of several of the senses. To “taste” the food when experiencing our meal, dish, or snack, we actually use all our five senses -sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. These sensations do not operate in isolation but intertwine so that one sensation influences the quality and intensity of the other. Furthermore, these sensations are connected to our memories and values, which further influences how we “taste” our food. Losing only one of these will fundamentally alter our experience. You can experience the importance of smell in food if you have a cold, or by pinching your nose, while chewing the food. Using only our sense of taste in the mouth, it can sometimes be difficult to identify which food we are tasting. Is this apple or grape juice? When we then recover from the cold, or stop pinching our nose, the smell sensation returns and the food becomes identifiable. In other words, smell and taste together create an experience that we, in layman’s terms, call food’s “taste.” Vanilla has virtually no taste but an intense aroma. So, when you’re enjoying a vanilla ice cream, it is not a vanilla-tasting ice cream; you are having a vanilla-scented ice cream. Likewise, the experience of lemon consists of both taste (mostly sour) and its characteristic scent. Taste and smell sensations also influence one another so that by combining a specific odor with food we can enhance or suppress tastes such as sweetness or saltiness. For example, smells that we have accustomed to associate with sweetness, such as strawberry or banana, can enhance sweetness in food. Similarly, odors commonly experienced together with saltiness can enhance the sensation of saltiness, and even induce the notion of a salt taste where there is no salt (more about this in the chapter on reducing the amount of salt in your food).

  According to current knowledge, we have taste receptors for only five taste characteristics, namely sweetness, sourness, bitterness, saltiness, and the savory umami taste (there is recent research that indicates that we may have receptors for other experiences as well, such as fat and metallic taste). Even though we have a limited number of tastes, we are able to discern, for instance, between different types of sweetness, such as the difference between sugar and aspartame, stevia or fructose sugar. So perhaps we need to start talking about different shades of sweet, sour, bitter and so forth. Smell is even more versatile, as the most recent research suggests that we can identify tens of millions of different smells. We have a limited number of basic taste sensations, but we don’t have “basic smells.” When it comes to the nose, the closest we get is to go by association, be it particular things or experiences, such as “lemony aroma” or “wet dog.” This is the reason that those describing aromatic foods and drinks such as wine and coffee use such flowery language when describing a product: “This Ethiopian coffee has character of bergamot, citrus, and jasmine, with a distinct lingering sweetness and rounded acidity.” Our brains also receive other signals such as the temperature and texture of food that we feel through the trigeminal nerve system while chewing our food. The chemical burning sensation of, for example, chili interacts with our heat sensing nerves: “This is hot!” And this is also embedded in the language as we use the same word for the two. The cooling sensation from menthol comes from the chemical interaction between menthol molecules and our temperature receptors (“menthol” is an ambiguous word describing a concept as well as a distinct chemical compound found in various plants). The tingling sensation from carbonated drinks appears due to mild stimulation of the pain receptors in our mouth. All these work together in an interplay to give us the experience that we call the flavor of food. ×

  Senses of man, unite! In addition to smell-taste pairs, sight perceptions have been shown to blend together with taste into a merged (multi)sensory experience. For example, the red color in food has been observed to enhance sweetness whereas green enhances the intensity of sourness. Don’t be disturbed, though, if your personal feeling is that green is bitter and red is sour, as these “tastes of colors” are very strongly based on learned associations that we start making from the very beginning of our life. There is no right or wrong when it comes to personal sensory associations. However, when many people are asked, common patterns do emerge. These learned associations also have an effect on how we taste our food. Thus, if strawberry jam is the red food that you usually have, you will most likely experience the color red as sweet, and red color in your food may even enhance the intensity of the sweetness in your food. However, if your experience of red fruits is mostly lingonberries or cranberries, you might experience red as sour or bitter. There are a number of studies published to show such mechanisms. For example, how a red drink has been shown to be experienced as sweeter than a yellow or colorless one, even though the ingredients and thus its actual sweetness were identical.

  Vision may lead our perceptions in other ways. The French researcher Gil Morot and his coworkers asked oenology (wine studies) students to describe aromas in white and red wines. When describing the white wine, the students used
terms such as honey, lemon, grapefruit, straw, banana, sulphur, butter, and mango. The red wine, on the other hand, was described using words such as coal, blueberry, plum, cherry, Havana cigar, chocolate, cocoa, and violet flowers. The interesting part of the study was that both wines were actually the same white wine, and if you had tasted them with your eyes shut there would have been no detectable difference. The apparent red wine had just been colored red with purified grape anthocyanins. An elegant experiment that shows how powerful the sense of vision is in guiding our other senses.

  Most of us would probably accept the fact that the smell or even our sight intertwines with and influences how we taste our food. However, it might be harder to believe that our hearing also has a similar effect. The sound of pouring the drink into the glass, the fizzing sound when you open your soda or the crunching sound of the carrot influences the experience of taste, liking or freshness of our foods and drinks. Researchers have demonstrated the independent role of sound by studies where only the sound of the food or drink is changed while all the other characteristics have be kept constant. The Danish researcher Kristian Holt-Hansen described, as far back as in the 1960s, how the pitch of a beer’s fizz affected the experience of beer. The study first showed how two different Carlsberg beers, Lager and Elephant, both have their unique fizzing sounds although beer drinker most likely don’t pay attention to this fact. However, when the fizzing sounds of the two beers were switched, the taste panel rated both beers as significantly less pleasant. Obviously, although the participants did not recognize that the sound had changed, they must have noticed that something had changed in their sensory trip to their pint, and thus they reported decreased pleasantness over the same foamy gulp but with the wrong fizz. This is a challenge for you dedicated beer drinkers: can you differentiate the sound of your favorite beer from other brands?

  Another classic study is Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence’s study published in 2004 on how both the sound volume and frequency of the crunchy sound affected respondents’ experience of crunchiness and appeal when chewing potato crisps. The participants sat in a cubicle enjoying potato crisps while wearing headsets, and were asked to evaluate the quality and liking of the different potato crisps. The sounds from the respondents’ mouths were recorded by a microphone and played back simultaneously through a headset. This way the researchers could turn up and down the volume of the crunching sound, and they could also selectively amplify or reduce specific frequencies. Louder crunching sounds, as well as selectively amplifying high-pitch frequencies, resulted in the participants reporting the crisps to be crisper and fresher. Zampini and Spence’s study might make you laugh, and it did since it was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in nutrition in 2008, a series of prizes awarded “to honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” But the question behind it is also serious: when one sense affects another, is it to be considered a false sensation or a brand new complex sensory perception? For example, does the red liquid actually taste sweeter than the green with the exact same amount of sugar, or is it an illusion? Or does the soup with sardine flavor really taste saltier, or is your sensation false? The basis for all of this is that the sensation does not occur only in our mouth or nose, but in our brains where all the different sensory modalities—sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing–unite into one unique multimodal sensation.

  Wine spiced with music or music seasoned with wine? The lucky participants of another study by Spence and coworkers were served some excellent wines while listening to a concert by the London Symphony Orchestra. While enjoying both music and wines, the participants were asked to tell which of the musical pieces and wines matched. The participants reported surprisingly similar pairs of music and wine. This made the researchers continue with more experiments by selecting the most frequently matched pairs of wines and music and then asking participants to evaluate the wine with and without music. The participants were asked to evaluate the wines in terms of typical characteristics such as sweetness, acidity, fruitiness as well as their own enjoyment of the wines. The results indicated that the participants perceived the wines sweeter and more enjoyable while listening to the matching music than while enjoying the wines in silence. Indeed, one could imagine that music matching emotionally for champagne would be different from the best musical match for red wine. This is again a great result to build upon, which we did in our food workshop.

  Since our senses apparently work together in both ordinary and extraordinary occasions, we asked ourselves, inspired by Spence and coworkers’ studies: “is a red wine enjoyed alongside one of Mozart’s piano concertos the same red wine as the same bottle enjoyed with one of Tchaikovsky’s string quartets?” As we did not have a symphony orchestra to work with, we did “a poor man’s version” by selected recordings of the same music: Mozart’s flute quartet in D major KV285 second movement (allegro), and Tchaikovsky’s string quartet No. 1 in D Major, second movement (andante cantabile). The Mozart movement is an up-tempo piece in a major key for flute and strings, giving a light and cheerful/merry character. It’s a very typical Viennese classic: gracious, elegant, and orderly/neat—giving associations to pastoral and aristocratic/noble scenarios. The Tchaikovsky piece for four strings is in a slower, walking tempo in major key. Compared with the Mozart piece, it is more toned down, at times melancholic and nostalgic, but with some more rhythmic sequences, like a beautiful hymn. The music-lover might say it could connote nostalgia and romance. The wines of our choice, selected to resemble the wines in the original study within our more modest budget, were a soft, tannic, fruity and slightly spicy red Bordeaux Château de Sequin 2011, and a crispy, dry white Laroche Sauvignon Blanc de la Chevalière 2012 with marked acidity.

  The tasting was conducted in three stages. First, the participants were asked to taste and evaluate the characteristics of the wines. They were asked to focus on sweetness, acidity, fruitiness, astringency (tannins), alcohol character and aroma intensity. They were asked to rate the wines according to a scale from 1 to 3, where 3 is most and 1 is least. Thereafter the participants were asked to reflect upon which type of music that would fit the wines, and which instrument the wine could represent if it was an instrument. The wines were indeed characterized by different music and instruments! The red wine was associated with progressive metal music, Bach, soft jazz, Sade, Adele with cello accompaniment, male choir, Apocalyptica and “the music police standing in a rock concert.” The white wine was characterized by swing music, ABBA, Vivaldi’s Spring, a picnic concerto, Chopin, Schubert’s Die Forelle, or Monteverdi’s Orfeo. The instruments chosen for the red wine were lute, cembalo, cello, or saxophone whereas the white wine was represented by flute, soprano saxophone, or steel-string acoustic guitar.

  After the descriptive session, we turned the participants’ attention to other things so that they would take some distance to the wines. After approximately 10 minutes of relaxed chatting, we refilled the glasses and played the Tchaikovsky movement, asking them to evaluate numerically the same characteristics for a second time. After this second tasting session and another 10-minute break of chatting, we asked the participants to numerically evaluate the wines for the third time now listening to Mozart.

  First, it is worth noting the spontaneous comments from the participants: “How come the flavor becomes more fruity with this music?” and “The wine smelled stronger when the music changed.”

  Although the effects were not strong and the number of participants too small to carry out a proper statistical analysis, it still seemed as if the music had some effect on the taste characteristics of the wines. The bars in the diagram indicate the shift of the average intensity on the various characteristics of the wines affected by music compared with tasting without music. The higher the bar, the greater the effect of music compared with silence. A positive value means that the music enhances the given characteristic while a negative value means that the music suppresses the given characteristic. Close to zero means that the respo
nse saw, on average, little or no link between taste characteristic and sound. We considered a change to be significant if the value was higher than 2 units; if the average value changed only 1–2 units in one or another direction, then the change was considered not important. Thus, Mozart seemed to enhance the aroma intensity of the white wine aroma while Tchaikovsky enhanced the sensation of astringency in both wines. Acidity in the red wine seemed to be enhanced by both Mozart and Tchaikovsky, and perhaps suppressed in the white wine, as compared with tasting in silence.

  The effect of music on wine

  ^The diagram shows the effect of music on the characteristics of wines compared with tasting in silence. The higher the bar, the greater the effect of the music. A positive value means that the music enhances and a negative value means that the music suppresses the given characteristic. Close to zero values indicate very low or no effect of music on the sensory perception of wine.

  Our 16-member panel indeed gave, in many respects, similar results to what the original study by Spence and coworkers had indicated: slow, lingering, “in front of the fireplace”–feelings were dominant for the red wine whereas the white raised light and cheerful feelings. The participants had few problems in associating musical instruments and music with the two different wines. The opinions were so uniform that one would think they were secretly communicating with each other without us noticing. The participants were also very like-minded about the music-wine pairs: 14 out of 16 matched the red wine with Tchaikovsky and the white with Mozart. No wonder that wine critics describe wines by intuitively picking expressions and metaphors from music. The same should apply to other foods and drinks as well. After all, how would you consider a steak if a poetic food critic described it with the words: “This steak tastes like driving a Ferrari with flat tires?”