Curious Cook: The elusive essence of flavour

The Star

6 days ago

The last of my aunts on my mother's side passed away recently, and one of my memories of her was at a family wedding dinner 12 years ago where she and other family members were nonchalantly mixing St-Émilion red wine with cola or lemonade.
They encouraged me to do the same, because they said red wine by itself was too 'sour' or 'bitter'. I had tried the mixture before in Spain (where it is called kalimotxo), but it is more acceptable to mix cola and ice with cheap vino de mesa than a full-bodied expensive claret. And to be fair, a kalimotxo was a refreshingly nice drink, especially in the heat of a Spanish summer.
First problem
However, it did make me think of how one would describe a 'nice drink'. That is because a lot depends on context and the influence of peers. In a 2008 experiment, researchers at the University of Bordeaux served blindfolded oenology (wine science) university students the same white wine twice, once described as a white wine and again later as a 'red' wine.
The outcome was remarkable. When the students believed they were drinking red wine, they used terminology and descriptors typically associated with red wines (berries, tannins, etc.). When they believed the same wine was white, they used completely different descriptors typical of white wines (floral notes, citrus, etc).
The experiment demonstrated how powerful cognitive expectations are in sensory perception. Simply being told the wine was red caused the participants' brains to interpret the flavours through that lens, despite the wine actually being white.
Wine experts have a specific lexicon to describe the taste of wine. — ELINA SAZONOVA/Pexels
The study challenged assumptions about wine expertise and highlighted how personal expectations and prior information significantly influence how we experience and describe wine, even among those with formal training in wine tasting.
Second problem
Apart from inherent biases due to cognitive expectations, a more fundamental issue may be how flavours are communicated in the first place. How would you describe the flavour of vanilla to someone who has never tasted it? What words would you use? Can you imagine describing the fragrant spicy creaminess of curry laksa to an Eskimo?
Flavour is a multisensory illusion. Unlike vision or hearing, which are tied to specific organs, flavour emerges from an orchestration of inputs, processed into a neurological symphony by the brain. The core inputs are:
• Taste, (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami) perceived via the tongue
• Smell, via orthonasal and retronasal olfaction, which is a major factor which can contribute up to 80% of a perceived flavour, depending on the intensity
• Texture, temperature, and even sound, (eg, the crunch of a potato crisp), detected by the mouth and ears.
The brain's orbitofrontal cortex integrates these signals into a unified experience. But language resides in the brain's Broca's and Wernicke's areas, regions evolved for communication, not sensory processing.
This anatomical divide introduces a fundamental problem: How can humans translate the harmony of flavours into a sequence of meaningful words?
The problem may be because our brains evolved to prioritise survival, not poetry. Early humans needed to communicate 'this berry is really poisonous' far more urgently than 'this berry has a tannic sharpness with floral undertones.' As a result, the language for describing taste remains rudimentary compared to our sensory capacities.
Chocolate described as 'silky' triggers multisensory expectations. — VIE STUDIO/Pexels
The orbitofrontal cortex processes flavours in vivid, multidimensional detail, but Broca's area struggles to encode these sensations into the linear, symbolic structure of language. This mismatch explains why even seasoned food critics resort to metaphors like 'charming' or 'explosive' – words that evoke emotions or physical sensations rather than precise flavours.
This neural gap in our brains also shapes cultural differences in taste communication. For instance, the Japanese term 'koku' – describing a flavour's lingering depth – has no direct English equivalent, much like the Inuit word 'ikuumaq' (literally 'tasting like seal fat') relies on lived Arctic experience. When a Thai chef describes 'prik pon' (a specific crunchy spiciness), the term activates sensory memories in local Thais but leaves outsiders grasping for meaning. Our linguistic tools, constrained by both biology and culture, necessarily filter the vastness of flavours into bite-sized descriptors, often losing subtleties and even meaning in translation.
Semiotics isn't enough
Semiotics is a means for describing experiences, developed separately and independently in the late 19th century by a Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, and an American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce. In simple terms, semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, and how they combine to create meaning in an attempt to communicate an understanding of experiences and the world.
Signs can be words, images, sounds, gestures, objects, etc, and semiotics investigates the relationship between signs and what they represent. Ultimately semiotics attempts to explain how such signs function to express meaning within cultural and social systems.
So whenever you are describing a food encounter, you are actually applying semiotics using words and possibly gestures in an attempt to convey what you had experienced.
Yet, semiotics is inherently imperfect. As philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein noted, 'The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.' If a culture lacks a word for 'vanilla,' does that diminish its ability to perceive vanilla? And the answer, probably, is Yes. It would not be significantly different from your inability to perceive the experience of ikuumaq (I am assuming you are not an Inuit reading this).
Perceptual fingerprints
Some neuroscientists argue, with good reason, that flavours are inherently idiosyncratic. Genetic variations (for example, numbers of taste buds and olfactory neurons, etc), past experiences, and even moods create unique perceptual fingerprints which attach themselves to the flavours encountered. Two people sipping the same wine may have radically different neural responses – ones no vocabulary can fully reconcile.
However, this neural divide is not insurmountable. Just as musicians are trained to discern pitch, individuals can hone their flavour vocabulary. Wine experts, for example, develop a specialised lexicon ('tannic,' 'jammy', 'plummy', etc) that refines their perceptual acuity. Studies show that sommeliers' brains exhibit heightened connectivity between the orbitofrontal cortex and Broca's area, suggesting that practice can bridge the perception-language divide.
Hallucinations
Curiously, imperfect semiotics can be used as perception filters, which reduce our ability to independently experience the flavours of foods. Such perception filters are used extensively in marketing to steer our sensory perceptions in the direction of the food producers' goods.
For example, a wine labelled as 'complex, with hints of dark berries' may be perceived as such, even if the taster detected none of those notes. This phenomenon, called 'label-induced hallucination,' reveals language and semiotics' power to distort reality.
Food packaging is a masterclass in semiotic manipulation. Artisanal buzzwords commonly used such as 'small-batch,' 'handcrafted,' and 'locally sourced' evoke exclusiveness and quality, even if the product is in fact mass-produced.
Cross-sensory or 'synesthetic' labelling is also very often used to entice customers. Chocolate described as 'silky', or kombucha as 'exhilarating', triggers multisensory expectations even though the labels do not actually make sense. Neuromarketing research shows that evocative labels activate the 'insula', a brain region linked to disgust and craving. A 'zesty' lemonade might be perceived as tasting brighter and fizzier than one labelled 'original' or 'tangy,' even if they are identical.
Boundaries
If language and crafty semiotics can shape what we taste, does it also constrain our innate gastronomic experience? The answer is complex.
Philosopher Carolyn Korsmeyer contends that taste creates knowledge that resides primarily in our bodily experience rather than our intellectual reasoning. This knowledge therefore exists outside of semiotics. The moment you taste a perfectly ripe mango or a stunning wine, you immediately know it's something special – and this knowing happens independently from the labelling and before you can even attempt to describe it.
Remember the first mouthful of an extremely delicious food that made you feel like you are in heaven? No labelling can invoke that feeling. Hence there are likely to be some boundaries which even slick semiotics cannot cross. Either you are in gastronomic heaven, or you are not. As top chef René Redzepi once remarked, 'The best flavours are those that leave you speechless.'
Beauty in the unsayable
The limitations of taste language reveal a paradox: While words often shape our experiences, they also confine them. Yet, this gap invites delicious exploration, especially in the 21st century.
By investigating and savouring metaphors of fascinating foods available from foreign lands, and acknowledging the idiosyncrasies of flavour, we can celebrate culinary diversity in ways that past generations simply could not. In short, the ineffability of taste reminds us that there are still many delicious wonders out there waiting to be savoured in our own very personal ways, and not just talked about.
The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.