Heston Blumenthal: 'We are just scratching the surface of taste'
September 30, 2008 Lucy Shaw
Culinary wizard Heston Blumenthal believes we are just skimming the surface of taste and are close to throwing out the theory of the five basic tastes.
Speaking at a Sherry and food pairing event at Shoreditch House in London last night, the Michelin-starred chef praised research into new taste receptors that is bringing us towards a fresh understanding of the workings of the tongue.
Blumenthal told Decanter, 'In experiments, fruit flies found receptors for C02, so there is evidence that carbon dioxide is a taste. There is also a growing argument that fat is a taste.'
'To say there are only five tastes simplifies things', Blumenthal continued. 'Scientists found 21 receptors for bitterness on the tongue, which can be detected by supertasters'.
Supertasters are said to have more taste buds on their tongue than other people and tend to have stronger food dislikes, particularly for bitterness.
'We are also looking into the idea that the tongue has tactile receptors. If you put an embossed letter “L” on a supertaster's tongue, they could tell you what letter it was. My tongue doesn't do all that.'
The Fat Duck chef has recently discovered new compounds in Sherry that help explain why it is such a food versatile wine.
'It was like finding a needle in a haystack – you can't just do a blanket search for compounds in wine.'
Blumenthal discovered that while Sherry does not contain umami itself, (the elusive fifth savoury taste), it contains a group of compounds known as diketopiperazines, or DKPs, that enhance the flavour of umami-rich foods such as meat, fish, parmesan cheese and shiitake mushrooms, and act as a taste booster.
'Sherry has compounds that wines don't have. The DKPs develop from the yeast activity. I think it could also work with red and white wine. It's on my list of things to look into.'
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"Culinary wizard"? At around $350 per person, I'd say this guy is a clever accountant first.
Dan Friedman, NYC, USA
He is saying what apparently "ancient" Asians were saying, no...?! Japanese peeps and such...think I wrote something in regards to this...will look for the piece...! Michael, my friend, copied here, one of the finest chefs around, is best to figure out this matter...! Michael, please send your thoughts...you did once, but can't locate...I am in Shanghai right now...! Remember, ya commented about my take when it comes to spicy (Indian) food and wine matching...?!
Zoltan Szabo, Shanghai, China
Very true......
.......and one thing I always preach to young aspiring chefs (and old ones without a clue) - in regards to cooking and food and wine pairings is..........."Follow Nature's and History's Guidelines"!!!!
There is a reason that the countries that have the spiciest, raciest and most pungent of cuisines on this small blue planet, really don't produce any wines (besides the very odd one, (which aren't great)...and that is because wine is not a “great” match for spicy, pungent, bitter flavours (ie: Thailand, China, India, Vietnam, etc....)....[and I will argue (and have) with many sommelier and technically and scientifically destroy his/her argument] and much to the displeasure of many snobby, and technically culinary deprived sommeliers.....I still say, and always will that nothing pairs better with a spicy lamb vindaloo, pork pho, sichuan fermented black bean beef or hunan cuisine than a nice cold, crisp one!!!!...and for some reason I didn't know why, most sommeliers take this as a personal insult against their mother....GET OVER IT!!!!
While we believe (in the western world) that there are 4 flavour Characteristics and flavours we can perceive....the Indian world has through all of antiquity believed that there are 13 taste sensations beyond sweet, salty, sour and bitter! Think about that for a mere second....13 taste sensations....how many could you add to the original western 4?
To add to this, how does one separate taste from flavor sensation as there are foods that project “flavor” but is it truly flavor. Our western palates I believe are in the infancy stage of tasting....We are a new culture derived from a young culture. Chinese, Indian and most other Asiatic culture/food history go back 4-5000 years!! That means 4000+ years of experimenting and experiencing tastes and textures....much of which I remind you has been transplanted onto and spread through DNA VIA genetic "hand me down" mapping and blueprinting...it is inborn. Basically what I'm saying here is that the older the culture...the better trained and more progressive the palate. This is a strong belief and theory of mine through all my travels from Bali to Germany and South America to Russia. That is why I feel that north Americans (and new cultures) have the worst palates as far as the general population goes. The fact we thrive and live on junk foods and chemicals doesn't help either. We live in a world of "wants" and "need's" over here...so although we may have very good, beautiful restaurants in many cases it comes from a more superficial level and approach than a soul-full one....I truly believe we as a western culture need to do a bit of "soul-squeezing"....our palates are juvenile and immature on a global scale! On the humility side of things we are hazed by the façade of eating and dining as it is the act we are into more than what's on the plate…any waiter at a high end restaurant can second this thought as in our world, the event of dining takes centre stage and eating slips into second.
Bring this topic up next time your with an educated group of chef's and have not's and see where it goes.........HUGZ!
......don't you agree Her Szabo :-)
Michael Pataran
How right Heston is! My PhD thesis, published in 2004, shows that a different orientation of taste and flavour is needed to understand these concepts. The basic tastes orientation has rather impeded understanding taste and flavour. In the Netherlands this new flavour theory has been widely accepted and proves to be very useful in i.e. understanding wine and food pairing. The article I send herewith explains what it is about. It would be an interesting topic to share with Decanter readers.
Peter Klosse
What astonishes me is that anybody gave serious credence to the 4 (or 5) distinct tastes theory in the first place! Surely any wine drinker would have to reject such a hypothesis based on tasting only a few wines. We 'easily' accept there are hundreds of aromas that we can smell, and multiple notes that we can hear, but seemingly raise no questions about the small number of distinct tastes.
As a teenager (more than a few years ago), for a while I lost my sense of taste (along with several other things not relevant to this discussion). Doctors were baffled – after all nobody had ever checked my sense of taste before (neither had they ever checked my sense of smell, which remained intact during this spell!). And no remedy was found. I still recall the psychological (as much as physiological) distress of smelling fresh orange juice and tasting what seemed like a mixture of lard, water and cardboard flakes.
Fortunately my taste returned – but slowly, so I had the pleasure of gradually discovering a whole series of tastes. And there are certainly a much larger number than 5!
This sparked a continuing interest in taste (and smell) and I have since participated in a number of 'tasting tests' using chemically adjusted fluids (including but not restricted to wine). It transpires that I am unable to detect 'bitter' by taste (I interpret all concentrations as identical) although at high concentrations I can certainly 'feel' the effect on my gums. Not a bad flaw to have – I can detect what is behind the young tannins in wine and that guides my buying and cellaring decisions – although my preference for higher acid wines may come from an attempt to 'balance' for this missing(?) component. I believe it is now 'accepted wisdom' (which was faulty enough to get us into this discussion) that around 10% of the western population has a similar issue with bitter – although how that can be deduced when taste is never tested still smacks of speculation.
Still, kudos to Heston, Ferran, Wylie, Grant etc., who are exploring new food dimensions. And any discoveries they make do not take away anything from the tastes we experienced before. Let them charge what they can get. Nobody is forcing me to eat anything I don't want (at least since I departed from my parents' home – and I wasn't paying for that).
More tastes (and more wines also), please!
Alan Gardner, Toronto, Canada
Isn't the idea just to enjoy? Do we have to learn ridiculous things to do that?
Ricardo Santos, Mendoza, Argentina
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Lucy Shaw