The story of taste

Seamlessly joining science, ancient myths, literature, and philosophy, John McQuaid tackles some of the most basic aspects of taste in fresh and new ways.

Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat author: John McQuaid Publisher: Scribner Publishing, non-fiction

IT’S a rare writer who can make science seem lush and luxurious, but John McQuaid does just that in his book Tasty: The Art And Science Of What We Eat. A lovingly-researched insight into the incredibly complex sense of taste, the book focuses on breakthroughs in what McQuaid calls “the interplay of body, brain and mind” with food.

From a rare form of synesthia – a cross-wiring of different senses – which causes words to be tasted (“blue” tastes of ink, “human” tastes like baked beans) to the effects of a miracle fruit that makes acidic foods taste sweet, McQuaid presents a riveting journey through the world of taste.

Seamlessly joining science, ancient myths, literature, and philosophy, McQuaid tackles some of the most basic aspects of taste in fresh and new ways: why do we crave sugar, why does cheese make food taste better?

His rich language makes the book a joy to read, capturing the nostalgic attraction of hot buttered toast, crisp French fries, and fresh cheese in a style reminiscent of Enid Blyton’s lavish yet simple picnics.

Our love of salt and sweet, and our sometimes childlike aversion to bitter foods are all discussed succinctly in Tasty, with anecdotes that service to spice up the fare (did you know George H.W. Bush hated broccoli and banned it from Air Force One when he was US President from 1989 to 1993?).

Pulitzer Prize-winning McQuaid understands that taste is so inherently linked to pleasure (parts of our brain light up when we’re given sugar), that we crave salt, sugar, and umami.

One of the best parts of Tasty is McQuaid’s reference to real recipes and real meals, such as Adam Fleischman’s Umami Burger: soy, miso, fish sauce, kombu dashi (kelp broth), mashed together with a combination of beef, pork, and Parmesan cheese.

Umami, McQuaid posits, is still the province of Asian cuisine. A chef he interviews notes that in the West, palates are often “destroyed” by hot coffee, acidic food, fizzy drinks.

Geography, too, has a lot to do with how we eat. When early humans first began populating the world, different environments and survival requirements shaped our diets and, accordingly, our palates – in India, over half of the population can tolerate extremely bitter food but many cultures can’t bear bitterness.

McQuaid maps the tongue, the bitter gene, our love for spicy food, what makes things delicious and even disgusting – think of the widespread hatred of creamily delicious durian, which many Malaysians simply cannot understand.

He spins a web of history and flavour, theorising about fire and when early man learned to cook food before eating it. Cooking meat would have done more than simply make it taste better; it would have made the food easier to chew and digest, giving our ancestors more time to travel or hunt.

Taste, he says, is a driving force of our evolution; and our tongues can be tricked or shaped dramatically. Why else do we love foods that are inherently oddly-flavoured: bitter coffee, searing wasabi, stinky cheese? Potential triggers for disgust, he says, can become memorable. A chef he speaks to reveals that if you crunch on a grain of pepper and drink some coffee, it tastes like it has been sweetened with a tablespoon of sugar.

The mystery at the very heart of flavour, writes McQuaid, has never truly been cracked.

“Science,” he says, “has still not explained how flavour can encompass the whole range of human experience – pleasure, joy, disgust, pain, memory – continually hammering these into something new with each dish, each sip.”

We are, essentially, ready to try new things; he posits that dietary upheavals caused by climate change and bioengineered food are just some of the adaptations we will have to endure.

But at the end of the day, whether you eat to live or live to eat, the idea of taste and how it clutches at feelings and moods is something that we still know very little about – but there’s no doubt that any future scientific breakthroughs will be nothing short of delicious.

In the meantime, if you like food, cooking, science, or even just plain old eating, Tasty will have something for you.