Food contains many taste chemicals, from the simplest, like sodium chloride, also known as table salt, to the most complex, like truffle fungi which can contain up to sixty different volatile flavor molecules such as dimethyl sulphide and 2-methylbutanal.
Taste starts on the tongue, via the taste buds, which are replaced every two weeks or so. We all have approximately 5,000-10,000 taste buds, decreasing with age which is why foods taste stronger when you’re younger. Contrary to popular belief, it is not strictly true that there are ‘regions of the tongue’ where you sense salty, sweet, savory (umami), and bitter tastes. You have taste buds for all of those things all over your tongue, you just may have more in certain areas
than others.
There is an interesting part of taste called somatosensation, essentially how the texture of a food affects how you perceive its taste. This is fairly dependent on your personal preference; hence someone might prefer al dente pasta to well-cooked.
The nose is the final key for taste. When you chew, you release volatile chemicals that your taste buds aren’t able to pick up but olfactory sensors can, so you only get the most fully rounded idea of taste when you can smell well!
Our perception of flavor is then enhanced by certain chemicals. Salt is the most obvious one of these. It is the sodium (Na+) component that dictates just how salty something seems but the chloride (Cl-) part seems to enhance this perception. When sodium is combined with different bigger chemical groups such as glutamate, nitrite or bicarbonate, the saltiness declines. Salt reduces the ability of water in the food to prevent volatile flavor molecules from hitting the olfactory sensors, so when food is unsalted, it often seems less flavorful. Salting food lightly at the beginning of the cooking process means the saltiness will be carried throughout the food, rather than sitting on the outside if it is added at the end.
When a chef makes pasta, they invariably add salt at the beginning of cooking because, as Massimo Carro, chef owner of Posa, believes, one has to let individual flavors shine in food. In order to maximize the flavor of each individual ingredient, he needs a light hand with all flavor enhancers such as salt, and limits his dishes to as few elements in the food as possible, to prevent the confusion of the palate. He keeps his Almalfi coast menu very simple, with few items in a dish. “If you have a really good product, you don’t need to have very many things in it. We have on the menu right now a homemade pasta with porcini mushrooms. So, I don’t really add anything, no butter, just extra virgin olive oil, because, at the end of the day, you have to taste the porcini,” says Massimo.
Posa’s ingredients are mostly imported directly from Italy, many from small growers and manufacturers in his home region, and Massimo left me with this zinger, ‘You can be the best chef in the world but, if you have bad ingredients, you will have bad food!’ I could not agree more! •
