Taste, Aroma and Flavour

To fully understand the pungent principle, as scientists call it, we must first consider the concept of taste, aroma and flavour. The three are closely connected, taste and flavour often being used interchangeably, but they are not the same. We experience the taste of food – sweet, salty, sour and so on – through thousands of taste buds on the tongue, inside the cheeks and at the back of the mouth. We detect aroma when we chew food. The cells in the lining at the back of the mouth capture the aromas and transmit them to the olfactory bulb, an organ behind the bridge of the nose. These chemical messages, and those from the taste buds, are transmitted to the brain which interprets them as flavour. If you have a cold and your sense of smell is reduced, your food will have little flavour although you may still be able to ‘taste’ it.