Matt Brady visits an experiment in sensory perceptions, and discovers that we can’t always rely on them when it comes to taste.
An installation of experimental rooms collectively named Tongue Twister are being set up in London’s Westfield shopping centre to demonstrate how our other senses have an impact on taste.
A company called Condiment Junkie behind the installation. It specialises in sensory branding, basing its work on how emotions and senses interact. Co-founders Russell Jones and Scott King use the example of a holiday abroad to explain how the other senses can have an effect on taste.
Senses working overtime
Imagine you’re sipping on a glass of white wine on holiday somewhere warm and sunny, surrounded by beautiful rolling hills and the scent of flowers wafting through the fresh air. The wine tastes amazing, so you bring a few bottles home and crack one open during a rainy day later in the year to relive that perfect day. Only to discover that it tastes like vinegary filth.
It’s not that something has gone wrong with the wine, they say, but that the different sensory experience in sight and smell, plus the difference in the weather, are having an astounding impact on your sense of taste. Your levels of relaxation are also different, since you're not on holiday, which can also have an effect.
Research from Heriot Watt University also shows that our tastes can change depending on background music. For example, Chardonnay wine tastes more zingy and refreshing when listening to the song Just Can’t Get Enough by Nouvelle Vague. Weird.
It seems we can’t really rely on our own senses to make sense of the world. Oh dear.
Are lemons fast or slow?
Please take a moment to answer this question as fast as you can.
You thought ‘fast’, right? Research published in 2013 suggests that the vast majority of us will think so, though there’s really no logical reason. A lemon just is fast. Over three-quarters of the people in this office agreed that lemons are fast. Why? I have no idea, but it’s definitely true.
What this relationship does show is that there is a crossover in our perceptions of objects; we experience a lemon not as a static item but as something we put characteristics to – and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to suggest that a lot of this is down to taste.
The sharp bite of a lemon strikes our tongues quite viciously, so the association with speed isn’t completely ridiculous, even if it lacks sense when assessed objectively.
Other sensory challenges
While on the surface Tongue Twister might appear rather gimmicky, there are some really interesting things going on.
In one room, there are tanks of various coloured liquids. They’re juice, but the colours have been altered. After predicting what flavour you think might be in each tank, and tapping your guess into a nearby iPad, it’s time to take a sip.
The first juice I try is a dark shade of red. Cherries, I guess. I’ll be sure to know what it is when I taste it anyway – how could I not? But sipping, I realise that I have absolutely no idea what it is. I simply cannot identify the flavour.
It’s apple, says the iPad. “Don’t be stupid” I think, and take another sip. Yes, of course it’s apple. How could I not tell that before?
The colour had thrown my senses off to the point where I couldn’t even make a reasonable guess. I fail again with peach, but get grapefruit right. One out of three isn’t the most impressive score.
The anonymised data of guesswork and results is being collected by Condiment Junkie to understand more about the relationship between sight and taste, and it will be interesting to see feedback on whether certain groups of people are better at this than others.
Smellathon
In a separate room stand ‘smell trumpets’ – pressing a foot pedal wafts a smell towards you. By eating jelly beans at the same time, you can merge the flavours, which results in some interesting combinations such as mango curry, while lime and coconut fuse nicely to smell something like a Caribbean cocktail.
However, there are some gross ones here too. A jam jelly bean mixed with a black pepper odour makes me retch, and banana plus curry is also repulsive.
Other rooms will focus on the relationship between the other senses and taste.
The full Tongue Twister experience is taking place at Westfield London in Shepherd’s Bush from Friday 27th February-Sunday 1st March.
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