Flavor of Coffee? |
Taste comes from 10,000 taste
buds-clusters of cells that resemble the sections of an orange. Taste buds,
found on the tongue, cheeks, throat, and roof of the mouth, house 60 to 100
receptor cells each. The body regenerates taste buds about every three days.
They are most numerous in children under age six, and this may explain why
youngsters are such picky eaters.
These taste cells bind food
molecules dissolved in saliva and alert the brain to interpret them. Although
the tongue often is depicted as having regions that specialize in particular
taste sensations-for example, the tip is said to detect sweetness-researchers
know that taste buds for each sensation (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami)
are actually scattered around the tongue. In fact, single taste bud can have
receptors for all five sensations. We also know that the back of the tongue is
more sensitive to bitter and that food temperature influences taste.
Umami, the fifth basic taste,
differ from the traditional sweet, sour, salty, and bitter tastes by providing
a savory, sometimes meaty sensation. Umami is Japanese word and the taste is
evident in many Japanese ingredients and flavoring, such as seaweed, dashi
stock, and mushrooms, as well as other foods. The umami taste receptor is every
sensitive to glutamate, which occurs naturally in food such as meat, fish, and
milk, and it is often added to processed foods in the form of the flavor
enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG). despite the frequent description of umami
as meaty, many foods, including mushrooms, tomatoes, and parmesan cheese, have
a higher level of glutamate than an equal amount of beef or pork. This explains
why foods that are cooked with mushrooms or tomatoes seem to have a fuller,
rounder taste than when cooked alone.
If you could taste only sweet,
salty, sour, bitter, and umami, how could you taste the flavor of cinnamon,
chicken, or any other food? This is where smell comes in. your ability to
identify the flavors of specific foods requires smell.
The ability to detect the strong
scent of a fish market, the antiseptic odor of a hospital, the aroma of a ripe
melon, and thousands of other smells is possible thanks to a yellowish patch of
tissue the size of a quarter high up in your nose. This patch is actually a
layer of 12 million specialized cell, each sporting 10 to 20 hairlike growths
called cilia that bid with the smell and send message to the brain. Of course,
if you have a bad cold and mucus clogs up your nose, you lose some sense of
smell and taste. Our sense of smell may not be as refined as that of dogs, which have billions of olfactory
cells, but we can distinguish among about 10,000 scents.
You can smell foods in two ways.
If you smell coffee brewing while you are getting dressed, you smell it
directly through your nose. But if you are drinking coffee, the smell of coffee
goes to the back of your mouth and then up into your nose. To some extent, what you smell (or taste) is determined by your
genetics and also your age.
All foods have texture, a natural
texture granted by Mother Nature. It may be coarse or fine, rough or smooth,
tender or tough. Whichever the texture, it influences whether you like the
food. The natural texture of a food may not be the most desirable texture for a
finished dish, and so a cook may create different texture. For example, a fresh
apple may be too crunchy to serve at dinner, and so it is backed or sautéed for
a softer texture. Or a cream soup may be too him, and so a thickening agent is
used to increase the viscosity of the soup or, simply stated, make it harder to
pour.
Food appearance or presentation
strongly influences which foods you choose to eat. Eye appeal is the purpose of
food presentation, whether the food is hot or cold. It is especially important
for cold foods because they lack the come-on of an appetizing aroma. Just the
sight of something delicious to eat can start your digestive juices flowing.
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