In our recipe development practice we use hedonic and amplitude charts to remind ourselves of the differences between taste and flavor and to help us to develop recipes well.

I love your post Dana because it is essential that chefs learn this kind of science if they want to serve their customers well. I recently delivered a presentation at the IACP conference about how people of boomer age face physiological changes in their mouths that affect their ‘taste’ in food. Then I also talked about how their preferences and sociological background is a type of ‘taste’, too.

What I’m really trying to say is that we use these words (and many others) in a number of ways but understanding how we use them and thinking a bit about them occasionally will help us to be better at our jobs.

You can bend words to mean many things. But to hack down to the root of the literal definition, then I believe yes I am correct.

A dictionary search will give definitions of taste as both a noun and verb, and of those categories there are multiple definitions. One doesn’t negate the other. The particular definition I was splitting, was the definition in which taste is a synnonym of flavor.

My claim in no way implies that the word taste should no longer be used in all it’s contexts.

It isn’t incorrect to say that chili’s taste hot, particularly if you argue, like some do that the sensation of hot is infact a sixth taste. However, we understand from the context of the statement, “chili’s taste hot” that you are using the word taste to refer to the post sensory recognition of the chemical stimuli, not the chemical tastants and odorants themselves. Context also makes it clear that you aren’t saying that a chili can taste something.

Language itself is so fluid, that the dictionary definition is rarely the only meaning a word has, particularly when you begin to distinguish the differences between the spoken language and the written language, and look into dialects. There isn’t really a right or wrong in language, simply a currently accepted implication that society agrees on. The implication of the word taste certianly means everything you write, but it also means everything I wrote as well.

It would be interesting to see if other languages have separate words for the various meanings of the word taste, rather than relying on context to make the definitions clear. I know that in german to eat is essen, but when animals eat, it is fressen.

This post wasn’t intended to change the way we use language, certianly not. It was simply an excercise in thinking about the words we so frequently use, and using deeper understanding to better our own thought processes.

At the root, I believe that taste and flavor aren’t simply a variation of the same word, used as noun versus verb. I believe that flavor is a construct of the mind’s perception, where as taste is a physical, chemical property.

But from a language perspective, I believe the words can be used interchangably until the english language assigns new words for the various definitions of taste and flavor.

I think the basic distinction you’re drawing (between the experience of eating and the deliverances of the five receptors on our tongue) is an important one, and every chef should bear it in mind. But I also think you’re quite wrong to suggest that the English words ‘taste’ and ‘flavour’ refer to different sides of this distinction.

Do you really think that it’s literally false, or somehow imprecise to claim that, for example, chili tastes hot? Surely not - but that’s what your claim about ‘taste’ implies.

The real difference between ‘taste’ and ‘flavour’, surely, is just that ‘taste’ is a verb (that can be made into a noun) while ‘flavour’ is noun (that can be made into a verb). So - ‘I taste the soup’ means something obviously and non-subtly different from ‘I flavour the soup’. The first of these I do with a spoon. The second I do with a pinch of salt and a bouquet garni (except in the special case where I am a chicken and the soup is made out of parts of me.)

Great blog - Eating food is so much more fun when you think about it!