We taste with more than the tongue

Taste receptors detect only a handful of qualities. Flavour — the whole experience of a mouthful — is assembled by the brain from taste, smell, texture, temperature, sound, sight and what we expected before we began.

A young science

The study of how these senses combine at the table is often called gastrophysics, a term associated with Professor Charles Spence and the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford. Researchers apply the methods of experimental psychology to eating: changing one thing — the colour of a plate, the weight of a bowl, the music in the room — and measuring how people rate identical food.

Jozef Youssef and Kitchen Theory

The London chef Jozef Youssef, who worked at The Fat Duck and The Connaught before founding Kitchen Theory in 2011, has spent more than a decade turning that research into dining. Kitchen Theory, a multisensory gastronomy design studio, has collaborated with Spence on published studies, including work on how people prefer food to be arranged on the plate. Youssef has also run studies on tableware for the Ambiente trade fair in Frankfurt.

Reading the research carefully

These studies are fascinating, and easy to over-read. Most test one variable in one setting with one food. Effects can depend on the dish, the diners and the context, and some later studies have qualified earlier ones. The Institute summarises what each study found, and does not stretch it.