A tasting with centuries of history
Sevilla
Taste is located in the mouth and pharynx, and is stimulated thanks to the dissolution in the saliva of particles that characterize the flavors of food. We perceive sweet, salty, bitter, acid, metallic and umami tastes. Other more complex flavors related to the aftertaste that recognize the great variety of existing spicy. Not all people have the same ability to taste, some people have special gifts of perception, others work on these skills and train this sense. Tastings help us improve our ability to taste.
The aroma can be perceived both through the nose and through the mouth. Good gastronomy lovers know that taste pleasure is more complete if it comes through flavor and aroma. When the aroma arrives through the mouth, we speak of the retronasal route, and orthonasal when it arrives through the nose. There are very little aromatic or neutral foods, but there are other groups of foods rich in olfactory nuances. The king of nuances is wine, of which we can say that it has nuances of cherry, liquorice, oak, floral, corky, sweet, bitter, fresh... in a rich terminology that recreates with a certain romanticism the world of oenology.
With sight we "eat" and surely in gastronomy we use this sense before taste and very often even before smell. Through sight we can enjoy the appearance of a meal, the elaborated or little treated products, how a dish is presented on a table, the pleasant appearance or not of different foods, the color, the order of the ingredients, even the quantity makes us want or not a food.
The ear has its share in gastronomy: sounds of food and gastronomic conversations. Food speaks through sounds: sparkling, crispy, gratin, soft. The drink has different sounds, you can hear pouring into a glass, opening a bottle of sparkling. There are very pleasant gastronomic sounds, although there are also others that may not be. Gastronomic conversations that activate those parts of the brain that activate our appetite. Through hearing we know a menu, we speak and remember special meals and dinners, in our mind the memory of other dishes, aromas and flavors occurs.
Touch in gastronomy can be appreciated through the skin when we touch a food with our fingers, and with the mouth, thanks to the tongue, we can perceive the sense of texture. Touch helps us to feel different characteristics of food: temperature, humidity to distinguish those that are juicier from others that are dry, the spiciness that causes a physical reaction to the tongue, the hardness of the food when chewing it, the unctuousness of the creams, the viscosity of syrups, liqueurs and honey.