Science Shows How Cutting Food Like Vegetables and Chocolate Can Affect Their Flavor.
To understand this, it’s essential to first recognize that taste and flavor are two different things. Taste is a sense related to specialized receptors known as taste buds on the tongue. Flavor, on the other hand, involves a range of senses, and while there is still much debate, most agree that olfaction is just as significant as taste in the perception of flavor.
How cutting vegetables can change their flavor – (Image: Shutterstock).
The difference in aroma when finely chopping something is one factor that can explain why some foods may taste better or worse to different people, and this is linked to chemistry.
“When you cut onions or garlic, it releases an enzyme called alliinase that produces their characteristic pungent flavor or aroma, which is not present when they are whole. The enzymatic reaction creates flavor, so the more finely you cut, the more flavor is released“, says Dr. Charles Forney, who works at the Canadian Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food.
Furthermore, some culinary experts believe that texture plays a crucial role in how we perceive food flavors, according to IFLScience.
According to Brendan Walsh, the head of the culinary arts department at the Culinary Institute of America, if we put a round vegetable in our mouth, our brain associates it with something juicier. Conversely, a square-shaped item may taste slightly better, or our minds may perceive something as more delicious if it appears smoother.
Researchers also suggest that our expectations of food before we eat it significantly influence our enjoyment of the meal. This means that the shape of food, depending on how it is cut, can affect how we perceive its flavor.
This became particularly evident when Cadbury, a chocolate manufacturer, was criticized for changing its Dairy Milk chocolate bar from a rectangular to a round shape. Many people claimed that the chocolate bar tasted sweeter even though Cadbury did not change the recipe.
According to a paper by Professor Charles Spence at the University of Oxford in the UK, the issue lies in how the brain associates shapes with specific tastes. People often link sweetness with round objects and bitterness with angular ones.
Thus, rounding off a traditionally rectangular item could alter flavor perception as consumers’ minds evoke concepts of sweetness.
In summary, if a food item seems sweeter when its shape is altered, it may be due to a chemical reaction or possibly because our brains have been conditioned to think this way.
