Hey everyone,
First, I've got another link to put up here, because it's an interesting read that matches up with some concepts that I'll be working with. There's some nicely written articles on the pleasures of comfort and soul food here. I'm not vegan, but in the interest of exploring how people experience food, dietary choices can't be outside my sphere. I like the experimentation and creativity that emerges from trying out these regimes, even if it's only for a little while. True gourmands say, "Can we do this? How can we do it?" They become the masters of food chemistry and enjoy a depth of understanding of how cooking works; using emulsions, infusions, leavening, drying and preservation.
Regarding the article: how we connect to comfort food is something I've talked a little bit about before. Tasting is linked to memory in several ways, so first I'll show you the pathway of descriptive taste development that I've come to envision. My aim is to match this up with concepts associated with the development of both the olfactory bulb and memory/pattern recognition in the brain.
The Model of Descriptive Taste Development
1. "I can taste it, but I don't recognize it."
2. "I can taste it, and I can recognize it, but I don't know how."
3. "I can taste it, I definitely recognize it in the ways a, b, and c, but I don't know what that means."
4. "I taste and recognize it in these ways a, b, and c; it means 'this'."
An example, using alcohol content in wine.
1. "I'm experiencing a slight burning feeling in my nose and throat."
2. "I learned that alcohol content gives that impression of heat in wines."
3. "This is a higher alcohol wine, indicated by the burning sensation and 'legs' on the sides of the glass."
4. "This wine is 'hot'. The alcohol is out of balance towards the high side, it causes the sensations in nose and throat of heat; this indicates that the grape must's initial sugar content was high."
This is how I can see descriptive taste development progressing. The second and third points often work together. The transition between the four points can be shortened by guided tasting experiences. As I'm just introducing this here, I will expand on how we develop sensitivity to qualities as I continue to learn about the olfactory system.
Barbara Leslie, author of Canadian Wine for Dummies and one of my professors at NC, taught the first tasting class I've ever taken. I was overwhelmed at first, with people saying that they smelled oranges, apples, cat's pee, and socks, when I could pretty much just identify that what I had in my glass was, in fact, wine. I was definitely not alone, and the piece of advice she gave to first-time tasters was this: "Go home, and smell everything. Smell the fruit that you have in your lunch. Smell your spice cupboard. Most importantly, pay attention to what you're smelling and assign that memory to your nose."
The movement from perception to recognition certainly takes focused effort. After a while, the recognition of apples and oranges still exists, but the new aromatic elements that you're looking to define will take up the space in your attention. For example, a taster learns how to recognize oak in wines as having woody, smoky, caramel or vanilla aromas (this is only a short list of the associated characteristics; I could carry on about eugenol, vanillin and octo-lactones, but that's a bit more specificity than needed). Then, as the taster familiarizes with the concept of oak, they can start to differentiate between American, French and Hungarian oak. As they continue to taste, they further differentiate American oak into sub-categories such as Appalachian oak, Missouri oak, Minnesota oak, and so on. How complex does the spectrum need to be? This depends on the interest level of the taster, of course. To most consumers, they may not care that much if the oak tree that grew in Missouri went on to be coopered into a barrel, in which the winery then chose to vinify the Chardonnay that they are enjoying... My point here is more that we can practice specifying tastes to increase the familiarity of elements, which can lead to a fulfilling and multi-leveled taste experience.
Next time you taste a wine, try this. Give it a good couple sniffs, and decide on the dominant fruit flavour that stands out the most; say it's cherries if you're tasting a red. Then, see if you can be more specific. Is the fruit sour, candied, dried, rotten, juicy? That's all you have to do to start familiarizing with aromas.
The next "level" is to find out how these characteristics relate to fruit condition before fermentation, which could lead to clues about climate conditions, or vintage variation...
This is why I feel that unraveling the mysteries of wine is incredibly fun.
Cheers, and happy perception and recognition.
Melissa
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