It was just an innocent little food craving that started my foray into the depths of vegan baking in the late nineties. I had no idea what I was doing back then (and arguably now in many cases) but one thing that has definitely happened is that my sense of taste has matured greatly. As you bake, cook and pay attention to taste, your sense of taste will improve too. This article will inform you on how our sense of taste works and teach you the tricks to improving your taste so you can become a better baker.

Like other art forms, the way food tastes is subjective. Peanut butter and hummus on toast may taste delightful to you but be repulsive to another taster. Taste varies from person to person depending on a variety of senses and feelings associated with the food. Many people are unable to drink particular hard liquors due to the bad experiences they had with them at one point. Even smelling the liquor brings back the bad memories.

Our Taste

Our bodies perceive food with a variety of organs including the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin. During eating all of these senses are working at the same time; your eyes are noticing the golden brown of the bread, your ears hear the crunch as you bite into it, you're smelling and tasting the bread with your nose (more on that below). Your mouth is also involved in tasting and feeling the breads texture and your hands are as well as you lift it to your mouth. All of these senses lead to an overall perception of taste. 

The most important factors used in tasting a food's flavor are listed in the following table:

Sensory System	Senses	Receptors	Chemical Properties
Basic Tastes	Sweet, salty, bitter, sour (and umami)	Taste buds on the tongue	Must be water soluble to mix with saliva
Smell	Cinnamon, vanilla and thousands more	Olfactory cells in the nasal cavity	Must be water soluble and be able to evaporate into the mucous membranes
Trigeminal Effects	Burning, cooling, numbing and several others	Nerve endings throughout the nose and mouth	Must be absorbed into the skin and/or evaporate in order to effect the nasal cavity.

All of the above systems process the food and send their collective information to the brain, where it's processed into flavor perception. Once being perceived in the brain, the flavor may be associated with things like memories or current surroundings. This is why a brownie eaten in a bakery is probably tastier than the same brownie obtained while dumpster diving. 

Basic Tastes

The tongue can only perceive four or five basic tastes, as seen on the graph above. These flavors are sweet, salty, bitter and sour. In the early 1900s, Japanese researchers claimed to identify a fifth basic taste which they called umami, which means savoriness or tastiness in Japanese. The existence of this basic taste is still debated in the foods industry, as some taste experts claim it to be a combination some or all of the the original four basic tastes. 

Different people have different sensitivity to different senses. In terms of basic tastes, people can be categorized into different classes depending on the number of taste buds on their tongues. Supertasters are known to have the highest number of taste buds and consist of about 20 percent of the population. Normal tasters consist of about 60 percent of the population and have average numbers of taste buds. Non tasters also consist of about 20 percent of the population but have lower numbers of taste buds than average. Super tasters are more likely to be sensitive to bitter flavors. 

Many food experts also insist that genetics plays a role in all levels of taste perception. This is why food preference is so subjective; there are just so many factors. 

Smell

Four or five flavors isn't much for all the tastes we're bombarded with once we bite into our favorite food. This is because the olfactory senses in the nasal cavity are responsible for doing most of the tasting work; sensing thousands of smells, or aromas. Most of the things you smell consist of a combination of thousands of aromas. This is why things like coffee and wine smell so complex. Once these aromas are picked up in the nasal cavity, the information is sent to the brain for further processing. The brain actually perceives these aromas as coming from the mouth. That's why taste and smell seem to be one sense when eating food.

Trigeminal Effects

The burn of cayenne, the cool of mint and the sting of alcohol are examples of trigeminal effects. These sensations are sent via nerve endings just under the skin in the the mouth and nasal cavities to the brain via the trigeminal nerve. Trigeminal effects work in conjunction with other senses to make an overall flavor. An example of this would be hot sauce, where you get the trigeminal effects of burning from the pepper, basic taste from the saltiness and smell from hundreds or thousands of other chemicals.

Improving Your Sense of Taste

Luckily, like most of your abilities, your sense of taste can be improved. This is done by, what else? Tasting and smelling. Since smelling is the most important part of taste perception, it's a great thing to start out with. Follow these steps to improve your sense of taste:

• When smelling foods and spices start out taking small, quick sniffs to pull the aromas into your nasal cavity. 
• When chewing food, draw a small amount of air into your mouth to increase the rate at which the aromas go into your nasal cavity. Wine tasters frequently do this 'slurping' effect while tasting wine. Don't worry about doing it as much as they do, a small amount is just fine. 
• Take the spices down from your spice rack and sniff each one with the cap off. Be careful with the cayenne! Do this a few times per week with all of your spices. It's recommended that you use spices as fresh as possible. Throw out spices that are older than one year and buy fresh replacements. In a week or so, sniff each spice with your eyes closed and see if you can tell which one it is. Buy more spices for this purpose. Learning the smell of each spice expands your nasal 'vocabulary'. 
• As you chew, move the food around your mouth so it warms and gets broken up. It will dissolve more and release more aromas to be processed by your nasal cavity. 
• Take frequent breaks when tasting to give your senses a break. Sometimes I take a break and come back hours later to taste a recipe I'm working on only to find that I've strayed way off course.
• Taste, taste taste. Go to cafes and try their take on banana bread. Think you have chocolate chip cookies nailed down? Try someone else's take on it and see what you find. You may discover something you didn't before. Try to resist ordering that favorite dessert you always get. Mix it up and be open to discovering new flavors. 

The more you pay attention to taste, the more you will be able to successfully bake because you will have a better idea of how to arrive at the particular flavor you're after. You will also be able to appreciate food more. As I continue to develop my own taste more fully I figure that my food journey is still just beginning.