A Mouth With an Agenda

Food takes us on a journey but it’s the flavour of the food that writes the map. When a food enters your mouth the outcome is not as simple as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but an explosion of ingredients working together to form a cohesive yet layered flavour, the mouth’s agenda deciding and classifying it according to your own opinionated taste.

I’m sure you don’t consciously think of these things when you eat but your mouth is in fact trying to tell you something. Tasting is unique to each mouth and nose, the incredible push and pull of sour, sweet, salt and bitter is a unique performance of flavour only found in that specific palate.

To define a flavour, we must dig deep into the ambiguous nature of our reciprocal senses, and understand that our senses are different to every individual. A taste can be accepted, rejected, loved, repulsed, savored or SPAT OUT! But a taste is always a taste and its process is a science worth talking about.

When we eat our sense of smell and taste are at work, from the overpowering flavour to the hidden subtle background performers, they all play a role in the overall taste and flavour of a dish. An example is blue cheese, some palates can’t handle the sharp, salty, yeasty, bitterness of the cheese, alternatively others crave for it smeared and tucked into anything.

Flavour is the curriculum of the taste buds. Over time they learn salt from sweet, bitter from sour, and begin to evolve with traits of dislike and fondness for particular tastes, all of this triggered and promoted by culture, food availability, choice and education. It is these factors that cause our taste buds to develop relationships with certain foods and mouths with agendas.

Our mouths and noses have an agenda, they are constantly in search of that smell, and taste that sparks memories, unlocks happiness, and recognizes deliciousness. Taste can be ambiguous and in constant alteration but it forms the basis of eating and the pleasure we get from it. So let your mouth do the talking and always be open to a new agenda. And when you do find a taste that pushes all the right buttons, remember it, recognize it and savour it!

By Samantha Coutts