June 30, 2017 • 39 mins
Why heavier bowls, a pair of headphones and an electronic lollipop can trick your mind grapes into making food tastier. Plus, the legend of the PB and Mayo sandwich. (And one very cute pepper to avoid!) Featuring Bob Holmes.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what will what's that? Man? Go? So I was
watching this old BBC clip online of an electronic lollipop.
What is that? So it's not actually a candy. The
lollipop is still being developed in labs, but it's this
gentle plant that slides metal plates over the top and
bodiy tongue. I don't think it helps to call this
clamp gentle. That still doesn't sound that appealing. Well, here's
(00:20):
what's cool about it. So it sends currents through your
tongue and adjust the temperature on those plates, and the
electronic lollipop can actually trick your tongue into thinking it's
tasting a wide variety of flavors, like a lemony sour
taste is the easiest to pull off, and scientists can
do reasonable approximations of other flavors. But the application of
all this is really cool. Like imagine you're watching Iron
(00:42):
Chef and Bobby Flays on there and he's just made
the most amazing eggplant spaghetti taco in the world, and
you can't figure out for the life of you what
an eggplant plus spaghetti and a taco shell should taste like,
And so you just take a lick of your lollipop
and suddenly you get a sense of that flavor. Wow.
I mean, that's kind of weird, but it is. It
is pretty cool. It minds me a little bit of
smell vision, except for your taste, but exactly. And you
(01:04):
can see how this might be used in online grocery
shopping in the future or checking out new recipes. It's
totally fascinating. But what I found most interesting in all
of this are the limitations. Because these currents are only
playing with your tongue, they can only create a set
of basic flavors. But when the scientists added technology that
incorporates your nose, suddenly the range of flavors expanded dramatically,
(01:25):
and that got me thinking what other tricks can we
play on our tongue and how much a flavor is
really just something constructed in our brain. So that's what
this episode is all about. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome
(01:51):
to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always
I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesho Ticketer, and
today I'm here to address a big problem in the
English language. I'm pretty sure you're talking about starting sentences
with because because my second grade English teacher had the
same argument with me. Wait, this was second grade. You
get in trouble in second grade for starting sentences with
because yeah, actually it was more of a thing that
(02:12):
she said we shouldn't do. And then I started every
sentence in a story with the word because it was
not a good strategy for going to recess that. Right. Well,
at some point we'll do a whole episode on grammar,
so you can save your SOB stories for them. But
today I'm talking about how English speakers use the words
taste and flavor interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing. Wait,
(02:32):
they don't mean the same thing. I know, it's pretty crazy.
So I've been reading this new book called Flavor. It's
by Bob Holmes, and it's really good. As Holmes explains,
taste is just one component of flavor, and he writes,
the best way to think about flavor is that it's
the sum of all the sensations we get when we
have food in the mouth. So think about the weight
of the bowl, the color of the plate, the crunch
(02:53):
of the potato chip. Even the choice of background music
can have a direct effect on how we perceive flavor.
That funny, because when I think of flavor, it seems
like such a specific thing, like popcorn flavor, jelly beans,
that's a flavor. I think there might be some people
who disagree with you on this, but but I know
what you're saying is true. Like taste and smell and
(03:13):
touch and sound, they all play a role in how
much we appreciate food. I guess I've just been using
the wrong vocabulary. All right, Well, I'm not here to
flavor sham you, but we do have Bob Homes on
the show today, which is super exciting, and we'll be
talking to him about flavor and some of the fascinating
studies and facts he covered in his book. Speaking of which,
do you have a terrible quiz lined up for us today?
(03:34):
Of course I do. Sticking with the flavors theme, we're
playing real vintage recipe or gourmet cat food flavor. It's
a little harder than you think. Awesome, all right, all right, well,
let's kick this off by talking about taste. Even if
it's not the same thing as flavor, it's obviously an
important thing, definitely so. In the English speaking world, psychologists
have traditionally acknowledged four different tastes. They're sweet, sour, salty,
(03:57):
and bitter, and humans have different receptors for each these.
And then more recently, we've added a fifth taste, ou mommy,
which kind of just sounds made up, so we need
to talk about that. Yeah, it did feel like a
few years ago people started talking about ummmy and it
was like breaking news, like did you hear about this
umami flavor? And actually, to be honest, I got confused.
I was mixing it up with the word unagi, which
(04:18):
is the Japanese word for freshwater eel, so so I
was trying to understand why eel got to be a
flavor of its own. I mean, don't get me wrong,
I love eel, but it was still a little confusing. Yeah,
it was confusing to meet because I thought we were
getting a brand new flavor, like you know that apartment
you have, did you know it's been hiding a secret
room all this time? Or like you're familiar with the rainbow,
(04:39):
guess what we're adding a new color, And instead it
was like, you know, parmesan cheese or soy sauce, those
are your mommy. You just didn't have a word for it, right,
But umami is definitely distinct. Yeah, It's a Japanese word
meaning delicious flavor and linguists usually translated as savory or
maybe meaty, and his Homes explains there are a few
reasons why it takes a while to rack your head
(05:00):
around what U mommy is. First, is that, unlike other tastes,
you don't really experience mummy as this isolated thing. Think
about it. You can bite into a strawberry and immediately
experience that as sweet, or lick a French fry and no,
that's kind of a salty taste. I think we've talked
about this. You've got to stop licking your French fry.
That's a little weird. They're just so good though, But anyway,
(05:22):
you can experience those tastes in a pretty pure and
direct form With OU mommy, it's more in combination with
other things. Taste researcher Paul Breslin also points out that
the receptors for OU mommy have a pretty low maximum
intensity compared to other taste which prevents us from being
able to note something is being very umami, unlike how
we might say something is very sweet or very salty. Yeah,
(05:43):
and there's a much stronger cultural element than I realized.
I mean, I know the stereotypes of different cultures being
able to handle different levels of spice or things like that,
but I really didn't think about how that could be applied.
There's something like ou mommy. But it turns out many
people in Asian countries have no problem identifying things as
z mom, but they have the same ease that American
children have identifying things as sweet. It's really interesting how
(06:06):
taste has developed differently in different places around the world. Well,
let's back up for a minute talk about how these
tastes would have developed from an evolutionary perspective. Yeah, it's
one thing for us to identify or talk about these
tastes when we cook at home or eat at restaurants now,
but for our ancestors, these tastes were key to survival.
So think about how a sweet taste would have let
someone know that they were getting sugars, which are an
(06:27):
important way to get calories for energy, or Tasting salt
would be an indication of electrolytes, and a mommy would
have indicated the presence of proteins. Now, on the negative side,
our ancestors learned from bitter taste that something might be
toxic or from sourness that a fruit might have gone
bad or just not be good to eat. Yeah, it's
not hard to see how we'd be hardwired to like sweet, salty,
(06:47):
and mommy. And it's equally fascinating to see how other
animals have evolved differently because of their different nutritional needs.
Like there was a cat study. Oh great is back?
Well a study was done that showed cats, because their
carnivores are unable to really identify sweetness and it has
no appeal for them, and pandas, who are some serious
(07:09):
bamboo eaters, don't really need to identify you mommy, so
they've lost the ability to taste it well. And even
more extreme than that, vampire bats love of blood has
caused them to lose the ability to taste ou mommy,
sweet and bitter. I'm actually curious why we don't do
a bad studies like we do cats studies. Have I
mentioned I don't like cats. I think you've mentioned that
(07:30):
a few times, alright, just wanted to make sure. So
back to how we've evolved, there's another thing about taste
that I think is just crazy interesting. So just as
we're discussing how flavor is much more than just taste.
Taste also happens to be more complex than we thought.
Did you know that there are taste receptors in multiple
places around our body, not just our mouth. Sure, it's crazy,
isn't it. Wait, so that means you do know about this.
(07:52):
I'm gonna quiz you, So, do we have taste receptors
in our lungs? What about our guts? What about our brains?
What about our for No, we don't. We do not
have taste receptors in our forehead, you slum dogmillionaire, You
should know better. There's no cheating on our quizzes. So
this isn't exactly well understood yet, but it's really fascinating.
(08:14):
The ones in the gut, for example, detected mommy and sweet,
and let our brains know that some yummy and nutritious
food has arrived, and if they taste something bitter, they
let us know there may be a problem and trigger
response of some kind. So you can get the sense
for why they're helpful. But why do you think we
need taste receptors in our respiratory system? So it's one
way of letting our bodies know if bacteria has arrived,
(08:36):
Because bacteria have a communication chemical with a bitter taste,
and when the receptors in our respiratory system notice this,
they help our bodies mount a response. There's even some
thinking among scientists that these bitter receptors may have existed
in other areas of our body, first as a way
of detecting infection and then moving to our mouths. As
Holmes explains, if this is the case, we have disease
(08:57):
to thank for the flavor of coffee, beer, and brocc
It's weird, right, all right? So I know in a
few minutes we're going to play a quiz, but before
we do that, I think we should find out whether
we're super tasters super tastes. Well, it's not as exciting
as it sounds, because while it does mean someone has
a more intense sense of taste, supertasters tend to be
much more bland eaters because most tastes tend to be
(09:18):
that much more extreme for them. Well, given the fact
that the last time we ate at the Chinese place downstairs,
it looked to me like you just ordered a plate
of hot peppers, So I'm guessing you're not a supertaster. Yeah,
we had a joke in our family that our dad
served as so much spicy food that we burned off
our taste butts. Let me show you how we test
for this using this filter paper. Each strip has a
(09:40):
small amount of a bitter compound on them. It's called
prople thi osal or p r o P. So we're
going to put these on our tongues and find out
which of these three categories of tasters we fall in.
Non tasters will taste nothing, tasters will notice the bitter
taste but it's not a huge deal, and supertaste will
have the super strong response to it. All I like this.
(10:00):
We should also get some other members of the PTG
team in here. What are you say? Yeah? Definitely all right,
So let's give this a shot. So we've got two
of our team members joining us. We've got Noel Brown,
you may know from stuff they don't want you to know,
also a supervising producer on the show, and Jerry Rowland,
our executive producer. Here. Guys, you guys ready to give
this a shot? Boy? Am I ever? Okay? All right?
(10:23):
So we've all got these strips and on the count
of three, we're gonna put them on our tongues and
we're gonna see what happens now. As a reminder, if
you taste nothing, which may be the case, you're a
non taster. If you taste a little bit of bitter,
just some bitter, then you're a taster. And if it
tastes extremely better than you are a super taster. So ready,
all right on the count of three, one, two, three.
(10:47):
I don't know what sides you may have to flip
it out. You get something I got. I got a
hint of bitter. Uh huh. Mine is totally bitter. It's
like great fruit bitter. Oh nice, I have a real
paper taste, but I mean something completely different. We can't
talk about it, Jerry, she's running away. She's always had
(11:12):
a great taste. Is blown? I hate great fruit, super taste. Kay,
spicy food, Jerry, I love spicy food, but you just
like the torture of I guess I'm not sure what's happening.
Oh man, that's so disappointing. You've given us a lot
to think about. Yeah, I feel like I'm so cheated,
(11:34):
Like not only can I not see those like three
D magic pictures, but also I can't taste these people. Yeah,
this is the worst. Okay, that's a bummer I was
getting I think I was getting a slight taste of bitter. Okay,
here we go. Well, while we're having so much fun,
what do you say we play a little quiz? Sounds good?
(11:55):
All right? So who do we have on the line today, Mango,
We've got Sarah Fiddler, who's got one of the list
jobs in the world. She's a flavor guru at one
of my favorite ice cream companies, Ben and Jerry's. We
are so excited to have you on. Welcome to part
time genius, Sarah. Thank you for having me. So I'm
really curious how you got this job. I mean, what
sort of training and schooling do you have to have
to become a Ben and Jerry's flavor guru? Um? Well, personally,
(12:19):
I have a degree in Food science UM from the
University of Vermont and a degree in baking and pastry
from the Culinary Institute of America. There are a group
of us flavor gurus here, and everybody's got kind of
a mixed background, from chefs to food scientists, all comes
(12:40):
from different backgrounds. It's very cool. And and how are
flavors decided upon? Like, how do you guys decide? You
have so many fun and creative and awesome flavors. How
do you guys come up with these? Well, we start
out by being very creative and kind of playing around
in our test kitchens, and then we meet with our
(13:01):
marketing team or brand management team sometimes the social mission
team and figure out which of our crazy flavors makes
the most sense to launch for the next season. And
so how many flavors are you typically playing with? It
could be arranged anywhere from maybe three to ten at
(13:22):
a time. That's that's a pretty crazy UM. I heard
that the Ven and Jerry's staff takes a field trip
every year to research new flavors. Is that true. Yeah,
we go on what we call trend tracks. UM take
a city or area that seems to be filled with
really up and coming food places, sometimes cocktail places, farms,
(13:49):
and go as a group and eat as much as
we possibly can, and then come back and make ice
cream inspired by what we ate. That's so cool. Well,
where are some of the fun places you've trecked to? UM? Well,
I'm relatively new to the company, so I have yet
to go on a truck, but I've heard that they've
gone to San Francisco, Portland's UM I believe there was
(14:13):
a trip to Japan before I started. Very cool. That's
so jealous of this job. That sounds pretty great. Now
we also know about the flavor graveyard at Ben and Jerry.
So are there are there ceremonies when flavors are buried there?
And how does this work? How do you pay your
respects um? I think for some of the flavors that
were a little bit more love, uh, they do ceremonies
(14:37):
and sometimes it's more of a quiet affair. You won't
get into that then. So that's pretty great. All right,
So ango, what game are we playing today with Sarah?
It's called do Me a Flavor? Mostly because I just
wanted to hear you say do me a flavor things.
I really, I really appreciate that. That's a pretty terrible t.
(14:57):
I don't know. How do we play? Basically, we're giving
Sarah three popular flavors from an iconic food or drink
brant and she just has to tell us what we're
talking about. Okay, that sounds fun. All right, Sarah? You
ready to play? I'm ready? Okay. Question number one? This
chip comes in cool Ranch, nacho, cheese, and heat wave flavors.
So do me a flavor and tell me what product
(15:18):
we're talking about. You Yeah, you got it for one
Question number two. The most popular flavors of this candy
include very cherry and buttered popcorn, though the blueberry flavor
was particularly popular in the nineteen eighties when it was
created for Ronald Reagan. Do me a flavor, manger A,
you're gonna make me say. Do me a flavor and
(15:38):
tell me what brand we're talking about for two question
number three. This sports drink originally came in lemon, lime,
and orange flavors. It has since expanded to include rainberry,
glacier freeze, and cool blue. Do me a flavor and
tell me what beverage I'm talking about. Yes, sorry, she's
(16:01):
three for three. Let's see if she can get the
last two question number four. While this O shaped breakfast
cereal does come in flavors like fruity and frosted, the
most popular varieties are still original and honey nut. Do
me a flavor and tell me what breakfast cereal I'm
talking about. Okay, we've saved the hardest for last. Good
luck on this one. Okay, Question number five. This iconic
(16:23):
ice cream brand has the best puny flavors, including Fish Food,
American Dream, and the Tonight Dough. Do me a flavor
and tell me what really wonderful ice cream company we're
talking about? All right? That would have been kind of
embarrassing if she missed out. Well, Sarah when an astounding
five for five, which wins her the grand prize, a
(16:45):
handwritten note from us to her mom or boss singing
her praises. So, congratulations Sarah, and thank you so much
for playing. That's awesome. Congratulations Sarah. Please tell all the
people that Ben and Jerry's we say thank you for
making wonderful ice or even keep up the great work.
(17:18):
I guess what will? What's that mango? I'm coming to
terms with the fact that I'm not a super taste
al right. Well, lucky for you, we've been talking about
the fact that flavor is so much more than just taste,
and then we just talked about taste. But I think
it's time we backed that statement up and talk about
another key component of flavor, and that smell. All right,
talk to me about smell. Well, if you think taste
(17:40):
is a complicated thing, it's nothing compared to the complexity
of smell. Think about the millions upon millions of smells
in the world and how our noses have to make
sense of them and help us identify what things are.
In fact, as Holmes points out, the old faction researcher
Joel Mainland estimates that they're about twenty seven billion smelling
molecules in the world. And while that doesn't mean they're
(18:01):
about billion smells because some might be identical, that's still
this incredible number. Well, the other thing, Holmes explains that
I find so interesting, and this goes back to your
electric lollipop example, but that's how different taste and smell are.
So our sense of taste is pretty easy to break down.
We can enjoy a dish of sweet and sour pork
and understand that it's sweet and sour, or have some
(18:22):
catch up and know that it's sweet, sour, salty and
new mommy. And maybe we're not thinking about those things actively,
but those are all there and we can identify them.
So but smell is different because you really can't break
it down. Instead, our brains take all the information from
the smelly molecules and create a single perception of smell.
As Holmes writes, if you combine ethyl isobuterate which is
(18:44):
a fruity odor ethyl maltall it's just caramel like an
allyl alpha ionine, which is violet like in the proper proportions.
For example, what you smell is not caramel coated fruit
on a bed of violets, but pineapple. And it's made
much more complicated by the fact that in English we
really don't have the language to describe smells in any
(19:05):
significant way other than seeing what they smell like. So
we might say something smells fishy or like grass or whatever.
But this isn't the case everywhere, and especially in places
that depend much more on those smells for survival, such
as the remaining hunter gatherer tribes. Take the Jehi tribe
of Thailand. A research team set up a smell test
between a group of Jehi men and a group of
(19:25):
men from Texas, and when the Jehi men were presented
with certain smells, they had just an easy time communicating
what they smelled with very descriptive words, as they did
in describing colors. And the Texans, on the other hand,
were of course able to describe colors, but they struggled
when asked to describe smells. When there's one more reason
why smell is just so difficult for us to understand
and talk about what's not alright, So humans have around
(19:48):
four hundred odor receptors. But the part that makes things
complicated is that only about half of those receptors work
and pretty much everyone. But then of the other half,
there's this wide range of which one's work and some
p bowl and not in others. So that leads to
an incredibly wide range of smells that humans are capable
of processing. In fact, for the most part, no two
(20:08):
people have the same sense of smell, which is pretty crazy. Yeah,
but needless to say, our sense of smell and makes
a huge contribution to the flavors we process. And there's
another biggie to add to taste and smell, and that's
the sense of touch. Think about the burn of a
chili pepper, or the chili feeling in your mouth when
you're chewing on a menty piece of gum, or visit
a carbonated drink. Oh man, that first sip of a coke?
(20:30):
How good is this first sip of a coke? So good?
I think I'll have one right now, all right to Atlanta.
So it's interesting how little is really understood about this
component of flavor at least how few studies have been
done on it, but we do know that spicy hot,
for example, is not a taste. It's something you feel,
(20:51):
and that we have specific receptors that cause the heat
sensation when we eat spicy things. Speaking the spicy hot.
Do you know how the Scoville units, which measure or
the heat of chili peppers got its start. Well, apparently
it goes back to this pharmacist and researcher Wilbur Scoville.
Scoville came up with a scale back in and it
was a pretty smart way of doing it. You figured
(21:11):
out that you could create a scale based on the
amount of dilution required before the burn of a chili
could no longer be felt, So super hot pepper would
take much more dilution. Oh, that is pretty smart. Yeah,
and now it's easier for scientists to just measure the
amount of capt sasan, which is the main ingredient that
makes a chili hot, and then just convert those into
Scoville units. It's pretty wild how hot some peppers can be.
(21:33):
Take halapinos, for example, which we think of is pretty hot.
They come in about five thousand Scoville units. Cayans are
at about forty thousand. The Habbaniro comes in it over
a hundred thousand, maybe even up to three hundred thousand.
But even the Habbaniro doesn't hold a candle to the
Carolina Reaper. And how many Scoville units does that one have?
Two point two millions and unbelievable. That's basically like police
(22:00):
aid pepper spray. And there's a new contender out there.
It's called Dragon's Breath, which is a tiny pepper that
can possibly kill you, but it sounds so cute. So
we have no old Brown here to test this. Why
would you even make a pepper that hot. Well, it's
so unbelievably hot that can actually numb your skin to touch,
and that makes it useful as an anesthetic in areas
(22:20):
without medical supplies. But let's leave the hottest of the
hot peppers aside for a minute. It's interesting that we
humans enjoy inflicting this burning pain on ourselves and we
don't know exactly why this is. I mean, I know,
we know about the endorphin release that happens when we
eat spicy foods, but that still doesn't answer the question
of why that happens. You know, first we feast does
(22:40):
that chili head enthusiast show. And I was reading an
interview that said it's much easier to get people to
drop their inhibitions when they eat a chili pepper because
they're like sweating and it's like they've just exercised. So
instead of those awkward questions you go through in the
beginning of an interview, people just get past that by
eating chilies. Anyway, we know humans like heat, but researchers
have yet to identify another mammal that seeks the heat
(23:01):
of chili peppers. I mean, birds eat plenty of them,
but they don't actually have the receptors that would feel
the heat of kept sastion, so there's no sensation at
all for them even in eating a super hot pepper.
I wonder if birds enjoy the first sip of a coke.
Oh man, Alright, while we savor our beverages, why don't
we take a break for a quiz. Our guest today
(23:31):
has been a science writer and correspondent for New Scientist
magazine for over twenty years, and as the author of Flavor,
the brilliant book we've been talking about in this episode,
and for those who listen to our episode on how
Clean We Should Be. You know, I'm not surprised that
a new scientist writer would produce such a great book.
Bob Holmes, Welcome to Part Time Genius. Thanks for having me,
Bob and Flavor. You mentioned that we can pretty much
(23:53):
do away with the idea that we have previously had
about taste maps, where different parts of our tongues helped
us experience different taste. So our taste maps really not
a thing we should think about anymore. They really aren't,
And it's it's pretty easy to demonstrate that. All you
have to do is take a que tip and dip
it in salt water and brush it around your tongue.
You know, the taste map says that he tastes salty.
(24:15):
I think it's right at the tip of your tongue,
and you'll find that you can taste the salt anywhere.
So how did this come about? I'm not sure. It
turns out there are slight differences in different parts of
the tongue, and you've got a few more bitter taste
buds right at the back and a few more sweets
at the front. Things like that. But it's it's not
(24:37):
enough to make much of a difference at all. You
also write the possibility of a sixth taste or even
more than that, and could you talk a little bit
about that? Sure, Yeah, I mean it's almost certainly at
least like the taste and made quite a few more. Uh.
You know, we all know about sweet, salty, sower, bitter,
and most of us know about mommy, which is a
(24:58):
fifth taste that's sort of safe retaste. But almost certainly.
I think the evidence is really good now that there
is in fact a taste for for fat, or more specifically,
for the fatty acid breakdown products of fat. And these
are actually the nasties. The researcher who demonstrated this is
(25:18):
the easiest way to think about what they taste like
is to imagine old ransoid French fry oil. It's gone off,
and that's what fatty acids taste like. Yeah, I definitely
know that, almost certainly one of those warning tastes to
keep us away from rancid fats. And is there anything
(25:39):
good that can be done with it? A little bit
of these nasty fatty acids are part of what makes
aged cheese interesting. So yeah, and probably also a little
bit in aged meat and things like that, So in
very small quantities, you know, just like putting a little
bit of cappy, I persume actually is a good thing.
(26:03):
You know, these nasties in our food probably do add
interest if there's little enough of them. You know. One
of the other things that you explained that I thought
was was super interesting is that humans get a bad
rap for having an inferior sense of smell. So is
this really a myth? We have fewer odor receptors in
our nose than something like a dog does, so they
(26:24):
probably are better than us, but not nearly as much
better than us as we think. Uh. When people have looked,
they found that that humans are actually pretty good at
smelling stuff. But a blindfolded person can follow a chocolate
trail across the lawn on their hands and he's sniffing
(26:44):
to find where the chocolate was ding. Uh. So you know,
most of the reason that we think we're so bad
at smell is that our noses are way up in
the air and all the smells are done there on
the ground. So if we were too, if we were
to explore our worlds just like our dogs do, we
find there were stuff there we could smell. People can
(27:06):
go into a into a into a bookshelf and pick
out which book someone has just handled by the smell alone.
And the other place we're really good at smell actually
is in flavor. You know, the shape of our heads
mean that the flavors foods that are inside our mouth
has very quick access to to the olfactory part of
(27:31):
the nose, and so we're probably way better than our
dogs are at appreciating flavor. M that's really interesting, that's
so crazy. I mean, I feel like that totally changes
the truffle game, like the truffle hunting game, Like you
don't need a pig if you're on all four four
that's probably right, But some people don't smell the key
(27:51):
compounded truffles. Yeah, I'd probably do it for the right
bar of chocolate. Yeah, alright, Well, being an expert on flavor,
we couldn't let you go without putting you to the
test on an ultimate flavor quiz. So, Mango, what what
game do we have? What game do we have Bob playing? Today?
We're playing a game called Vintage Recipe or gourmet cat
(28:13):
food Flavor. That's right, So we'll be tossing you a
delicious sounding item delicious is in air quotes, which doesn't
work quite as well on podcasts. But you have to
tell us if it's a vintage recipe we found online
or a gourmet cat food flavor. So you're ready to
get started, all right. So the first one is ham
(28:35):
and bananas hollandaise, Ham and bananas hollandaise. Is this a
vintage recipe we found online or a gourmet cat food flavor?
I'm going to go vintage recite. Yeah, you would be right.
It's a great way to make use of your leftover
bananas and ham apparently. All right, Okay. Number two sea
(28:58):
beast in seas consume a I'm gonna got for that one. Yeah,
you're right. It's from Tiki Cats Hawaiian Queen Emma lul Line,
of course. Alright. Question number three liver sausage pineapple. I
can't imagine the cat eating pineapples. I'm gonna go with
(29:19):
intoe recipe three for three. I really probably would have
guessed cat food on that though, just because the word
liver would have thrown me off. I think. Alright. Number
four lime cheese salad recipe is correct. Yeah, you're right,
it's a um it was a recipe from Jello and
and uh it's a Jello bed with a seafood salad
(29:41):
plopped on top. I think I've got that Midwestern church. Alright,
we've got two lefties. Four for four so far. Here
we go. Ocean fish, tuna and cheese sauce. That sounds
like it will appeal to a cat. And you're right,
it is a gort. I can't believe there's cheese sauce.
(30:02):
And yeah, it's from the Teeth Treasurers line. Right, fancy
cat food. All right, let's see if you can get
six for six spam in Lima's Spam and Lima's hip. Yeah,
it was a promotional recipe from hormel Um and it
(30:23):
had a Spanish gravy and frozen line of beans. That
is incredible. So, Bob, how has Bob done? He ran
the table. He went an incredible six for six, which
wins him today's grand prize, which is our endless admiration. Wow,
congratulations Bob. That is huge. Yeah, well, Bob, thanks so
(30:43):
much for writing a terrific book and for for joining
us today on part time genius. Guess what I've got
my pocket here? Mango? That sounds so creepy. Sorry, I
(31:06):
should have I probably should have phrased that a little differently.
But guess what I have in my pocket here that
rhymes with schmock blocks. That sounds even creepy here, But
you've got pop rocks, right. I know we've talked about taste, smell,
and touch, and that those are considered the flavor trinity,
but we can't leave out sound or other multisensory effects
(31:26):
on how we experience flavor. Well, you're gonna crack open
those bad boys are not? All right, let's do it.
They are so good. Pop rocks reminded me of that.
You know that part in um the Eddieizard routine where
he's talking about chiropractors and how they live for the noise,
(31:47):
and that chiropracticing or what do you call it, chiropractic
cracking bones would be nothing if they didn't hear the sounds,
or just like I live for the noise, I crack
your bones anyway. All right? You remember how our friend
and former Mental Flaws editor O the pop rocks are
still just popping like crazy. I don't think I've had
one of these since I was ten. I need more. Okay,
(32:09):
So you remember our friend and former Mental Flaws editor
Jesson Collins used to talk about chip o'clock in the office. Yeah,
for your listeners. There was a period in the mid
afternoon when the editorial staff and Mental Flaws used to
all go out for their afternoon snack and grab a
bag of chips. It made her crazy. Well, while that
sound may be difficult for the person not eating the
chips to listen to, for the people eating chips, that
(32:30):
sound likely increase their enjoyment. So papers have shown that
people rate chips his taste here if they provide a
louder crunch. There was even a study by Charles Spence
and Max m peeny that had people eat a hundred
and eighty pringles. I'm so envious that people got to
eat pringles for Scion. I mean, we did get to
have pop rocks coke and we got to watch Jerry
have that bitter taste. So, but as they did this,
(32:53):
they wore headphones that played back the sound of their crunch.
So as they work their way through the chips, the
researchers adjusted the volume level of the crunch feedback, and
they found that the louder crunching made them rate the
chips fifteen percent tastier than the softer crunching. I still
can't believe they got to eat sprinkles for signing. I
know the sound of an expensive coffee maker has been
(33:13):
showed to increase how people rated a cup of Joe,
But I also loved the study where Spence had a
group of subjects eat oysters while listening to different sounds.
Some of them heard the sounds of waves and seagulls,
and some of them heard sounds from barnyards like chickens
clucking and cow's moving. And not only did those who
heard the c sounds rate the oysters taste here, they
also experienced them as saltier. I love this stuff because
(33:36):
it kind of feels like food trickery. But I guess
as we understand that all our senses are involved in
how we experience flavor, it's really no more trickery than
anything else we do to enhance flavor. So let's talk
about some of the other multi sensory effects on flavor.
I love that music can affect how we experienced flavor,
like homes notes that really powerful music like Carl Orff's
(33:56):
Carmina Burana causes people to note the heavier flavors in
a red wine and what he describes as zingi music
actually brings out the brighter flavors and a white wine.
And with that in mind, I'd like to recommend after
the show we all listen to Hall and Notes and
need a bag of rollos. I bet that can only
make the experience of both better. And then we'll eat
one of those Reese's fast break bars and listen to
(34:16):
Ayah the Tiger. Yeah, it's science and action. Folks will
will report back. But there's some other fun and funny
results of experiments, Like there was this Goldilocks style experiments
using three bowls of yogurt. The yogurt was the same
in all three bowls, but the bowls weighed different amount
and how many bears were involved this is is zero.
It wasn't published in our bear reviewed medical journals, but
(34:37):
people did note that they enjoyed the yogurt in the
heaviest bowl, most like why should weight of a bowl
infect your enjoyment? And strawberry moose served on a white
plate was rated sweeter than the same dessert served on
a black plate. One of my favorite studies was the
one on hockey fans at Cornell and researchers found that
when the home team won, fans actually found the ice
cream to be sweeter, and when they lost, they knowed
(34:58):
it as more sour. How weird, that's almost as science,
he is. Okay, So if all these senses contribute to flavor,
why do we only associate flavor with the stuff happening
in our mouths. Well, that's the work of our brains.
It takes all that information smell, taste, texture, sound and
combines it into one experience, and then it tells us
that experience is happening in our mouths. So it's a side,
(35:20):
don't Many food scientists now say that while foods obviously
contain flavor molecules, they believe the actual flavors themselves aren't
created by the food, but instead by our brains, which
I guess would be a big part of the reason
why we all experienced flavor differently. That's just weird, Yes
it is. But we are not done with our weird
facts for the day. You know what time it is.
It's time for the part time Genius fact on the
(35:43):
part of the show where we share some of the
interesting facts we learned recently but didn't get a chance
to mention just yet, So well, why don't you start
this round? All right? Sure? So, if you read airline magazines,
you often see that famous chefs pair up with airlines
to improve the end flight meals, but the odds are
(36:05):
stacked against them. According to a study commissioned by the
German airline carrier Lutanza, between the elevation and the dryness
that occurs in the cabin, your sensitivity to sweet and
salty foods decreases by about thirty which means the meal
probably tastes a whole lot better if you save it
for after you land. Do you know peanut butter and
mayo sandwiches used to be a popular thing like According
(36:28):
to Garden and Gun magazine, the sandwiches were a staple
during the depression and could be fancied up by adding
a few leaves of lettuce and some pickles. And so.
The editors at Food fifty two this other site also
tried the sandwich on reader recommendation, and their verdict was,
if you wear a blindfold when you take a bite,
it almost tastes like a tuna sandwich. All right, why
don't we just name a few odd recipes we've found
(36:49):
since we both looked them up. The Betty Crocker recommended
a tuna and jello pie, also known as a summer
pie devoid. The winter sales slump. Dr Pepper wren as
that you should heat the soda in a saucepan and
then poured over a lemon gross, which is why nothing
reminds me of Christmas more than a steaming mug of
Dr Pepper. Did you know that Johnny Walker makes a
(37:09):
mustache wax that enhances their drinks. The wax comes in
three flavors, pepper, citrus, and ginger, and it helps to
apply a generous amount to your stash. So I know
we talked about eating and texture today, but I learned
this isn't a completely new concept. In the nineteen thirties,
the Italian futurists played with food and texture in a
completely different way. Diners were clothed and textured pajamas, which
(37:33):
they stroked with one hand in a dark room while
burying their face in bank and when they looked up
for their plates a waiter, it splits them with perfume.
For some reason, the movement didn't take off. I can't
imagine why. Yeah, futurists hated pasta, and they like to
sculpt their meats. And there was also one course where
you ate salad out of a tiny box with one
(37:54):
hand and turned a crank with the other. As long
as you were turning the crank, your waiter would dance
for you. Call that is so good. I have to
give you this one, so you earned this week's fact off.
Speaking of which, we need to nominate a smarty pants
to our Hall of Genius. I'm thinking we should give
it to William Mitchell's family. Mitchell was a food inventor
who grew up on a farm, worked his way through college,
(38:15):
and then went on to invent cool whip, powdered egg
whites for cake mix, quick set jello tang and that's
so many amazing things and what and pop rocks. Apparently
the candy was supposed to be a carbonated drink mix,
but it worked better as a crazy kids treat. He's
in William Mitchell's family. You'll be getting a certificate in
(38:35):
the mail and special thanks to our brilliant nonfiction librarians
over at the Hoover Public Library and Hoover, Alabama for
recommending the book Flavored by Bob Holmes. If you like
what you heard, be sure to pick up a coffee today.
That's it for today's episode. Thanks for listening. Thanks again
(39:04):
for listening to Part Time Genius. Be sure to subscribe
wherever you listen to your podcast. And because we're a
brand new show, if you're feeling extra generous, we'd love
it if you give us a rating on Apple Podcast.
Part Time Genius is produced by some of our favorite geniuses.
It's edited by Tristan McNeil, theme song and audio mixing
by Noel Brown. Our executive producer is Jerry Rowland. Our
research team is Gave Lozier, Lucas Adams, Autumn Whitefield in
(39:25):
the Toronto Austin Thompson, and Meg Robbins. Jason Hope is
our chief cheerleader.
Guess what will what's that? Man? Go? So I was
watching this old BBC clip online of an electronic lollipop.
What is that? So it's not actually a candy. The
lollipop is still being developed in labs, but it's this
gentle plant that slides metal plates over the top and
bodiy tongue. I don't think it helps to call this
clamp gentle. That still doesn't sound that appealing. Well, here's
(00:20):
what's cool about it. So it sends currents through your
tongue and adjust the temperature on those plates, and the
electronic lollipop can actually trick your tongue into thinking it's
tasting a wide variety of flavors, like a lemony sour
taste is the easiest to pull off, and scientists can
do reasonable approximations of other flavors. But the application of
all this is really cool. Like imagine you're watching Iron
(00:42):
Chef and Bobby Flays on there and he's just made
the most amazing eggplant spaghetti taco in the world, and
you can't figure out for the life of you what
an eggplant plus spaghetti and a taco shell should taste like,
And so you just take a lick of your lollipop
and suddenly you get a sense of that flavor. Wow.
I mean, that's kind of weird, but it is. It
is pretty cool. It minds me a little bit of
smell vision, except for your taste, but exactly. And you
(01:04):
can see how this might be used in online grocery
shopping in the future or checking out new recipes. It's
totally fascinating. But what I found most interesting in all
of this are the limitations. Because these currents are only
playing with your tongue, they can only create a set
of basic flavors. But when the scientists added technology that
incorporates your nose, suddenly the range of flavors expanded dramatically,
(01:25):
and that got me thinking what other tricks can we
play on our tongue and how much a flavor is
really just something constructed in our brain. So that's what
this episode is all about. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome
(01:51):
to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always
I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesho Ticketer, and
today I'm here to address a big problem in the
English language. I'm pretty sure you're talking about starting sentences
with because because my second grade English teacher had the
same argument with me. Wait, this was second grade. You
get in trouble in second grade for starting sentences with
because yeah, actually it was more of a thing that
(02:12):
she said we shouldn't do. And then I started every
sentence in a story with the word because it was
not a good strategy for going to recess that. Right. Well,
at some point we'll do a whole episode on grammar,
so you can save your SOB stories for them. But
today I'm talking about how English speakers use the words
taste and flavor interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing. Wait,
(02:32):
they don't mean the same thing. I know, it's pretty crazy.
So I've been reading this new book called Flavor. It's
by Bob Holmes, and it's really good. As Holmes explains,
taste is just one component of flavor, and he writes,
the best way to think about flavor is that it's
the sum of all the sensations we get when we
have food in the mouth. So think about the weight
of the bowl, the color of the plate, the crunch
(02:53):
of the potato chip. Even the choice of background music
can have a direct effect on how we perceive flavor.
That funny, because when I think of flavor, it seems
like such a specific thing, like popcorn flavor, jelly beans,
that's a flavor. I think there might be some people
who disagree with you on this, but but I know
what you're saying is true. Like taste and smell and
(03:13):
touch and sound, they all play a role in how
much we appreciate food. I guess I've just been using
the wrong vocabulary. All right, Well, I'm not here to
flavor sham you, but we do have Bob Homes on
the show today, which is super exciting, and we'll be
talking to him about flavor and some of the fascinating
studies and facts he covered in his book. Speaking of which,
do you have a terrible quiz lined up for us today?
(03:34):
Of course I do. Sticking with the flavors theme, we're
playing real vintage recipe or gourmet cat food flavor. It's
a little harder than you think. Awesome, all right, all right, well,
let's kick this off by talking about taste. Even if
it's not the same thing as flavor, it's obviously an
important thing, definitely so. In the English speaking world, psychologists
have traditionally acknowledged four different tastes. They're sweet, sour, salty,
(03:57):
and bitter, and humans have different receptors for each these.
And then more recently, we've added a fifth taste, ou mommy,
which kind of just sounds made up, so we need
to talk about that. Yeah, it did feel like a
few years ago people started talking about ummmy and it
was like breaking news, like did you hear about this
umami flavor? And actually, to be honest, I got confused.
I was mixing it up with the word unagi, which
(04:18):
is the Japanese word for freshwater eel, so so I
was trying to understand why eel got to be a
flavor of its own. I mean, don't get me wrong,
I love eel, but it was still a little confusing. Yeah,
it was confusing to meet because I thought we were
getting a brand new flavor, like you know that apartment
you have, did you know it's been hiding a secret
room all this time? Or like you're familiar with the rainbow,
(04:39):
guess what we're adding a new color, And instead it
was like, you know, parmesan cheese or soy sauce, those
are your mommy. You just didn't have a word for it, right,
But umami is definitely distinct. Yeah, It's a Japanese word
meaning delicious flavor and linguists usually translated as savory or
maybe meaty, and his Homes explains there are a few
reasons why it takes a while to rack your head
(05:00):
around what U mommy is. First, is that, unlike other tastes,
you don't really experience mummy as this isolated thing. Think
about it. You can bite into a strawberry and immediately
experience that as sweet, or lick a French fry and no,
that's kind of a salty taste. I think we've talked
about this. You've got to stop licking your French fry.
That's a little weird. They're just so good though, But anyway,
(05:22):
you can experience those tastes in a pretty pure and
direct form With OU mommy, it's more in combination with
other things. Taste researcher Paul Breslin also points out that
the receptors for OU mommy have a pretty low maximum
intensity compared to other taste which prevents us from being
able to note something is being very umami, unlike how
we might say something is very sweet or very salty. Yeah,
(05:43):
and there's a much stronger cultural element than I realized.
I mean, I know the stereotypes of different cultures being
able to handle different levels of spice or things like that,
but I really didn't think about how that could be applied.
There's something like ou mommy. But it turns out many
people in Asian countries have no problem identifying things as
z mom, but they have the same ease that American
children have identifying things as sweet. It's really interesting how
(06:06):
taste has developed differently in different places around the world. Well,
let's back up for a minute talk about how these
tastes would have developed from an evolutionary perspective. Yeah, it's
one thing for us to identify or talk about these
tastes when we cook at home or eat at restaurants now,
but for our ancestors, these tastes were key to survival.
So think about how a sweet taste would have let
someone know that they were getting sugars, which are an
(06:27):
important way to get calories for energy, or Tasting salt
would be an indication of electrolytes, and a mommy would
have indicated the presence of proteins. Now, on the negative side,
our ancestors learned from bitter taste that something might be
toxic or from sourness that a fruit might have gone
bad or just not be good to eat. Yeah, it's
not hard to see how we'd be hardwired to like sweet, salty,
(06:47):
and mommy. And it's equally fascinating to see how other
animals have evolved differently because of their different nutritional needs.
Like there was a cat study. Oh great is back?
Well a study was done that showed cats, because their
carnivores are unable to really identify sweetness and it has
no appeal for them, and pandas, who are some serious
(07:09):
bamboo eaters, don't really need to identify you mommy, so
they've lost the ability to taste it well. And even
more extreme than that, vampire bats love of blood has
caused them to lose the ability to taste ou mommy,
sweet and bitter. I'm actually curious why we don't do
a bad studies like we do cats studies. Have I
mentioned I don't like cats. I think you've mentioned that
(07:30):
a few times, alright, just wanted to make sure. So
back to how we've evolved, there's another thing about taste
that I think is just crazy interesting. So just as
we're discussing how flavor is much more than just taste.
Taste also happens to be more complex than we thought.
Did you know that there are taste receptors in multiple
places around our body, not just our mouth. Sure, it's crazy,
isn't it. Wait, so that means you do know about this.
(07:52):
I'm gonna quiz you, So, do we have taste receptors
in our lungs? What about our guts? What about our brains?
What about our for No, we don't. We do not
have taste receptors in our forehead, you slum dogmillionaire, You
should know better. There's no cheating on our quizzes. So
this isn't exactly well understood yet, but it's really fascinating.
(08:14):
The ones in the gut, for example, detected mommy and sweet,
and let our brains know that some yummy and nutritious
food has arrived, and if they taste something bitter, they
let us know there may be a problem and trigger
response of some kind. So you can get the sense
for why they're helpful. But why do you think we
need taste receptors in our respiratory system? So it's one
way of letting our bodies know if bacteria has arrived,
(08:36):
Because bacteria have a communication chemical with a bitter taste,
and when the receptors in our respiratory system notice this,
they help our bodies mount a response. There's even some
thinking among scientists that these bitter receptors may have existed
in other areas of our body, first as a way
of detecting infection and then moving to our mouths. As
Holmes explains, if this is the case, we have disease
(08:57):
to thank for the flavor of coffee, beer, and brocc
It's weird, right, all right? So I know in a
few minutes we're going to play a quiz, but before
we do that, I think we should find out whether
we're super tasters super tastes. Well, it's not as exciting
as it sounds, because while it does mean someone has
a more intense sense of taste, supertasters tend to be
much more bland eaters because most tastes tend to be
(09:18):
that much more extreme for them. Well, given the fact
that the last time we ate at the Chinese place downstairs,
it looked to me like you just ordered a plate
of hot peppers, So I'm guessing you're not a supertaster. Yeah,
we had a joke in our family that our dad
served as so much spicy food that we burned off
our taste butts. Let me show you how we test
for this using this filter paper. Each strip has a
(09:40):
small amount of a bitter compound on them. It's called
prople thi osal or p r o P. So we're
going to put these on our tongues and find out
which of these three categories of tasters we fall in.
Non tasters will taste nothing, tasters will notice the bitter
taste but it's not a huge deal, and supertaste will
have the super strong response to it. All I like this.
(10:00):
We should also get some other members of the PTG
team in here. What are you say? Yeah? Definitely all right,
So let's give this a shot. So we've got two
of our team members joining us. We've got Noel Brown,
you may know from stuff they don't want you to know,
also a supervising producer on the show, and Jerry Rowland,
our executive producer. Here. Guys, you guys ready to give
this a shot? Boy? Am I ever? Okay? All right?
(10:23):
So we've all got these strips and on the count
of three, we're gonna put them on our tongues and
we're gonna see what happens now. As a reminder, if
you taste nothing, which may be the case, you're a
non taster. If you taste a little bit of bitter,
just some bitter, then you're a taster. And if it
tastes extremely better than you are a super taster. So ready,
all right on the count of three, one, two, three.
(10:47):
I don't know what sides you may have to flip
it out. You get something I got. I got a
hint of bitter. Uh huh. Mine is totally bitter. It's
like great fruit bitter. Oh nice, I have a real
paper taste, but I mean something completely different. We can't
talk about it, Jerry, she's running away. She's always had
(11:12):
a great taste. Is blown? I hate great fruit, super taste. Kay,
spicy food, Jerry, I love spicy food, but you just
like the torture of I guess I'm not sure what's happening.
Oh man, that's so disappointing. You've given us a lot
to think about. Yeah, I feel like I'm so cheated,
(11:34):
Like not only can I not see those like three
D magic pictures, but also I can't taste these people. Yeah,
this is the worst. Okay, that's a bummer I was
getting I think I was getting a slight taste of bitter. Okay,
here we go. Well, while we're having so much fun,
what do you say we play a little quiz? Sounds good?
(11:55):
All right? So who do we have on the line today, Mango,
We've got Sarah Fiddler, who's got one of the list
jobs in the world. She's a flavor guru at one
of my favorite ice cream companies, Ben and Jerry's. We
are so excited to have you on. Welcome to part
time genius, Sarah. Thank you for having me. So I'm
really curious how you got this job. I mean, what
sort of training and schooling do you have to have
to become a Ben and Jerry's flavor guru? Um? Well, personally,
(12:19):
I have a degree in Food science UM from the
University of Vermont and a degree in baking and pastry
from the Culinary Institute of America. There are a group
of us flavor gurus here, and everybody's got kind of
a mixed background, from chefs to food scientists, all comes
(12:40):
from different backgrounds. It's very cool. And and how are
flavors decided upon? Like, how do you guys decide? You
have so many fun and creative and awesome flavors. How
do you guys come up with these? Well, we start
out by being very creative and kind of playing around
in our test kitchens, and then we meet with our
(13:01):
marketing team or brand management team sometimes the social mission
team and figure out which of our crazy flavors makes
the most sense to launch for the next season. And
so how many flavors are you typically playing with? It
could be arranged anywhere from maybe three to ten at
(13:22):
a time. That's that's a pretty crazy UM. I heard
that the Ven and Jerry's staff takes a field trip
every year to research new flavors. Is that true. Yeah,
we go on what we call trend tracks. UM take
a city or area that seems to be filled with
really up and coming food places, sometimes cocktail places, farms,
(13:49):
and go as a group and eat as much as
we possibly can, and then come back and make ice
cream inspired by what we ate. That's so cool. Well,
where are some of the fun places you've trecked to? UM? Well,
I'm relatively new to the company, so I have yet
to go on a truck, but I've heard that they've
gone to San Francisco, Portland's UM I believe there was
(14:13):
a trip to Japan before I started. Very cool. That's
so jealous of this job. That sounds pretty great. Now
we also know about the flavor graveyard at Ben and Jerry.
So are there are there ceremonies when flavors are buried there?
And how does this work? How do you pay your
respects um? I think for some of the flavors that
were a little bit more love, uh, they do ceremonies
(14:37):
and sometimes it's more of a quiet affair. You won't
get into that then. So that's pretty great. All right,
So ango, what game are we playing today with Sarah?
It's called do Me a Flavor? Mostly because I just
wanted to hear you say do me a flavor things.
I really, I really appreciate that. That's a pretty terrible t.
(14:57):
I don't know. How do we play? Basically, we're giving
Sarah three popular flavors from an iconic food or drink
brant and she just has to tell us what we're
talking about. Okay, that sounds fun. All right, Sarah? You
ready to play? I'm ready? Okay. Question number one? This
chip comes in cool Ranch, nacho, cheese, and heat wave flavors.
So do me a flavor and tell me what product
(15:18):
we're talking about. You Yeah, you got it for one
Question number two. The most popular flavors of this candy
include very cherry and buttered popcorn, though the blueberry flavor
was particularly popular in the nineteen eighties when it was
created for Ronald Reagan. Do me a flavor, manger A,
you're gonna make me say. Do me a flavor and
(15:38):
tell me what brand we're talking about for two question
number three. This sports drink originally came in lemon, lime,
and orange flavors. It has since expanded to include rainberry,
glacier freeze, and cool blue. Do me a flavor and
tell me what beverage I'm talking about. Yes, sorry, she's
(16:01):
three for three. Let's see if she can get the
last two question number four. While this O shaped breakfast
cereal does come in flavors like fruity and frosted, the
most popular varieties are still original and honey nut. Do
me a flavor and tell me what breakfast cereal I'm
talking about. Okay, we've saved the hardest for last. Good
luck on this one. Okay, Question number five. This iconic
(16:23):
ice cream brand has the best puny flavors, including Fish Food,
American Dream, and the Tonight Dough. Do me a flavor
and tell me what really wonderful ice cream company we're
talking about? All right? That would have been kind of
embarrassing if she missed out. Well, Sarah when an astounding
five for five, which wins her the grand prize, a
(16:45):
handwritten note from us to her mom or boss singing
her praises. So, congratulations Sarah, and thank you so much
for playing. That's awesome. Congratulations Sarah. Please tell all the
people that Ben and Jerry's we say thank you for
making wonderful ice or even keep up the great work.
(17:18):
I guess what will? What's that mango? I'm coming to
terms with the fact that I'm not a super taste
al right. Well, lucky for you, we've been talking about
the fact that flavor is so much more than just taste,
and then we just talked about taste. But I think
it's time we backed that statement up and talk about
another key component of flavor, and that smell. All right,
talk to me about smell. Well, if you think taste
(17:40):
is a complicated thing, it's nothing compared to the complexity
of smell. Think about the millions upon millions of smells
in the world and how our noses have to make
sense of them and help us identify what things are.
In fact, as Holmes points out, the old faction researcher
Joel Mainland estimates that they're about twenty seven billion smelling
molecules in the world. And while that doesn't mean they're
(18:01):
about billion smells because some might be identical, that's still
this incredible number. Well, the other thing, Holmes explains that
I find so interesting, and this goes back to your
electric lollipop example, but that's how different taste and smell are.
So our sense of taste is pretty easy to break down.
We can enjoy a dish of sweet and sour pork
and understand that it's sweet and sour, or have some
(18:22):
catch up and know that it's sweet, sour, salty and
new mommy. And maybe we're not thinking about those things actively,
but those are all there and we can identify them.
So but smell is different because you really can't break
it down. Instead, our brains take all the information from
the smelly molecules and create a single perception of smell.
As Holmes writes, if you combine ethyl isobuterate which is
(18:44):
a fruity odor ethyl maltall it's just caramel like an
allyl alpha ionine, which is violet like in the proper proportions.
For example, what you smell is not caramel coated fruit
on a bed of violets, but pineapple. And it's made
much more complicated by the fact that in English we
really don't have the language to describe smells in any
(19:05):
significant way other than seeing what they smell like. So
we might say something smells fishy or like grass or whatever.
But this isn't the case everywhere, and especially in places
that depend much more on those smells for survival, such
as the remaining hunter gatherer tribes. Take the Jehi tribe
of Thailand. A research team set up a smell test
between a group of Jehi men and a group of
(19:25):
men from Texas, and when the Jehi men were presented
with certain smells, they had just an easy time communicating
what they smelled with very descriptive words, as they did
in describing colors. And the Texans, on the other hand,
were of course able to describe colors, but they struggled
when asked to describe smells. When there's one more reason
why smell is just so difficult for us to understand
and talk about what's not alright, So humans have around
(19:48):
four hundred odor receptors. But the part that makes things
complicated is that only about half of those receptors work
and pretty much everyone. But then of the other half,
there's this wide range of which one's work and some
p bowl and not in others. So that leads to
an incredibly wide range of smells that humans are capable
of processing. In fact, for the most part, no two
(20:08):
people have the same sense of smell, which is pretty crazy. Yeah,
but needless to say, our sense of smell and makes
a huge contribution to the flavors we process. And there's
another biggie to add to taste and smell, and that's
the sense of touch. Think about the burn of a
chili pepper, or the chili feeling in your mouth when
you're chewing on a menty piece of gum, or visit
a carbonated drink. Oh man, that first sip of a coke?
(20:30):
How good is this first sip of a coke? So good?
I think I'll have one right now, all right to Atlanta.
So it's interesting how little is really understood about this
component of flavor at least how few studies have been
done on it, but we do know that spicy hot,
for example, is not a taste. It's something you feel,
(20:51):
and that we have specific receptors that cause the heat
sensation when we eat spicy things. Speaking the spicy hot.
Do you know how the Scoville units, which measure or
the heat of chili peppers got its start. Well, apparently
it goes back to this pharmacist and researcher Wilbur Scoville.
Scoville came up with a scale back in and it
was a pretty smart way of doing it. You figured
(21:11):
out that you could create a scale based on the
amount of dilution required before the burn of a chili
could no longer be felt, So super hot pepper would
take much more dilution. Oh, that is pretty smart. Yeah,
and now it's easier for scientists to just measure the
amount of capt sasan, which is the main ingredient that
makes a chili hot, and then just convert those into
Scoville units. It's pretty wild how hot some peppers can be.
(21:33):
Take halapinos, for example, which we think of is pretty hot.
They come in about five thousand Scoville units. Cayans are
at about forty thousand. The Habbaniro comes in it over
a hundred thousand, maybe even up to three hundred thousand.
But even the Habbaniro doesn't hold a candle to the
Carolina Reaper. And how many Scoville units does that one have?
Two point two millions and unbelievable. That's basically like police
(22:00):
aid pepper spray. And there's a new contender out there.
It's called Dragon's Breath, which is a tiny pepper that
can possibly kill you, but it sounds so cute. So
we have no old Brown here to test this. Why
would you even make a pepper that hot. Well, it's
so unbelievably hot that can actually numb your skin to touch,
and that makes it useful as an anesthetic in areas
(22:20):
without medical supplies. But let's leave the hottest of the
hot peppers aside for a minute. It's interesting that we
humans enjoy inflicting this burning pain on ourselves and we
don't know exactly why this is. I mean, I know,
we know about the endorphin release that happens when we
eat spicy foods, but that still doesn't answer the question
of why that happens. You know, first we feast does
(22:40):
that chili head enthusiast show. And I was reading an
interview that said it's much easier to get people to
drop their inhibitions when they eat a chili pepper because
they're like sweating and it's like they've just exercised. So
instead of those awkward questions you go through in the
beginning of an interview, people just get past that by
eating chilies. Anyway, we know humans like heat, but researchers
have yet to identify another mammal that seeks the heat
(23:01):
of chili peppers. I mean, birds eat plenty of them,
but they don't actually have the receptors that would feel
the heat of kept sastion, so there's no sensation at
all for them even in eating a super hot pepper.
I wonder if birds enjoy the first sip of a coke.
Oh man, Alright, while we savor our beverages, why don't
we take a break for a quiz. Our guest today
(23:31):
has been a science writer and correspondent for New Scientist
magazine for over twenty years, and as the author of Flavor,
the brilliant book we've been talking about in this episode,
and for those who listen to our episode on how
Clean We Should Be. You know, I'm not surprised that
a new scientist writer would produce such a great book.
Bob Holmes, Welcome to Part Time Genius. Thanks for having me,
Bob and Flavor. You mentioned that we can pretty much
(23:53):
do away with the idea that we have previously had
about taste maps, where different parts of our tongues helped
us experience different taste. So our taste maps really not
a thing we should think about anymore. They really aren't,
And it's it's pretty easy to demonstrate that. All you
have to do is take a que tip and dip
it in salt water and brush it around your tongue.
You know, the taste map says that he tastes salty.
(24:15):
I think it's right at the tip of your tongue,
and you'll find that you can taste the salt anywhere.
So how did this come about? I'm not sure. It
turns out there are slight differences in different parts of
the tongue, and you've got a few more bitter taste
buds right at the back and a few more sweets
at the front. Things like that. But it's it's not
(24:37):
enough to make much of a difference at all. You
also write the possibility of a sixth taste or even
more than that, and could you talk a little bit
about that? Sure, Yeah, I mean it's almost certainly at
least like the taste and made quite a few more. Uh.
You know, we all know about sweet, salty, sower, bitter,
and most of us know about mommy, which is a
(24:58):
fifth taste that's sort of safe retaste. But almost certainly.
I think the evidence is really good now that there
is in fact a taste for for fat, or more specifically,
for the fatty acid breakdown products of fat. And these
are actually the nasties. The researcher who demonstrated this is
(25:18):
the easiest way to think about what they taste like
is to imagine old ransoid French fry oil. It's gone off,
and that's what fatty acids taste like. Yeah, I definitely
know that, almost certainly one of those warning tastes to
keep us away from rancid fats. And is there anything
(25:39):
good that can be done with it? A little bit
of these nasty fatty acids are part of what makes
aged cheese interesting. So yeah, and probably also a little
bit in aged meat and things like that, So in
very small quantities, you know, just like putting a little
bit of cappy, I persume actually is a good thing.
(26:03):
You know, these nasties in our food probably do add
interest if there's little enough of them. You know. One
of the other things that you explained that I thought
was was super interesting is that humans get a bad
rap for having an inferior sense of smell. So is
this really a myth? We have fewer odor receptors in
our nose than something like a dog does, so they
(26:24):
probably are better than us, but not nearly as much
better than us as we think. Uh. When people have looked,
they found that that humans are actually pretty good at
smelling stuff. But a blindfolded person can follow a chocolate
trail across the lawn on their hands and he's sniffing
(26:44):
to find where the chocolate was ding. Uh. So you know,
most of the reason that we think we're so bad
at smell is that our noses are way up in
the air and all the smells are done there on
the ground. So if we were too, if we were
to explore our worlds just like our dogs do, we
find there were stuff there we could smell. People can
(27:06):
go into a into a into a bookshelf and pick
out which book someone has just handled by the smell alone.
And the other place we're really good at smell actually
is in flavor. You know, the shape of our heads
mean that the flavors foods that are inside our mouth
has very quick access to to the olfactory part of
(27:31):
the nose, and so we're probably way better than our
dogs are at appreciating flavor. M that's really interesting, that's
so crazy. I mean, I feel like that totally changes
the truffle game, like the truffle hunting game, Like you
don't need a pig if you're on all four four
that's probably right, But some people don't smell the key
(27:51):
compounded truffles. Yeah, I'd probably do it for the right
bar of chocolate. Yeah, alright, Well, being an expert on flavor,
we couldn't let you go without putting you to the
test on an ultimate flavor quiz. So, Mango, what what
game do we have? What game do we have Bob playing? Today?
We're playing a game called Vintage Recipe or gourmet cat
(28:13):
food Flavor. That's right, So we'll be tossing you a
delicious sounding item delicious is in air quotes, which doesn't
work quite as well on podcasts. But you have to
tell us if it's a vintage recipe we found online
or a gourmet cat food flavor. So you're ready to
get started, all right. So the first one is ham
(28:35):
and bananas hollandaise, Ham and bananas hollandaise. Is this a
vintage recipe we found online or a gourmet cat food flavor?
I'm going to go vintage recite. Yeah, you would be right.
It's a great way to make use of your leftover
bananas and ham apparently. All right, Okay. Number two sea
(28:58):
beast in seas consume a I'm gonna got for that one. Yeah,
you're right. It's from Tiki Cats Hawaiian Queen Emma lul Line,
of course. Alright. Question number three liver sausage pineapple. I
can't imagine the cat eating pineapples. I'm gonna go with
(29:19):
intoe recipe three for three. I really probably would have
guessed cat food on that though, just because the word
liver would have thrown me off. I think. Alright. Number
four lime cheese salad recipe is correct. Yeah, you're right,
it's a um it was a recipe from Jello and
and uh it's a Jello bed with a seafood salad
(29:41):
plopped on top. I think I've got that Midwestern church. Alright,
we've got two lefties. Four for four so far. Here
we go. Ocean fish, tuna and cheese sauce. That sounds
like it will appeal to a cat. And you're right,
it is a gort. I can't believe there's cheese sauce.
(30:02):
And yeah, it's from the Teeth Treasurers line. Right, fancy
cat food. All right, let's see if you can get
six for six spam in Lima's Spam and Lima's hip. Yeah,
it was a promotional recipe from hormel Um and it
(30:23):
had a Spanish gravy and frozen line of beans. That
is incredible. So, Bob, how has Bob done? He ran
the table. He went an incredible six for six, which
wins him today's grand prize, which is our endless admiration. Wow,
congratulations Bob. That is huge. Yeah, well, Bob, thanks so
(30:43):
much for writing a terrific book and for for joining
us today on part time genius. Guess what I've got
my pocket here? Mango? That sounds so creepy. Sorry, I
(31:06):
should have I probably should have phrased that a little differently.
But guess what I have in my pocket here that
rhymes with schmock blocks. That sounds even creepy here, But
you've got pop rocks, right. I know we've talked about taste, smell,
and touch, and that those are considered the flavor trinity,
but we can't leave out sound or other multisensory effects
(31:26):
on how we experience flavor. Well, you're gonna crack open
those bad boys are not? All right, let's do it.
They are so good. Pop rocks reminded me of that.
You know that part in um the Eddieizard routine where
he's talking about chiropractors and how they live for the noise,
(31:47):
and that chiropracticing or what do you call it, chiropractic
cracking bones would be nothing if they didn't hear the sounds,
or just like I live for the noise, I crack
your bones anyway. All right? You remember how our friend
and former Mental Flaws editor O the pop rocks are
still just popping like crazy. I don't think I've had
one of these since I was ten. I need more. Okay,
(32:09):
So you remember our friend and former Mental Flaws editor
Jesson Collins used to talk about chip o'clock in the office. Yeah,
for your listeners. There was a period in the mid
afternoon when the editorial staff and Mental Flaws used to
all go out for their afternoon snack and grab a
bag of chips. It made her crazy. Well, while that
sound may be difficult for the person not eating the
chips to listen to, for the people eating chips, that
(32:30):
sound likely increase their enjoyment. So papers have shown that
people rate chips his taste here if they provide a
louder crunch. There was even a study by Charles Spence
and Max m peeny that had people eat a hundred
and eighty pringles. I'm so envious that people got to
eat pringles for Scion. I mean, we did get to
have pop rocks coke and we got to watch Jerry
have that bitter taste. So, but as they did this,
(32:53):
they wore headphones that played back the sound of their crunch.
So as they work their way through the chips, the
researchers adjusted the volume level of the crunch feedback, and
they found that the louder crunching made them rate the
chips fifteen percent tastier than the softer crunching. I still
can't believe they got to eat sprinkles for signing. I
know the sound of an expensive coffee maker has been
(33:13):
showed to increase how people rated a cup of Joe,
But I also loved the study where Spence had a
group of subjects eat oysters while listening to different sounds.
Some of them heard the sounds of waves and seagulls,
and some of them heard sounds from barnyards like chickens
clucking and cow's moving. And not only did those who
heard the c sounds rate the oysters taste here, they
also experienced them as saltier. I love this stuff because
(33:36):
it kind of feels like food trickery. But I guess
as we understand that all our senses are involved in
how we experience flavor, it's really no more trickery than
anything else we do to enhance flavor. So let's talk
about some of the other multi sensory effects on flavor.
I love that music can affect how we experienced flavor,
like homes notes that really powerful music like Carl Orff's
(33:56):
Carmina Burana causes people to note the heavier flavors in
a red wine and what he describes as zingi music
actually brings out the brighter flavors and a white wine.
And with that in mind, I'd like to recommend after
the show we all listen to Hall and Notes and
need a bag of rollos. I bet that can only
make the experience of both better. And then we'll eat
one of those Reese's fast break bars and listen to
(34:16):
Ayah the Tiger. Yeah, it's science and action. Folks will
will report back. But there's some other fun and funny
results of experiments, Like there was this Goldilocks style experiments
using three bowls of yogurt. The yogurt was the same
in all three bowls, but the bowls weighed different amount
and how many bears were involved this is is zero.
It wasn't published in our bear reviewed medical journals, but
(34:37):
people did note that they enjoyed the yogurt in the
heaviest bowl, most like why should weight of a bowl
infect your enjoyment? And strawberry moose served on a white
plate was rated sweeter than the same dessert served on
a black plate. One of my favorite studies was the
one on hockey fans at Cornell and researchers found that
when the home team won, fans actually found the ice
cream to be sweeter, and when they lost, they knowed
(34:58):
it as more sour. How weird, that's almost as science,
he is. Okay, So if all these senses contribute to flavor,
why do we only associate flavor with the stuff happening
in our mouths. Well, that's the work of our brains.
It takes all that information smell, taste, texture, sound and
combines it into one experience, and then it tells us
that experience is happening in our mouths. So it's a side,
(35:20):
don't Many food scientists now say that while foods obviously
contain flavor molecules, they believe the actual flavors themselves aren't
created by the food, but instead by our brains, which
I guess would be a big part of the reason
why we all experienced flavor differently. That's just weird, Yes
it is. But we are not done with our weird
facts for the day. You know what time it is.
It's time for the part time Genius fact on the
(35:43):
part of the show where we share some of the
interesting facts we learned recently but didn't get a chance
to mention just yet, So well, why don't you start
this round? All right? Sure? So, if you read airline magazines,
you often see that famous chefs pair up with airlines
to improve the end flight meals, but the odds are
(36:05):
stacked against them. According to a study commissioned by the
German airline carrier Lutanza, between the elevation and the dryness
that occurs in the cabin, your sensitivity to sweet and
salty foods decreases by about thirty which means the meal
probably tastes a whole lot better if you save it
for after you land. Do you know peanut butter and
mayo sandwiches used to be a popular thing like According
(36:28):
to Garden and Gun magazine, the sandwiches were a staple
during the depression and could be fancied up by adding
a few leaves of lettuce and some pickles. And so.
The editors at Food fifty two this other site also
tried the sandwich on reader recommendation, and their verdict was,
if you wear a blindfold when you take a bite,
it almost tastes like a tuna sandwich. All right, why
don't we just name a few odd recipes we've found
(36:49):
since we both looked them up. The Betty Crocker recommended
a tuna and jello pie, also known as a summer
pie devoid. The winter sales slump. Dr Pepper wren as
that you should heat the soda in a saucepan and
then poured over a lemon gross, which is why nothing
reminds me of Christmas more than a steaming mug of
Dr Pepper. Did you know that Johnny Walker makes a
(37:09):
mustache wax that enhances their drinks. The wax comes in
three flavors, pepper, citrus, and ginger, and it helps to
apply a generous amount to your stash. So I know
we talked about eating and texture today, but I learned
this isn't a completely new concept. In the nineteen thirties,
the Italian futurists played with food and texture in a
completely different way. Diners were clothed and textured pajamas, which
(37:33):
they stroked with one hand in a dark room while
burying their face in bank and when they looked up
for their plates a waiter, it splits them with perfume.
For some reason, the movement didn't take off. I can't
imagine why. Yeah, futurists hated pasta, and they like to
sculpt their meats. And there was also one course where
you ate salad out of a tiny box with one
(37:54):
hand and turned a crank with the other. As long
as you were turning the crank, your waiter would dance
for you. Call that is so good. I have to
give you this one, so you earned this week's fact off.
Speaking of which, we need to nominate a smarty pants
to our Hall of Genius. I'm thinking we should give
it to William Mitchell's family. Mitchell was a food inventor
who grew up on a farm, worked his way through college,
(38:15):
and then went on to invent cool whip, powdered egg
whites for cake mix, quick set jello tang and that's
so many amazing things and what and pop rocks. Apparently
the candy was supposed to be a carbonated drink mix,
but it worked better as a crazy kids treat. He's
in William Mitchell's family. You'll be getting a certificate in
(38:35):
the mail and special thanks to our brilliant nonfiction librarians
over at the Hoover Public Library and Hoover, Alabama for
recommending the book Flavored by Bob Holmes. If you like
what you heard, be sure to pick up a coffee today.
That's it for today's episode. Thanks for listening. Thanks again
(39:04):
for listening to Part Time Genius. Be sure to subscribe
wherever you listen to your podcast. And because we're a
brand new show, if you're feeling extra generous, we'd love
it if you give us a rating on Apple Podcast.
Part Time Genius is produced by some of our favorite geniuses.
It's edited by Tristan McNeil, theme song and audio mixing
by Noel Brown. Our executive producer is Jerry Rowland. Our
research team is Gave Lozier, Lucas Adams, Autumn Whitefield in
(39:25):
the Toronto Austin Thompson, and Meg Robbins. Jason Hope is
our chief cheerleader.
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