Your Tasting Brain
A Sensory Approach to Wine, Beer, and Other Pleasures
9780226848198
9780226848204
Your Tasting Brain
A Sensory Approach to Wine, Beer, and Other Pleasures
A scintillating invitation to enrich our culinary pursuits by understanding how our bodies turn a taste into flavor, emotion, and meaning.
Our foodscape has never been more adventurous, but fully experiencing the subtleties of complex cheeses, wines, or cocktails can be a challenge. No longer! In Your Tasting Brain, bestselling food writer Randy Mosher assures us that we can all become master tasters by learning more about the brilliant ways our bodies translate smell, taste, and mouthfeel into flavor—without needing to know everything about terroir, varietals, or exotic ingredients.
In Your Tasting Brain, Mosher shares a roadmap to send you on your tasting journey, one that connects the worlds of science and art. Our bodies are more finely tuned tasting machines than we realize, Mosher explains. Even a simple grasp of how our senses interact with the world can enhance our culinary delight—and Mosher offers us a tantalizing place to begin: from how our brain processes, categorizes, and rewards (or punishes) encounters with chemicals in food all the way to how aromas and flavors spur us to language, emotion, and creativity. Overflowing with scientific insight and practical advice, Your Tasting Brain is an appetizing guide for anyone looking to enhance the pleasures they find in food through attention, curiosity, and practice.
Our foodscape has never been more adventurous, but fully experiencing the subtleties of complex cheeses, wines, or cocktails can be a challenge. No longer! In Your Tasting Brain, bestselling food writer Randy Mosher assures us that we can all become master tasters by learning more about the brilliant ways our bodies translate smell, taste, and mouthfeel into flavor—without needing to know everything about terroir, varietals, or exotic ingredients.
In Your Tasting Brain, Mosher shares a roadmap to send you on your tasting journey, one that connects the worlds of science and art. Our bodies are more finely tuned tasting machines than we realize, Mosher explains. Even a simple grasp of how our senses interact with the world can enhance our culinary delight—and Mosher offers us a tantalizing place to begin: from how our brain processes, categorizes, and rewards (or punishes) encounters with chemicals in food all the way to how aromas and flavors spur us to language, emotion, and creativity. Overflowing with scientific insight and practical advice, Your Tasting Brain is an appetizing guide for anyone looking to enhance the pleasures they find in food through attention, curiosity, and practice.
Table of Contents
An Introduction: Function, Feeling, and Purpose
Section 1: The Science
Chapter 1. The Mystery and Majesty of the Chemical Senses: Structure, Function, Feeling, and Purpose
Chapter 2. A Taste of Taste: The Purpose and Power of Our Not-So-Simple Sense
Chapter 3. A Feel for Mouthfeel: Trigeminal Sensations in the Mouth and Elsewhere
Chapter 4. Know Your Nose: Neuroanatomy and the Experience of Olfaction
Chapter 5. Chasing the Aroma Rainbow: The Endless Search for a Road Map of Aromas
Chapter 6. Flavor and So Much More: The Wonder of Multimodal Sensory Perception
Chapter 7. How Can We Even Talk to Each Other? Genetic, Cultural, and Personal History Differences
Chapter 8. The Word Is Not the Thing: The Pitfalls and Shortcomings of Tasting Language
Section 2: Practical Tasting
Chapter 9. What Am I Tasting? An Introduction to the Molecules of Flavor and Their Origins
Chapter 10. Fermented Beverages: A Vocabulary of Wine, Beer, and Other Beverages
Chapter 11. Distilled Beverages: A Vocabulary of Spirits
Chapter 12. The What, Why, and How of Tasting: Tools, Techniques, and Objectives
Chapter 13. How to Be a Taster: Enough with Theory—Let’s Taste!
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Section 1: The Science
Chapter 1. The Mystery and Majesty of the Chemical Senses: Structure, Function, Feeling, and Purpose
Chapter 2. A Taste of Taste: The Purpose and Power of Our Not-So-Simple Sense
Chapter 3. A Feel for Mouthfeel: Trigeminal Sensations in the Mouth and Elsewhere
Chapter 4. Know Your Nose: Neuroanatomy and the Experience of Olfaction
Chapter 5. Chasing the Aroma Rainbow: The Endless Search for a Road Map of Aromas
Chapter 6. Flavor and So Much More: The Wonder of Multimodal Sensory Perception
Chapter 7. How Can We Even Talk to Each Other? Genetic, Cultural, and Personal History Differences
Chapter 8. The Word Is Not the Thing: The Pitfalls and Shortcomings of Tasting Language
Section 2: Practical Tasting
Chapter 9. What Am I Tasting? An Introduction to the Molecules of Flavor and Their Origins
Chapter 10. Fermented Beverages: A Vocabulary of Wine, Beer, and Other Beverages
Chapter 11. Distilled Beverages: A Vocabulary of Spirits
Chapter 12. The What, Why, and How of Tasting: Tools, Techniques, and Objectives
Chapter 13. How to Be a Taster: Enough with Theory—Let’s Taste!
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index