Taste – a gastrophysical perspective
By Mathias P. Clausen, Morten Christensen, and Ole G. Mouritsen; Department of Chemical Engineering, Biotechnology and Environmental Technology, University of Southern Denmark and Department of Food Science, University of Copenhagen.
Gastrophysics (gastronomical physics) is an emerging interdisciplinary scientific discipline that focuses on attaining a fundamental understanding of the aspects of gastronomy and cooking, which can be understood employing principles from physics, chemistry and related sciences.
Gastrophysical studies has a gastronomic observation as its starting point, and aims at unravelling the scientific nature of the observations on many different length scales. This includes explaining physical and chemical aspects of the raw materials, of their transformations during the preparation of food, as well as of the sensory response while eating. The chemical and physical composition and properties of raw food materials are important for the transformations that occur in the food during preparation. Flavour (taste and smell), mouthfeel, chemesthesis, and astringency are all determinants for the sensory evaluation of food, and these characteristics are also related to the chemical properties and the physical texture of the food, and to how the food is transformed in the mouth. Gastrophysics deals with each of these components and aims at uncovering their mutual relations i.e. how the sensory input relates to the material composition and properties of food, and the absorption in the human body.
We will here show case different taste samples, and provide the gastrophysical explanation of the associated taste phenomena.