Wake up to the smell of coffee..

Coffee almost always smells better than it tastes. There is a reason the phrase is ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ and not ‘wake up and taste the coffee’.
 
Why is it so rare for it to taste as good as it smells? Conversely, why does horrible smelling cheese often taste glorious?

Recently, scientists have done significant research and think they have found the answer to this conundrum. It all has to do with the link between taste and smell, and the fact that we smell in more ways than one…

The Tongue, Overrated?

Taste, which we perceive as coming from our tongue is actually largely down to receptors in our nose. The tongue can only give us so much information. It tells us whether food or drink is sweet or sour, salty or bitter but it’s the nose that gives us a much more complex set of taste indicators. You don’t believe me? Try eating your next meal whilst pinching your nose and you might realise just how important it is!

Smell is a pretty amazing sense, in that it is the only dual sensory modality. What exactly does this mean? How can we smell in two ways?

The receptors in our nose can move two different ways, depending on whether we are inhaling things from the environment into us, or whether air comes up through the nasal passage and is breathed out of us. The dual sense of smell has a huge impact on the taste of both coffee and cheese and how we perceive flavours.



When we smell the lovely scent of freshly ground coffee, it is the result of our receptors that are directed towards the outside of the nose, that send that message to the brain. This is a different message to that sent when we taste coffee. When the drink is swallowed, the aroma travels up through the throat and encounters the receptors facing towards the throat, that send a different message to the brain, resulting in a much less satisfying sensation.