- - - - - - TASTE

The taste of bread is the basis for the range of tastes for Western societies.

Taste is a very personal sense, closely tied to the way we see life: we say we have no more taste for life, that life lacks spice… It is also a taste that links the others : in all societies there are solemn banquets, business meals, meals among friends, or lovers’ meetings. It is a criterion for classifying things and people : good or bad taste. Taste also accompanies memories : from mothers’ milk, always more or less associated with emotional memories, to the cakes and dishes cooked by our grandmothers. How do we taste ?
Adults have about 10 000 tastebuds grouped in different parts of the mouth, to perceive the salty, the sour, the sweet and the bitter. Each tastebud has about 50 cells that relay information to a neurone. The centre of the tongue has few tastebuds, but there are some on the palate, the pharynx, the tonsils. The taste buds are distributed as follows: Lower part of the tongue : sweet Back of the tongue : sour Side of the tongue : bitter Everywhere, but especially to the front : salty The lump of sugar that people from the north put on the top of the tongue thus loses some of its sweet flavour. The tastebuds wear out in about ten days and re regularly replaced throughout life, but more slowly after the age of 45.	The mouth of a baby contains more tastebuds than that of an adult. The palate needs stronger tastes in later life to feel the same sensation. The sense of smell is an active supporter of taste. We often smell before we taste. When we have a cold, we cannot taste very well. Food should have a good taste and a good smell. A salary is historically the means to buy salt, necessary for flavouring and preserving food. Symbolically, salt gives the taste, without which there is no life. “Be the salt of the earth” was what Christ said to his Apostles. In more everyday terms, in the 13 th century “getting the salt” meant buying food. The element that gives taste to food represents food itself.
Adults have 10 000 tastebuds   Adults have 10 000 tastebuds It is not by chance that the taste of a madeleine awoke the visual memory of the cake made by Marcel Proust’s grandmother. Taste is one of the strongest supports of our memory. In a flash it can find tastes that our conscious memory would never have found on its own. Present-day society is more concerned about the nutritional value (calories) of food than its capacity to awaken our taste. Who hasn’t recalled with regret the taste of fruit we once picked from the tree ?