Flavor: The Science of Our Most Neglected Sense

by Bob Holmes Narrated by Jonathan Yen

Overview

Can you describe how the flavor of halibut differs from red snapper? How Brie differs from cheddar? For most of us, unfortunately, the answer is: badly. Flavor remains a vague, undeveloped concept we don't know enough about to describe-or to appreciate-fully.



In Flavor, Bob Holmes shows us just how much we're missing. He tackles questions like why cake tastes sweetest on white plates, how wine experts' eyes fool their noses, and how language affects flavor. He peers over the shoulders of fascinating food professionals engineering the perfect snack, chefs seeking surprising new flavor combinations, and even mathematicians pursuing the perfect pizza topping. He reveals how we can all sharpen our senses using professional techniques to name and describe flavors articulately.



Whether you're someone who likes to cook creatively, delve into cutting-edge science, explore nutrition trends, or just to eat, Flavor will open your mind and palate to a vast and exciting sensory world.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Fascinating…Flavor, as Bob Holmes demonstrates elegantly, exists nowhere but in the mind of the eater."— Wall Street Journal

"Endlessly fascinating. A terrific book."— Bill Bryson

"I learned a lot while reading Flavor. Bob Holmes is a genial, well-informed guide to the rapidly evolving world of flavor and food design. From microbreweries to research labs, he captures all the key players: their personalities and passions come through clearly in this engaging tour of the field."— Avery Gilbert, author of What The Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life

""In this mouthwatering work....Holmes turns the kitchen into a laboratory....As [he] runs through terrific experiments and describes strange technologies, he makes food science fun and approachable.""— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Fascinating....Foodies who enjoyed Mark Schatzker’s The Dorito Effect, Michael Pollan’s Cooked, and Michael Moss’s Salt Sugar Fat will gravitate toward this scientific yet accessible and humorous take on food and wine."— Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

2017-02-20
An introduction to what flavor is and how we experience it.In the early chapters, Holmes, a longtime correspondent for New Scientist and an avid cook, gets a bit bogged down in the biology of taste, resulting in a slow narrative pace during his discussions of odor receptors, retronasal olfaction, and genetic differences in taste perception. Matters pick up, however, in the third chapter, "The Pursuit of Pain," in which the author turns away from taste and smell and explores another aspect of flavor: burn. Holmes blends accounts of his interviews with researchers with his own experiences testing the fire levels of various chili peppers, a narrative pattern he follows in later chapters. In the next chapter, "This is Your Brain on Wine," he recounts experiments that reveal the importance of factors such as the color and weight of the crockery or the sound the food makes in the mouth. He also reports that researchers are finding that the brain binds together inputs from many sensory channels to create the sensation of flavor. In other chapters, Holmes takes up the problems of keeping flavor in certain crops, such as tomatoes and strawberries, the development of appealing ready-to-eat meals for the military, and how flavor affects food intake. The author chronicles his visit to the Culinary Institute of America to see students learning how to create flavor in the kitchen. He also spent time with scientists working in the modern flavor industry, chemists who take flavors apart and build them up again to enhance processed foods. Among the odder experiments conducted by the author, who often put himself front and center, was decanting wine into his kitchen blender to see how it affected the flavor; the results are intriguing. An uneven work, but some of the chapters could have lives of their own as entertaining magazine pieces.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170494002
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	04/25/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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