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Food Lesson #21: “

‘Mark!’, you exclaim, ‘What’s the difference between a taste and a flavor?!’. Well, first of all, let’s calm down. A taste is something that can be sensed solely by your tongue. You have five basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (more on umami another time). A flavor, on the other hand, is something that is received by both taste and scent.

Hold your nose and taste lemon juice: simply sour. That’s lemon taste. Now taste it again with your nose open: you can sense the lemony zest and citrus power of the fruit. That’s lemon flavor.

As for visual aids, here’s a diagram of where your tongue picks up tastes:

And here’s a diagram illustrating how tastes and flavor (odor) interact:

Notice the taste ‘mouthfeel’ in the wheel: that’s umami in a nutshell. It’s the fullness in the mouth / heartiness / proteiny taste that adds sensory heft to any dish. We all love umami, let’s not lie.

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(Via Black Napkin.)