• Question: How many tastebuds are stimulated when you eat an apple pie?

    Asked by johntheunicorn to Duncan, Grant, Julie, Nik, Rachel on 16 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Duncan Gaskin

      Duncan Gaskin answered on 16 Mar 2013:

      You have 5 types of tastebuds on your tongue and elsewhere in your mouth that can detect 5 different tastes, sweetness (such as sugar), salt, bitterness (like tonic water), sourness (lemon juice) and umami (which is hard to describe, but is a sort of meaty full taste).

      So an apple pie is likely to stimulate the ones for sweetness and possibly sourness.

      The flavour of the apple pie is sensed by a complex set of receptors in the nasal cavity behind the nose and above the roof of the mouth.

      If you want to experience the difference between taste and flavour, you can try this:
      Hold you nose so that you close your nostrils – you will have to breathe through your mouth.
      Still holding your nose, put a sweet like a tictac or fruit gum into your mouth.
      Still holding your nose, chew it and see if your can taste anything.
      Then let go of your nose and see what happens.

    • Photo: Rachel Edwards-Stuart

      Rachel Edwards-Stuart answered on 17 Mar 2013:

      As Duncan said, an apple contains both acids and sugars (the main ones, if you are interested, are malic acid, citric acid, glucose and fructose). But aroma is also very important in delivering apple flavour – when you have a cold and you eat foods, they seem very bland. This is because the nose cannot pick up all those important aromas when it is blocked – as the tictac test Duncan described below shows you (which, by the way, works very well with jelly beans – but make sure you close your eyes first so you can’t tell which flavour it is!).

Comments