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If Your Coffee Isn’t Sweet Enough, Try Adding a Dash of Mozart
Weird, I know. But it’s true.
I’m an avid home cook, and one of my favorite cooking shows had a segment that blew my mind.
In it, a taster was asked to try two pieces of chocolate and say which one they liked better. During each tasting, different music was subtly playing in the background. The taster took a bite of each then described in detail the texture, flavor, notes, mouthfeel, and melting point of each piece of chocolate on his tongue. While he said they tasted ‘similar,’ he described each one very differently.
Like me, you too may have suspected that the pieces of chocolate were the same.
How can this be?
Food science has discovered a phenomenon called “sonic seasoning,” whereby the music we hear impacts our tastebuds.
Curious? Here’s an experiment you can try at home for yourself using chocolate. This article from Public Radio International describes a study conducted by Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford.
His multisensory studies found that sweet flavors are associated with higher-pitched sounds, and bitter flavors correspond to lower-pitched sounds. Follow the instructions and links to two pieces of music in the article to try…
