Scent of Smell and Scent of Taste

When we were kids, oftentimes, moms would pinch our noses when we are forced to drink our medicines - be it antibiotic, vitamin supplements or even for diarrhea. There is logic behind this.


Try this out. Pinch your nose then chew on a mint gum. After several seconds, release your fingers and observe what happens.


Suddenly, you feel that burst of flavor rushing through your mouth. And that is why the nose pinching, so that we taste nothing to easily swallow the meds. Yes, the both senses are important for us to enjoy our food.

Remember in elementary science courses, our tongue can only distinguish 4 kinds of taste - sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. (There are some ideas behind umami as the fifth kind of taste but I cannot validate.)



The sense of smell is important for us to "taste" other things - vanilla, milk, coffee, mint, chocolate, etc.  That's why when we are sick or have colds, we seem to think that all things we eat are just bitter or sour or sweet and nothing else in between. This demonstrates that our sense of taste is dependent to our sense of smell.

Hence, sometimes, when we describe the food we eat, we normally use the sense of smell to describe them - tastes like pepper, like herbs and spices or, worse, like fart.