A Sensory Approach to Barbecue Spicing
Since I’m an experimental kind of guy who’s fascinated by the sensory effects of spices, I’ve been making my own “master” spice mix for about forty years now.
Soaking in Valdivia Chile
Valdivia (val-DEEV-ya) is about 400 miles south of Chile’s capitol, a couple hours north of where Patagonia really begins. The area is criss-crossed with rivers, with a temperate rainforest on the lower slopes of the stratovolcanoes and other mountains that form the cordillera—the massive mountain range that runs along the western edge of South America. The climate there is reminiscent of the US Pacific Northwest.
“How Great is this?” An Interview with Sensory Psychologist Rachel Herz
There are so many interesting things that olfaction does besides detecting chemicals. For example, there’s good evidence that an important function of olfaction is navigation. And it’s also really involved in social behavior.
Have you ever wondered what hop aromas are made of?
Long an indispensable flavoring ingredient in beer, hops famously have one of the most complex aromas of any botanical ingredient. Hop experts I know suggest that there are at least 700 known terpenoids in hops, and that’s a conservative estimate. And as you can see from the chart below, there are many other chemical types contributing different characters to hops’ amazing aromas.
Buying Beer: Are You Doing It Right?
On its face, choosing a beer seems like a pretty simple proposition. And It would be, save for the fact that this liquid is one of the most fragile of all packaged products, vulnerable to time, heat, light and other forces. The single biggest factor in making sure you have great beer in your glass is getting it reasonably fresh.
First Encounter: Greek Food, in Greece
Sunrise in Porto, the view from our hotel window. Situated along the Douro River estuary in northern Portugal, beautiful Porto is one of the oldest European centers. Port wine, one of Portugal’s most famous exports, is named after the city as its metropolitan area is the heart of the packaging, transport, and export of this world-famous fortified wine. Recently my wife Nancy and I had the occasion to visit lovely Portugal and spend a little time enjoying its scenic and gustatorial delights.
Our Brain’s Peerless Valuation System
Our minds work hard to parse every sensory impulse into psychological qualities that help us respond appropriately. Among the most important is determining the value of the sensation and the object it represents.
How Taste Signals Reach the Brain—and Why It Matters
Whether individual tastes travel exclusively along dedicated pathways or are encoded to allow multiple taste signals to travel through shared nerves is an active argument within science that is still unresolved. This is not just an academic question. The nature of these connections determine the kinds of sensations we perceive.
Umami and Beyond: An Interview with Joe Formanek, PhD
Kokumi is another effect, like umami, that we have experienced for millennia, but until recently had no understanding of what it truly was. You think about traditional processes that a fine chef might use to deliver a full-bodied desirable food – making stocks, long simmering, even aging of cheeses and meats.
This Is Your Brain on Chemosensing
Recently reviewing some of the bits and pieces of text we cut because they were just a bit too detailed for what we were trying to do, I marveled again about all this neurological clockwork. There’s an awful lot more going on, but I think the capabilities, concerns and mechanisms of these brain regions I have plenty to say in the upcoming book, but