Tip of the Tongue: Humans May Taste at Least 6 Flavors

We cook, therefore we are. Over the millennia, humankind – hardly content to eat plants, animals and fungi raw – has created a smorgasbord of cuisines.

Yet for all our sophistication in the kitchen, the scientific understanding of how we taste food could still use some time in the oven. Dating back to ancient Greece and China, the sensation of taste has historically been described as a combination of a handful of distinct perceptions. Western food research, for example, has long been dominated by the four “basic tastes” of sweet, bitter, sour and salty.

In recent decades, however, molecular biology and other modern sciences have dashed this tidy paradigm. For example, Western science now recognizes the East's umami (savory) as a basic taste. But even the age-old concept of basic tastes is starting to crumble.