On a recent programme on the Beeb, mad scientist chef Heston Blumenthal, most famous for his bacon and egg ice cream, carried out an interesting experiment on his tastebuds.
He dried them out with a tampon.
Yes, that’s right. He put a ladies’ sanitary product on his tongue, on TV.
It absorbed saliva and, more importantly, a mucus that builds up on the tongue when we eat certain foods, and which interferes with our tastebuds.
He found custard creamier afterward, and other flavours more pronounced.
Now, me and Boak didn’t want to replicate that exactly, but we did try eating some dry white bread when we were tasting a beer that night. And, do you know what? The beer tasted much more intense and we thought we could detect more hop flavour.
Michael Jackson suggested this years ago, but I scoffed, preferring to, er, scoff pork scratchings. Now I know. For “serious” tastings, dry bread (or tampons) it is.
Bailey
One reply on “More on tastebuds”
Less risk of toxic shock syndrome with bread as well.