The Tongue Map Is a Myth
Tasting is sampling food or drink to judge it. The diagram showing where each taste is detected is one of the best-known errors in science teaching.
Tasting is sampling something to judge its quality. The famous tongue map — sweet at the tip, bitter at the back — is wrong. It came from a mistranslated German study in 1901 and was repeated in textbooks for a century. All taste regions detect all five basic tastes, with only small differences in sensitivity.
- Sampling to judge. *A wine tasting.*
- The sense of taste. *A keen sense of taste.*
- Blind tasting — judging without knowing the identity. *A blind tasting of ten wines.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | tasting | A cheese tasting. |
| Verb | taste | Taste the sauce. |
| Noun | taste | A bitter taste. |
| Person | taster | A professional taster. |
| Adjective | tasteful | A tasteful design. |
How it is used in a sentence
- They held a tasting for members.An event.
- Blind tasting removes the label effect.Expectation strongly affects judgement.
- Most of what we call taste is smell.Which is why food is dull with a blocked nose.
The five basic tastes
- Sweet — sugars and some proteins
- Salty — mainly sodium
- Sour — acids
- Bitter — many plant compounds, a protective warning
- Umami — savouriness, identified in Japan in 1908
From *taste*, from Old French *taster*, to touch or try, from a Latin verb meaning to handle. The sense narrowed from touching to trying by mouth.
Is the tongue map real?
No. It arose from a misreading of a German paper and persisted in textbooks. All areas of the tongue detect all basic tastes.
What is umami?
The savoury taste associated with glutamates, identified by Kikunae Ikeda in 1908 and accepted as a basic taste much later.