Smell and Taste

[Cavernio]

There was a rather silly thread started about flavored jelly beans tasting like something no one would ever taste.
Taste and smell are actually partially synesthetic in most people, meaning that the senses overlap. Taste and smell receptors, in fact, both have projections to a common area in the frontal cortex. eg:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?art...=related_links

For me at least, I have an idea of what something tastes like just from the smell. A good example for me is to think about oranges. They smell and taste, well, similar.
Smell can be important for tasting anything at all sometimes. For example, ever have a bad cold, your nose is all plugged up, and everything just tastes like styrofoam? (Meaning tasteless, since styrofoam doesn't have much of a smell and few of us have probably tasted it.)
I've also had a few foods where the smell and taste are oddly, opposite, and it drives me nuts when I eat it! There's a type of jam I had, I *think* it might've been elderberry jam, and it stunk. But it tasted yummy, not at all like what it smelled like, and I couldn't help but notice it with every, single bite.

Also, beyond that, you can make synthetic compounds which are exactly the same as what you'd find in nature, but just aren't extracted from the product itself. Subtle differences between accurate artificial and natural flavors can be explained by other compounds in the natural product, which can enhance or change the flavor of the ester itself which is necessary for the actual flavor. In fact, even if you never ever tasted or even smelled rotten egg in your life, you could just match the chemicals, et voila!

[Relambrien]

That's quite interesting, but just what do you want us to discuss here? Whether or not we feel similarities between smell and taste?

[arelik]

Last year my biology teacher brought different juices in class. He told some students to pinch their noses and made them drink the juices. No one was able to guess what flavor they were drinking.

Yeah I don't really see what can be discussed here.

[devonin]

We could try turning it into a discussion of what it is about the human need for hyperbole that we would compare things to concepts we have no actual frame of reference for, simply to draw a substantial enough comparison. (That tastes like sh it)

[Cavernio]

I really just wanted to answer the question about jelly beans, I know it's not a good discussion topic.

[Cavernio]

Oh, also another thing about my point about connection of smell and taste, there're only 5 known taste receptors on the tongue, yet obviously we taste more than 5 things. There're some huge number of receptors for smells, separate ones for each different chemical compound of a smell.

[Paperleaf]

Yeah, I agree- it's obvious that smell and taste are definately linked to each other. That's why some people plug their noses before chugging down an unpleasent tasting drink... to weaken the taste of the drink. Also, if you're chewing something and then a totally different scent from what you're eating is directed under your nose, the taste of whatever you're chewing seems to change! :P