ARE WE REALLY TASTING THE SAME THING?
We often talk about taste as though it belongs entirely to the food. A lemon is sour, cocoa is bitter, a stock is salty. But taste perception varies from person to person, which means flavour can be less fixed and objective than it appears.
Two people can eat exactly the same piece of chocolate, from the same bar, at the same moment, and still experience it differently. One may find it intensely bitter, another may notice more sweetness. One may describe it as perfectly balanced while the person beside them finds the same piece too sharp.
The chocolate has not changed. The person tasting it has.
Why Taste Perception Differs Between People
Our sensitivity to the basic tastes, sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami, varies from person to person. Genetics can play a role, as can age, familiarity, past experience and individual biology. Some people are more sensitive to bitterness, while others may require more salt or sweetness before they perceive the same level of intensity.
This becomes particularly interesting when we consider the language chefs use around balance. We often talk about a dish having the right amount of acidity, the correct level of seasoning or the perfect relationship between sweetness and bitterness. There is value in that way of thinking, of course. A chef needs a reference point and a dish needs structure. But how fixed can that balance really be if the person eating it is part of the equation?
Perhaps balance is not simply a property of the food. Perhaps it is a relationship between the food and the person experiencing it.
This is one reason tasting with other people is so valuable during development. A chef may have years of training and an extremely refined palate, but it is still one palate. If several people respond differently to the same element, that variation should not automatically be dismissed as inconsistency. It can tell us something.
One person may notice bitterness that others barely register. Another may find a texture too dry. Someone else may experience a level of sweetness as excessive when everyone else considers it restrained. These differences can reveal parts of the experience that would be difficult to see if the creator relied entirely on their own perception.
What Does This Mean for Chefs?
There is also something interesting here about the relationship between chef and guest. We often think of flavour as something created in the kitchen and then delivered to the diner. But perhaps that description gives the chef too much credit.
The chef creates the stimulus: the ingredients, temperatures, textures, aromas and seasoning. The guest brings their own sensory system, memories, expectations and previous experiences. Flavour emerges somewhere between the two.
This also makes the growing conversation around personalisation particularly interesting. Personalisation does not necessarily need to mean creating an entirely different dish for every guest. It could simply mean accepting that people may need slightly different levels of seasoning, sweetness, bitterness or texture to reach a similar experience.
Perhaps the salt and pepper shakers we removed from so many restaurant tables deserve another look.
If two people can eat the same dish and experience it differently, then perhaps asking whether something is “perfectly balanced” is not quite the right question.
A better question might be:
Balanced for whom?