Note: This is part two of a three-part series on how the senses not directly linked to taste—sight, hearing, touch—affect perception of flavor. See part one here.
Last time we focused the sense of sight, examining how color changes perceived taste. Now let’s move on to another sense not commonly associated with flavor: hearing. Dr. Charles Spence of Oxford’s Crossmodal Research Lab has performed numerous studies that demonstrate how music, ambient noise, and the sound of the food itself affect our sense of taste.
While most food researchers downplay the importance of sound, Dr. Spence has shown that it can be an important factor in flavor and enjoyment. As he puts it, “Sound is the forgotten flavour sense.” Let’s take a look at some of his most interesting findings:
1. Wine can be paired with music.
We all know that certain wines pair with certain foods, but apparently wines also pair with pieces of classical music. When participants were asked to pair four wines with eight pieces of classical music, the results were non-random: the acidic Sauvignon Blanc paired best with Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D major, K285 - Movement 1, while a balanced Cabernet Sauvignon went better with two Tchaikovsky string quartets than any other pieces.
“The results presented here provide some of the first evidence for the idea that people follow similar crossmodal correspondences when pairing wines and classical music. In addition, the results reveal that classical music can enhance the overall experience of drinking wine,” concludes Dr. Spence.
2. Low-toned music makes beer taste more bitter.
Wine isn’t the only drink that’s affected by music. As recounted in a recent New Yorker profile of Dr. Spence, he gave a presentation at a London beer festival wherein asked the audience to take a sip of a dark Welsh ale while a tinkling xylophone song played. Then he changed the music to dark, low organ and asked them to take another sip. The author watched the change come over the crowd:
When the second piece of music stopped, the audience had fallen silent.
“Wow,” a girl near me in a vintage houndstooth dress said. I knew this particular trick of Spence’s—I had watched him perform it multiple times—but it still worked on me. With only a change in the background music, the deep-brown beer had gone from creamy and sweet to mouth-dryingly bitter.
3. Noisy restaurants dampen the taste of food.
To test the effects of ambient noise on taste, Dr. Spence had 100 diners at the Edinburgh Science Festival insert earplugs before starting on a crispy roll of bread. The loud, unruly crowd turned suddenly silent.
“Not a murmur was heard from anywhere in the room. What happened? Well, the diners were concentrating so avidly on their tasting experience that I think they simply forgot for a moment about conversing,” he notes. Dining in silence is not necessarily a desirable goal, but perhaps more effort should be made to prevent noise from interfering with flavor in restaurants.
4. Potato chips that sound louder taste crispier.
In his most famous experiment, which won him an Ig Nobel Prize, Dr. Spence had subjects bite into Pringles potato chips (or crisps, as they’re called across the pond) and rate their crispiness. The subjects wore headphones that played the sound of their bite, sometimes with distorted loudness or frequency composition, and sometimes left unaltered.
Participants rated the chips as significantly crunchier when the overall volume was increased and when the high-frequency sounds were boosted. The opposite was also true—quieter volume and lower frequency made the chips taste staler and softer.
This research has wide-reaching implications for bars, restaurants, and producers of packaged foods. The right sounds improve the flavor of food and beverages, while the wrong sounds distort flavor. Dr. Spence has shown that sound should not be a forgotten flavor sense anymore.