best defined as the combined effects of the taste and aroma of food, is a matter of practical concern to all cooks and to the food industry, and a challenge to scientists. The activities of cooks in adding or modifying flavours in the kitchen are referred to in numerous articles about spices etc. This one is rather about the theoretical aspects.
Although many flavours can be described effectively for everyday purposes, usually by referring to some other flavour (‘it tastes a bit like strawberries’), a full scientific description or analysis is virtually impossible. The flavour of a single spice, which may be just one of numerous ingredients in a given dish, may embody hundreds of elements, of which some may not yet have been finally identified. For all the miraculous technology of spectroscopic analysis, there are mysteries here which will defy resolution for some time to come.
If only for this reason, the artificial and exact replication of flavours achieved by using natural ingredients is not possible. If the chemical identity of the dominant flavouring elements in, say, a spice is known, and if these can be synthesized, a close approximation can be achieved, but that is all.
The subject of flavour is thus of almost infinite complexity, and so is that of flavourings, both natural and artificial. Nor does it have a vocabulary which would make the task of grappling with it easier. It is fortunate that no difficulties of this sort impede our enjoyment of flavours; that they cannot be fully analysed or described in words is of little moment to the vast majority of the world's population.
Even an attempt to classify aromas (one constituent of flavours) leads to immediate difficulty. A typical classification of categories of aroma, from the 1940s, looked like this:
This list is partly opaque to the lay person (even if it is explained that hircine means goaty and that alliaceous has to do with the onion family) and partly too vague (fragrant and repulsive). There were simpler classifications. The great Swedish naturalist Linnaeus had a list of seven. Hans Henning, a German physiologist, produced a list of only six fundamental kinds of aroma:
These are understandable terms, but it can be objected that a short list like this is incapable of covering all the aromas we experience, or so general as to be useless. It does seem that, although Linnaeus gave us a practical and comprehensible system for the taxonomy of plants and animals, the achievement of a corresponding taxonomy of aromas is not within sight. And if this is beyond our present horizon, a taxonomy of flavours (and therefore flavourings) is necessarily even further out of sight.
However, someone who is dealing with a particular group of flavours and addressing a sympathetic audience may manage quite well. Thus Joan Morgan (Morgan and Richards, 1993) uses the following vocabulary in her useful survey of categories of apple flavours: refreshing and savoury (of summer apples); strawberry; vinous; densely fruity; aromatic (the most prized); sweet and scented (the German Edelborsdorfer is ‘the perfect example’); honeyed; aniseed; russet; nutty; pineapple; fruit/acid drops. As a whole, this list will be an effective piece of communication for most people. It is interesting to see that the author thought it necessary to add explanations in only a few instances, notably ‘russet’. Here she had to explain that russet is normally taken to refer to the colour of the skin; that possession of a ‘russet’ flavour is linked to that but not coextensive with it; and that what some of the greatest apple authorities—Bunyard (1925), Shand (1934), and Hogg (1851)—have said on the subject gives useful guidance. This illustrates an important point: in the absence of an agreed ‘flavour language’, it will often be necessary to amplify, in one or both of two ways, a term used: first by giving examples of what the term is applicable to (vinous is now usually applied to McIntosh, aniseed develops in Ellison's Orange, etc.); and secondly by referring to fuller explanations, possibly in different and especially illuminating contexts, from other people.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Bunyard, E. A. (1925), A Handbook of Hardy Fruits: Stone & Bush Fruits, Nuts, etc., London: J. Murray.
Hogg, R. (1851), The Apple and its Varieties, London: Groombridge & Sons.
Jaine, Tom (ed) (1988), Taste, Oxford Symposium on Food History 1987, London: Prospect Books.
Lake, Max (1989), Scents and Sensuality, London: John Murray.
Shand, P. Morton (1934), Book of Food, London: Jonathan Cape.
Walker, Harlan (ed) (1993), Spicing up the Palate, Oxford Symposium on Food History 1992, Totnes: Prospect Books.
