Background
A complex dish — a curry, a stew, a well-made cocktail — is composed of many discrete flavors that your perceptual system either separates into components or fuses into a single gestalt. Sommeliers, tea tasters, and perfumers are trained to move between these modes. This practice trains the same skill on any complex food.
Eat something complex — a curry, a chocolate, a stew. First, try to taste every element individually. Then taste the whole.
The Practice
- 01
Take a bite of the complex dish. Do not swallow immediately.
- 02
First pass: try to identify each individual flavor. Sweetness? Acid? Bitter? Heat? Herb? Salt? Fat?
- 03
Move attention from one element to the next as if selecting instruments in an orchestra.
- 04
Second pass: release the individuation. Let all the elements enter at once as a single, unified flavor.
- 05
Toggle back and forth: analytic taste → gestalt taste → analytic → gestalt.
- 06
Swallow. Notice what lingers of both modes.
You can hear a chord as one sound or as several notes. You can taste a dish the same way. Most people only ever taste the chord.