For instance,
paradoxical as it sounds to say so, cinnamon has really no taste at all,
but only a smell. Nobody will ever believe this on first hearing, but
nothing on earth is easier than to put it to the test. Take a small
piece of cinnamon, hold your nose tightly, rather high up, between the
thumb and finger, and begin chewing it. You will find that it is
absolutely tasteless; you are merely chewing a perfectly insipid bit of
bark. Then let go your nose, and you will find immediately that it
'tastes' strongly, though in reality it is only the perfume from it that
you now permit to rise into the smelling-chamber in the nose. So, again,
cloves have only a pungent taste and a peculiar smell, and the same is
the case more or less with almost all distinctive flavourings. When you
come to find of what they are made up, they consist generally of sweets
or bitters, intermixed with certain ethereal perfumes, or with pungent
or acid tastes, or with both or several such together. In this way, a
comparatively small number of original elements, variously combined,
suffice to make up the whole enormous mass of recognisably different
tastes and flavours.
The third and lowest part of the tongue and throat is the seat of those
peculiar tastes to which Professor Bain, the great authority upon this
important philosophical subject, has given the names of relishes and
disgusts. It is here, chiefly, that we taste animal food, fats, butters,
oils, and the richer class of vegetables and made dishes.
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