Taste

A Philosophy of Food

Sarah E. Worth

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781789144819
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

A thoughtful consideration of taste as a sense and an idea and of how we might jointly develop both. When we eat, we eat the world: taking something from outside and making it part of us. But what does it taste of? And can we develop our taste? In Taste, Sarah Worth argues that taste is a sense that needs educating, for the real pleasures of eating only come with an understanding of what one really likes. From taste as an abstract concept to real examples of food, she explores how we can learn about and develop our sense of taste through themes ranging from pleasure, authenticity, and food fraud, to visual images, recipes, and food writing.

1

Good Taste and Bad Taste

It’s hard to make sense of the word ‘taste’. Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that its literal meaning (gustatory taste) and its metaphorical meaning (taste as preferences) tend to be used interchangeably. Sometimes, it is not even clear which is which. It does not help that one can also have good taste (preferences) in gustatory taste. Most people who talk about having taste are focused on what it means to have good taste. Presumably, having bad taste is not merely the lack of good taste. Is bad taste just being attracted to, or having preferences for, the wrong kinds of things? Is it a lack of knowledge of design, structure or flavour? Or is it really a reflection of poor moral character? Historically, bad taste has been understood to be all of these things, but today it is not considered to be so closely tied to morality, just a way of dismissing people whose tastes differ from those of the dominant social class. If the ability to taste food and to appreciate its subtleties is used as the basis for understanding good taste, then we have a linguistic and experiential anchor for our metaphorical claims of good taste in art and culture. Understanding the relationship between gustatory taste and taste preferences is key to the enquiry in this chapter, since the concept that underlies both meanings is a kind of value judgement about how we sense things in the world around us.

Metaphors are so firmly ingrained into our language that we often hardly even know we are using them. In fact, it is hard to describe anything without using metaphorical language. ‘The world is my oyster’ is not about living in an oyster, or even eating oysters, but about having everything one wants. ‘I’m on top of the world’ might mean you have ascended a hill or a mountain, or it might just be the feeling of having done so. ‘You have such good taste’ is a compliment that has nothing to do with how well you taste food, but rather how well you decorate your house, dress yourself, or even which things you like in a shop. Understanding metaphorical expressions is one of the most difficult things about learning a new language, since metaphorical phrases often do not translate well from language to language. They tend to make little sense when translated literally. Metaphorical phrases take on their own meanings.

This is what has happened in the case of taste. Having good taste is the metaphorical description of having gustatory taste. But this particular metaphor is difficult to translate directly, since being able to detect differences in food and drink is not at all the same as having good taste in art, culture or design. It is even more confusing considering that not only has good taste (preferences) taken on its own meaning, but the language often does not even refer back to the original meaning of having to do with gustatory taste. Perhaps, however, it is a clear metaphor if we assume that ‘good taste’ is really about having a particular kind of pleasurable response resulting from a certain kind of understanding or knowledge of what you are tasting or looking at. Understanding what we mean by taste seems a necessary first step.

What exactly does it mean to taste? Ironically, the etymology of the word taste goes back to ‘the senses relating to touch’.¹ This includes probing, testing and examining, and this is where we get the notion that ‘a taste’ is to have just a little bit of something. Although taste cannot happen without touch, it is no longer the first thing we think of when we consider any of the meanings of taste. The literal (gustatory) sense of ‘taste’ refers to the way the tongue perceives the flavours of food and drink. But in the aesthetic sense of ‘taste’ – where we are thought to have good taste or bad taste – the distance of vision is built into the notion. That is, having good aesthetic taste is the ability to reflect on, and understand cognitively, what aspects of a work of art are executed successfully and, by being able to articulate those, to then determine what is good and what is less good, and why. Aesthetic taste suggests that we can contemplate from a distance some work of art or music and make a good judgement. Only the cognitive senses (vision and hearing) allow for that sort of contemplation, whereas taste, touch and smell require direct bodily engagement in order for sensations to arrive.

The notion of taste includes a number of seemingly incongruent features. We taste flavours with the tongue; taste involves both smell and touch (and temperature); we can taste-test a small amount; and we have preferences or ‘a taste for’ various things, including the arts, foods or activities. Having aesthetic taste (well-developed preferences) ends up as a metaphor for gustatory taste, but it is not at all a clear parallel or mere descriptor for tasting what we eat. When we taste with the tongue, we have a direct sensory perception. When we have taste we have no direct perception, but we are able to make evaluative judgements about things that are in the cultural realm around us, including art, music, fashion, design or style. Gustatory taste is in the mouth; aesthetic taste is in the mind. Unfortunately this means that the metaphor is a tough one to interpret, since having good taste, in food or art, seems as though it should at least reside either in the senses or in the mind. But we talk about having good taste, or the right kinds of preferences, with both food and culture.

Accounting for Taste

The Latin phrase de gustibus non est disputandum, or its more common English translation, ‘there is no disputing about taste’, usually comes up in discussions where people can’t agree and so revert to simple relativism: ‘I like what I like, and you like what you like. End of discussion.’ But what could be more subjective than what people like in food? It seems wrong to me to think that the only two ways of resolving such discussions are either absolutism or relativism. In fact, it does not seem possible that anyone really believes this: people regularly give reasons for thinking their favourite movie is the best, that their favourite restaurant is the best or that some particular painting is worth spending the time and effort to go and see. People spend time discussing the ways in which they are justified in thinking that their preferences are warranted. Roger Scruton argues that matters of taste are what people most like to argue about. For him, ‘Reasons are given, relations established, the ideas of right and wrong, correct and incorrect, are bandied around with no suspicion that they might be inappropriate.’² We do this when we discuss films and their questionable merits, the plots of book or even our favourite sports teams. Yet there has to be some sort of meaningful position in between the extremes of relativism and absolutism, since in these discussions we regularly outline either latent or explicit criteria by which we judge. The absolutist would say that there are better and worse wines, or paintings or stories, and that there are qualities that can be specifically pointed out that make them superior. They might say that there are objectively better things. The relativist would say, I like what I like, and I cannot be wrong about what I like. For instance, I love artichokes and I dislike beetroot. No one can convince me to like beetroot. I understand that other people like beetroot, but learning more about it cannot convince me that it will taste good, and I will not be persuaded by a new way of preparing it.

The first problem with this kind of reasoning is that we are conflating the ideas of something being good and someone liking it. I can recognize that something might be good, or even brilliant, and still not like it. My disliking it does not make it bad; it might just not be my preference, or to my taste. This is a distinction between what is in the object, and my preferences about the object. Second, there are qualities or properties of food or art in them. Red wine, for instance, has the quality red, and that is in the wine. My perception of it does not change the fact that it is red. If I am colour-blind, the wine is still red. There is also something that wine is like, and that is different from what it is like for me. This is the difference between the objective and the subjective relationships we have with wine. When I taste something wonderful, I might suggest that you must try it because there is something in the food that I want you to taste, and not because I think you will have the exact same experience that I had. I hope you will have the same experience I had, but no two palates are exactly alike. Palates are trained by experience, time, culture and genetics and we do not all like food in exactly the same way. Some people like spicy foods; some cannot tolerate them. Some like cilantro (coriander) and for some it tastes like soap (this is a genetic aversion that is linked closely to its smell).³ So another important distinction is that between properties in food and the experiences that we have individually. This same distinction works just as well with art objects such as paintings (there are properties of the work, and experiences of those properties). It is easier to say that this is less subjective, however, since two people can look at the exact same painting and have two experiences. When we eat, we cannot share the exact same bite.

In addition to these distinctions, we can pay more or less attention to our experiences, and to our taste experiences especially. Sometimes we eat quickly and do not notice the subtleties of flavour. Some people are trained to pay attention to the nuances of taste (or painting or literature). Sommeliers are trained to detect the types of grape, the chemical properties of the soil the grapes were grown in, and chemical properties of the wine which resemble the smells and tastes of other foods – blackberry, oak, cherry, pear and so on – that untrained people simply cannot detect. (A sommelier once told me that if I could not taste anything I could identify in a wine, just to say that it tastes like a baked potato.) It is not the case that those properties are not in the wines, but that not everyone has the training and ability to detect them. The (wine) sommelier preparation course is extensive training for taste – perhaps the most complex taste education there is. The body of knowledge covers history, theory, science, geography, geology, proper service and, of course, taste. Only the most exacting tasters can pass the tests needed to qualify as a sommelier; they can identify subtle differences between wines grown all over the world. A trained art historian will have a different kind of experience from the untrained person when they view the same pieces. The trained person will likely be able to derive more pleasure from various artworks. They should be able to articulate what it is about different works that is successful and less successful, as well as why they might be interesting because of their historical significance. They should be able to articulate why they like a work. The same artwork incites different experiences in two different people, just as the same bottle of wine can give two different tasters completely different experiences.

The Problem of Taste

The eighteenth century was a watershed moment for philosophical aesthetics and notions of taste. The so-called ‘problem of taste’ questioned whether ‘beauty’, and other notions of aesthetic excellence, indicates that there is some sort of quality in the objects we perceive, and that beautiful things would arouse some sort of aesthetic emotion, or distinct pleasure in the perceiver, for those trained to perceive it. The question came down to whether beauty was in the eye of the beholder (subjective), or if it was inherent in the object (objective), waiting for those who were capable or educated to perceive it. Beauty, unlike knowledge, was always indicated by a feeling of pleasure that would accompany it. Some called that pleasure aesthetic, to distinguish it from other kinds (such as intellectual or sexual), but it was always a pleasure that seemed to be linked to the body.

One of the first eighteenth-century influencers was the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten, who offered up a conceptual change that ended up shaping much of the field of aesthetics. Prior to Baumgarten’s work in 1750, ‘aesthetics’ was understood in the way that the ancients wrote about it – having to do only with the bodily senses or sensations. The ancient Greek notion of aesthetikos related only to sensory perception and the way we interpret external stimuli in our worlds. Baumgarten suggested that sensory taste was not all that mattered, and that good and bad cultural taste needed to be understood more completely. This had to do with the burgeoning art market that was developing in Europe, and the growing capacity to buy art as a consumer product by people in the middle class. What constituted good taste and bad taste needed to be clarified, but who decided what was good was even more important. According to Baumgarten, good taste was the ability to detect beauty in an object. He said that this ability came from trained senses rather than a trained intellect. Someone with good taste has the ability to judge perfections and imperfections through the senses.⁴ As it turned out, this changed the whole field of philosophical aesthetics. All of a sudden, there was a real emphasis on whose senses were trained properly and how they became trained. And, of course, the focus ended up on the arts of vision (painting, sculpture and architecture) and hearing (music, drama and literature). Hardly any attention was given to the tastes experienced in the mouth.

After Baumgarten, David Hume and Immanuel Kant dominated the discussion of taste. Kant was intimately acquainted with Baumgarten’s work (and sketched out much of his own most famous work in the book of Baumgarten’s that he was reading) because of his proximity to him, but there is no evidence that Hume had seen Baumgarten’s work at all. Although Hume and Kant did not come to the exact same conclusions, they did both tackle the question of whether good taste was an issue of good judgement in the bodily senses, or whether it was a purely intellectual matter. Hume advocated a way of thinking about aesthetic judgement that indicated that beauty was in a work of art or literature (his examples were mostly taken from literature). Experts, or true judges, as he called them, were able to discern, dig out or clearly identify cases of beauty much more reliably than someone with an untrained eye. He said that it was clear that ‘whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegance between Ogilby and Milton . . . would be thought to defend no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained . . . a pond as extensive as the ocean.’⁵ Almost everyone knows who John Milton is. But who is John Ogilby? Well, he was a much lesser-known Scottish cartographer of Hume’s day – presumably some sort of hack, compared to Milton. There is discernible genius in Milton’s work that will be detectable indefinitely, but a few hundred years later, no one will know Ogilby since his work really contains no genius, no beauty and nothing with any real staying power. Only true judges or ‘ideal critics’ will be able to identify these works reliably, since they have had plenty of practice in making comparisons and should always be able to explain why something is good or bad. True judges have good taste, according to Hume. Those with bad taste might prefer Ogilby, or, in current trends, a ‘Velvet Elvis’ painting, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series or paintings by Thomas Kinkade (the so-called ‘Painter of Light’). These works have all been identified as lacking in real quality and skill, despite their popularity. Presumably, no one will be learning about them in art history or literature classes in a hundred years.

What about the example of wine? Ironically, even though most of Hume’s examples throughout his essay are about literature, he does use one very important parable about wine to make his point crystal clear. Hume recounts a story from Don Quixote:

It is with good reason, says Sancho to the squire with the great nose, that I pretend to have a judgment in wine: this is a quality hereditary in our family. Two of my kinsmen were once called to give their opinion of a hogshead, which was supposed to be excellent, being old and of a good vintage. One of them tastes it; considers it; and after mature reflection pronounces the wine to be good, were it not for a small taste of leather, which he perceived in it. The other, after using the same precautions, gives also his verdict in favor of the wine; but with the reserve of a taste of iron, which he could easily distinguish. You cannot imagine how much they were both ridiculed for their judgment. But who laughed in the end? On emptying the hogshead, there was found at the bottom, an old key with a leathern thong tied to it.⁶

For Hume, the fact that the two tasters described different tastes in the wine demonstrates clearly that flavour and taste (he mentions sweet and bitter specifically) are not in the mind alone, but are some of the qualities that we perceive in objects. A true judge would have been able to identify both the leather and the iron because of what Hume called a delicacy of imagination. Those who are not trained (the training, according to Hume, includes experience, comparisons and this delicacy of imagination) would not necessarily have bad taste per se, but they would not have good taste either. Bad taste would be more about being oblivious to any sort of standards rather than not being able to detect them correctly.

Hume is what we call an objectivist. He thought that the objective reality of beauty was in objects, waiting for us to comprehend it. With the right kind of training and education, one could identify it if it were present in the object. Immanuel Kant, on the other hand, was a subjectivist of sorts. He thought that the subjective character of aesthetic judgement was the basis of good taste. He argued that any one of us could make valid aesthetic judgements that were dependent upon a few very specific conditions. The most important of these conditions is that we must be able to make a disinterested assessment, or that we can separate ourselves from financial, emotional or personal intere...