Can you tell a multi-sensory story with your food?

Le Cordon Bleu Online Learning
3 min readOct 18, 2019

--

Modernist cuisine sits at the intersection of art, science and philosophy. Encompassing a range of culinary innovations, multi-sensory dining is a style employed by some of the world’s most renowned chefs to provide context to their food.

Without context, what does any work of art truly mean? This is the kind of question you might find yourself asking when delving into the concepts of modernist cuisine. Not a style of cooking in itself, but a forward-focused approach to dining, modernist cuisine sits at the intersection of art, science and philosophy.

How can food tell a story?

There is a common misconception among many people that taste and flavour are the same thing. Taste refers strictly to what begins in the mouth — the perception of sensations between your taste buds and brain. Meanwhile, flavour is more a complex experience, culminating from the interactions of a series of sensations: taste, touch, sound, smell, sight, emotion, memory and perhaps more.

Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash

While traditional culinary perspectives will typically observe only taste, sight and smell, and still produce high quality dishes, multi-sensory dining incorporates the idea that context can be provided to any dish by addressing the full range of sensory experience.

Why is context important in dining?

For one, it shapes our experience and enjoyment of the food in front of us. Think of a restaurant where the service is poor, but the food is excellent. While the basic senses may point to a positive experience, the emotional influence of receiving bad service can affect the flavour perception of the food itself.

When carefully considered, the context and thereby overall hedonistic rating of food can be controlled using multi-sensory elements. Take, for example, Heston Blumenthal’s famous Sound of the Sea dish. A selection of shellfish are served alongside seaweed, edible “sand” and a foam made from the juices of the shellfish, invoking the appearance, taste and smell of the ocean. Blumenthal then pushes this one step further by providing an MP3 player playing carefully selected ocean sounds, which diners are to listen to while eating.

Diners claimed the food was more flavourful, saltier and fresher when eaten with the ocean sounds playing than without. Furthermore, the experience invoked nostalgia in some, contributing even more to the experience by incorporating memory.

Discover Le Cordon Bleu Online Courses: https://online.cordonbleu.edu/

--

--

Le Cordon Bleu Online Learning
Le Cordon Bleu Online Learning

Written by Le Cordon Bleu Online Learning

Le Cordon Bleu is justifiably proud of its reputation as a leader in gastronomy and culinary arts education and this extends to the delivery of online learning.

No responses yet