n South African Food Review - Flavour perception : patterns in the mind : the art and science of good taste

Abstract

Flavour is a combination of the senses of taste and smell. In itself, the sense of taste is a fairly primitive system in that there are only 5 "basic" tastes. Differentiation between different chemicals in just one of these dimensions, for example sour taste, is usually very difficult. Malic acid and citric acid are almost indistinguishable and denoted simply "sour". By comparison, however, the sense of smell is far more complex.