32 Primary Aromas? Myth Busting

While doing some research about the part that your sense of smell plays when tasting/ drinking/ enjoying whisky, I repeatedly came across the following statement in one permutation or another:

...there are only four primary tastes (sweet, sour, salty and bitter) but there are 32 primary aromas.

I found this to be an interesting little factoid - something that I'd never heard before - so of course, I set about to find out what those 32 primary aromas might be.

Continued research turned up something odd. Charles MacLean, Whisky Magazine, Aberlour, The Scotch Doc, The International Centre for Brewing and Distilling, (and a few other random places) all state unequivocally that there are 32 primary aromas. Yet not one of them lists those 32 primary aromas.

Glenfiddich's Ludo Ducrocq also mentions the primary aromas factoid, but says:

...there are apparently 32 primary aromas - although nobody has ever been able to tell what these are...

Interestingly, ALL of the sources which declare the presence of 32 primary aromas, are related to the Scotch Whisky Industry.

Apparently, someone, somewhere made this fact up, and everyone else just accepted it as the gospel and continued to reiterate it - without ever stopping to ask what the 32 primary odors were.

That's not how we roll here at TSB, SO I started off on a little research of my own, which included discussions with Ed Lavin at the Department of Food Science & Technology at Cornell University; Gail Vance Civille, President of Sensory Spectrum, and co-author of the books Aroma and Flavor Lexicon for Sensory Evaluation: Terms, Definitions, References, and Examples; Sensory Evaluation Techniques; and Sensory Evaluation in Quality Control; Dr. Barry Green at Yale; and Dr. Marcie Pelchat, Experimental Psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. I also exchanged emails with Dr. John Piggott, University of Strathclyde and was also pointed to the work of Jordan Ross, (though I did not speak with Jordan).

Here is what I learned:

• The statement that there are 32 primary aromas is FALSE. None of the scientists had any idea where such a concept would have come from.
• There are several hundred different types of olfactory receptors, but they do not correspond on a one-to-one basis with classes of odors.
• Another myth is that the primary tastes each have their own little spot on the tongue:

The tongue map, showing sweet on the tip of the tongue, bitter on the back and sweet and salty on the sides, long accepted as fact, is a myth. It’s based on a mistranslation of a German paper that was written in 1901 by a Harvard psychologist. If you do any experimenting on yourself you’ll discover it’s not true.

• Sweet, sour, salty and bitter are perceived anywhere there are taste buds. While there are differences in sensitivity to the four tastes around the tongue, these differences are small.
• Most researchers accept the existence of a fifth taste: umami, a Japanese word meaning savory or meaty.
• Unlike taste preferences, which are hard-wired from birth, preferences for odors are, for the most part, learned through experience.
• The human tongue contains about 10,000 taste buds located in four different types of structures, called papillae. It is these papillae, not the taste buds, which give the tongue its bumpy surface.
• There appear to be several receptors for bitter and sweet, tuned to different molecules.
• The "four basic tastes" are an out-dated and language-limited model of what we perceive.
• Some people are born with more taste buds - and as a result may experience taste, particularly bitterness, much more intensely.
• There are proven differences in the way men and women smell - women can be more sensitive to strong smells, and more capable of detecting weak aromas. There is no corresponding research that states men and women taste things differently. This is important to keep in mind as the industry attempts to attract more female Scotch drinkers.
• The brain is trainable and will get better at picking out subtleties and nuances in aromas - a developed "palate" is really a developed brain.
• The Olfactory Bulb, the Hippocampus, and the Visual Cortex all play a part in helping to recognize aromas.

I hope you find this as interesting as I do. I plan to explore this in greater detail.

The next time you see a article about Scotch that declares there are 32 primary aromas...you'll know better.

Comments

[Nathan Mealey]

You might also be interested in Phillip Hills' book Appreciating Whisky, where he provides some really great discussion surrounding the chemical/biological explanations for why scotch tastes and smells as it does. Absolutely fascinating book!

[Matt]

Beyond the spirits you seek out ancient truths and dispel overgrown myths, you are truly a Scotch Sensei.