In Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat, journalist John McQuaid (Path of Destruction) tackles the complicated and fascinating science of taste: why we eat what we eat and how our taste preferences came to be. "Flavor," he writes in the introduction, "remains frustratingly paradoxical," but this is an attempt to understand that paradox and explore "what flavor is, where it came from, and where it's headed."
McQuaid starts with a 480-million-year-old imprint of a fossilized trilobite that holds the oldest known record of a meal. After a detailed account of this and other prehistoric specimens and what they can tell us about the history of taste, he moves on to the current state of taste, including the Bitter Gene (which determines one's preference for bitter food) and why some people prefer spicy food while others despise it. To understand where taste is headed, McQuaid looks at how this sense has evolved: growers attempt to create ever-hotter pepper varieties, for instance, and food manufacturers compete to see how many "sensory buttons" they can push at once (hence the rise of flavored potato chips). Chefs experiment with molecular gastronomy, while scientists study how two flavors sampled independently can be disgusting, but become delicious when combined.
Though the science of taste is still evolving, McQuaid's research is detailed and thorough; the anecdotes seasoned throughout this investigation keep the facts from becoming too dry. Tasty will appeal to readers of science as well as food lovers (most especially those interested in the science of food). --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm