Paper short abstract:

This paper is a reflexive account of learning to taste ‘off flavors,’ a form of sensory learning that utilizes the scientist’s own body as an instrument. Methodologically, the paper explores taste as a mode of knowing both for scientists and for the anthropologist studying scientific practice.

Paper long abstract:

Although there is a broad literature within the anthropology of food, many studies fall into a category that Holtzman describes as 'the ethnography of tasty things' (2006: 364). That is, much ethnographic research into food is devoted to gustatory pleasure, and food products that might appeal to the anthropologist's own taste and palate. One explanation for the predominance of 'tasty things' within anthropology might be that, in the mode of participant observation, anthropologists of food are frequently enjoined to eat the foods that they study. What is less well studied then are bad tastes, awful flavors and unpleasant foods. However, in the domains of food science and technology that this paper describes, understanding 'off flavors' has a significance with both technical and commercial implications. In the processed food industry in the United States, it is a widely held truism that consumers won't buy a product if they don't like the way it tastes or if it contains unpleasant flavors. But how can science determine when food is off putting, and how do scientists learn to address bad tastes in their experimental and technical practice? Based on an ethnography of flavor chemistry and sensory science labs in the United States, this paper is a reflexive account of learning to taste 'off flavors,' a form of sensory learning that utilizes the scientist's own body as a kind of instrument. Methodologically, the paper explores taste as a mode of knowing both for scientists and for the anthropologist studying scientific practice.