People intuitively match basic tastes to sounds of different pitches, and the matches that they make tend to be consistent across individuals. It is, though, not altogether clear what governs such crossmodal mappings between taste and auditory pitch. Here, we assess whether variations in taste intensity influence the matching of taste to pitch as well as the role of emotion in mediating such crossmodal correspondences. Participants were presented with 5 basic tastants at 3 concentrations. In Experiment 1, the participants rated the tastants in terms of their emotional arousal and valence/pleasantness, and selected a musical note (from 19 possible pitches ranging from C2 to C8) and loudness that best matched each tastant. In Experiment 2, the participants made emotion ratings and note matches in separate blocks of trials, then made emotion ratings for all 19 notes. Overall, the results of the 2 experiments revealed that both taste quality and concentration exerted a significant effect on participants’ loudness selection, taste intensity rating, and valence and arousal ratings. Taste quality, not concentration levels, had a significant effect on participants’ choice of pitch, but a significant positive correlation was observed between individual perceived taste intensity and pitch choice. A significant and strong correlation was also demonstrated between participants’ valence assessments of tastants and their valence assessments of the best-matching musical notes. These results therefore provide evidence that: 1) pitch–taste correspondences are primarily influenced by taste quality, and to a lesser extent, by perceived intensity; and 2) such correspondences may be mediated by valence/pleasantness.

Food product-extrinsic sounds (i.e., those auditory stimuli that are not linked directly to a food or beverage product, or its packaging) have been shown to exert a significant influence over various aspects of food perception and consumer behaviour, often operating outside of conscious awareness. In this review, we summarise the latest evidence concerning the various ways in which what we hear can influence what we taste. According to one line of empirical research, background noise interferes with tasting, due to attentional distraction. A separate body of marketing-relevant research demonstrates that music can be used to bias consumers’ food perception, judgments, and purchasing/consumption behaviour in various ways. Some of these effects appear to be driven by the arousal elicited by loud music as well as the entrainment of people’s behaviour to the musical beat. However, semantic priming effects linked to the type and style of music are also relevant. Another route by which music influences food perception comes from the observation that our liking/preference for the music that we happen to be listening to carries over to influence our hedonic judgments of what we are tasting. A final route by which hearing influences tasting relates to the emerging field of ‘sonic seasoning’. A developing body of research now demonstrates that people often rate tasting experiences differently when listening to soundtracks that have been designed to be (or are chosen because they are) congruent with specific flavour experiences (e.g., when compared to when listening to other soundtracks, or else when tasting in silence). Taken together, such results lead to the growing realization that the crossmodal influences of music and noise on food perception and consumer behaviour may have some important if, as yet, unrecognized implications for public health.

When it comes to eating and drinking, multiple factors from diverse sensory modalities have been shown to influence multisensory flavour perception and liking. These factors have heretofore been strictly divided into either those that are intrinsic to the food itself (e.g., food colour, aroma, texture), or those that are extrinsic to it (e.g., related to the packaging, receptacle or external environment). Given the obvious public health need for sugar reduction, the present review aims to compare the relative influences of product-intrinsic and product-extrinsic factors on the perception of sweetness. Evidence of intrinsic and extrinsic sensory influences on sweetness are reviewed. Thereafter, we take a cognitive neuroscience perspective and evaluate how differences may occur in the way that food-intrinsic and extrinsic information become integrated with sweetness perception. Based on recent neuroscientific evidence, we propose a new framework of multisensory flavour integration focusing not on the food-intrinsic/extrinsic divide, but rather on whether the sensory information is perceived to originate from within or outside the body. This framework leads to a discussion on the combinability of intrinsic and extrinsic influences, where we refer to some existing examples and address potential theoretical limitations. To conclude, we provide recommendations to those in the food industry and propose directions for future research relating to the need for long-term studies and understanding of individual differences.

Background: Shape can play an important role in our perception of food. In this study, the consequences of crossmodal correspondences between shape and taste on the expected and actual experience of eating chocolate were evaluated. Participants were given two identical dark chocolates differing only in terms of their shape (round or angular) and then rated their expectations of sweetness, bitterness, creaminess and liking. Subsequently, they rated their experience of those attributes on tasting the chocolates. Repeated-measures multivariate analyses (RM-MANOVA) of variance were conducted to assess the role of chocolate shape and cacao content on expected and post-taste chocolate ratings. In addition, we assessed the differences between expected and post-taste ratings for each chocolate shape. Results: The results revealed that the shape of the chocolate significantly influenced expected sweetness, bitterness and creaminess. By contrast, it had no significant effect on post-tasting ratings. The round chocolates were judged to be less sweet, more bitter, less creamy and liked less than expected, whereas the angular chocolates were judged to be slightly more creamy than expected. Conclusions: The theory of assimilation and contrast is outlined as one plausible mechanism behind the differences between expectation and the actual taste experience. Implications for food product design and directions for future research are discussed.

Complexity is a term that is often invoked by those writing appreciatively about the taste, aroma/bouquet, and/or flavor of food and drink. Typically, the term is used as though everyone knows what is being talked about. Rarely is any explanation given, and the discussion soon moves on to other topics. However, oftentimes it is not at all clear what, exactly, is being referred to. A number of possibilities are outlined here, including physical complexity at the level of individual molecules, at the level of combinations of molecules giving rise to a specific flavor profile (e.g., as in a glass of quality wine or a cup of specialty coffee), at the level of combinations of distinct ingredients/elements (e.g., as when composing a particularly intricate dish in a high-end restaurant, say, or when pairing food with wine), and/or the number of stimuli/steps involved in the process of creation. Of course, people might also be referring to some aspect of their perceptual experience, and one of the intriguing questions in this space concerns the nature of the relationship(s) between these different ways of conceptualizing complexity in the chemical senses. However, given that physical/chemical and perceived complexity so often diverge, we argue that it is the latter notion, or rather inferred complexity, that is the most relevant when it comes to the chemical senses. Finally, we look at the role of expertise and review the evidence suggesting that inferred complexity can emerge either from a unitary taste experience that is judged to be complex, or from a tasting experience having multiple individuable elements.