What is Taste?
by Gemma Mahadeo
(answer: varying levels of unofficial synaesthesia.)
Let’s try to define ‘taste’ by what it isn’t. The dictionary is a good place to start for this.
1. touch
taste, n. 1¹
forms: ME–tast, ME taast, ME–15 (Scottish–16) taist, (15 Scottish test), ME– taste
etymology: Old French tast touching, touch, = Italian tasto a feeling, a touch, a trial, a taste (Florio); Old French taster (modern French tâter), Italian tastare : see taste v. Compare also Old French taste, Italian tasta, a surgical probe.
I. senses relating to touch or trial
1. The sense of touch, feeling (with the hands, etc.); the act of touching, touch. [Obsolete]
2a. A trying, testing; a trial, test, examination.
b. A trial, an attempt. [Obsolete; rare]
Suggested exercise: How do you relate ‘taste’ and ‘touch’ or ‘trial’? Examples might include licking a textured sole of a brand new pair of shoes or wearing clothing that mimics the feel of your own skin. It could also mean: knitting something out of your pet’s fallen fur or the collection of dead hair picked out from your hairbrush.
II. senses relating to tasting or flavouring
3a. The act of tasting, or perceiving the flavour of a thing with the organ of taste (sense 4); the fact of being tasted. [Obsolete]
b. transferred. The means of tasting; hence, such a small quantity as admits of being tasted; a very small quantity (esp. of alcoholic drink), a sip; spec. (U.S. slang), an alcoholic drink; alcohol
c. figurative. A slight experience, received or given; a slight show or sample of any condition or quality
d. a taste (adverb): colloquial to a small but perceptible degree; slightly; a little.
Suggested exercise: take a vessel made to be drunk from, and fill it with liquid that is not poisonous to ingest. Shabu-shabu: regardless of what the temperature might be, try to drop some into your mouth as if it might sting or burn you. Can you describe to me how this makes you feel?
4a. The faculty of sense by which that particular quality of a thing described in sense is discerned, the organs of which are situated chiefly in the mouth; one of the five bodily senses.
b. out of taste, not able to distinguish flavours.
5a. That quality or property of a body or substance which is perceived when it is brought into contact with certain organs of the mouth, etc., esp. the tongue; savour, sapidity; the particular sensation excited by anything in this manner.
b. Odour, scent, smell. [Obsolete]
c. In figurative phrase a bad (or nasty) taste in the mouth and variants, a lingering feeling of repugnance or disgust left behind by a distasteful or unpleasant experience.
6. Mental perception of quality; judgement, discriminative faculty. [Obsolete except as in sense 8]
7a. The fact or condition of liking or preferring something; inclination, liking for; appreciation.
b. Enjoyment, pleasure, ‘relish’. Const. in, of.
c. transferred. The object of one’s liking or preference.
8a. The sense of what is appropriate, harmonious, or beautiful; esp. discernment and appreciation of the beautiful in nature and art; spec. the faculty of perceiving and enjoying what is excellent in art, literature, and the like.
b. Style or manner exhibiting aesthetic discernment; good or bad aesthetic quality; the style or manner favoured in any age or country.
Suggested exercise: think of things you really, really enjoy, and things you really, really hate. Think of times when you met others whose preferences did not match your own. Did you judge them? Did you feel inferior or superior to them? Explain fully why you had these thoughts.
taste, n. 2²
A kind of narrow thin silk ribbon used for edge-binding: now commonly called taffeta-binding. See also wire n. 1, Compounds 2 - taste
a1889 F. A. P. Barnard in New Haven (Connecticut) Palladium 18 Apr. If...Mrs. S. has any taste she will oblige me by sending me half a yard, no matter of what color, so it be not black.
Author’s note: it reminds me of the tale about the ribbon around a bride’s neck which her husband was not allowed to remove, most recently reworked in ‘The Husband Stitch’ by Carmen Maria Machado³.
taste, v.⁴
forms: ME tasten, (ME tasti, ME tasty, taaste, ME–15 taast, ME–17 tast, ME–16 taist, 15 Scottish test, 16 teast), ME– taste
etymology: Middle English tasten; < Old French tast-er to touch, feel (12th cent.); in 13-14th cent. also to taste, modern French tâter to feel, touch, try, taste = Provençal tastar; Old Spanish tastar; Italian tastare to feel, handle, touch, grope for, try (Florio) < Common Romantic or late popular Latin *tastare; apparently < *taxtāre < *taxitāre; frequentative of taxāre to touch, feel, handle (Gellius, etc.): see tax v.
I. of touch, feeling, or experience generally
1a. transitive. To try, examine, or explore by touch; to feel; to handle. [Obsolete]
b. intransitive. To feel, touch; to grope. [Obsolete]
c. transitive. To come into contact with, to touch.
Author’s note: it is worth pointing out that if you are ‘groping’ someone, it is most likely not consensual. If consent is obtained, is it still ‘groping’? An unobsolete question to an obsolete usage of this word we currently puzzle over.
2a. transitive. To put to the proof; to try, test. [Obsolete]
b. spec.: see quots. 1711 W. Sutherland Ship-builders Assistant 164 Tasting of Plank or Timber, chipping of it with an Addice to try the Defects; 1850 J. Greenwood Sailor’s Sea-bk. 155 Tasting of plank or timber, chipping it with adze, or boring it with a small augur, for the purpose of ascertaining its quality.
c. To attempt, try to do something. [Obsolete. Rare.]
Suggested exercise: make a paper plane out of a sheet of paper, make a miniature book out of another, or make one of those folded fortune-tellers that would now confound the brain forced to forget its creativity. Note down how difficult or easy both actions are for you. Does your plane fly? Where do you cut and fold to get a book? Where do you put which fingers to get your fortune-teller to move like so (cf. opening credits to the television show Community⁵, s1: e2 onwards)
3a. figurative. To have experience or knowledge of; to experience, feel; to have a slight experience of. Often (in later use perhaps always) figurative from 4.
b. To have carnal knowledge of. [Obsolete]
Author’s note: yeah, yeah, it was pretty funny once you started learning about how rude Shakespeare actually was, and how he wasn’t always literal, especially about sexual stuff. The chore of reading a Shakespeare play for high school English, mixed in with the thick of puberty, trying to understand how this foreign early modern English had anything to do with anything...’til you realised it had a lot to do with ‘existence’.
II. of the special sense that resides in the tongue and palate
4a. transitive. To perceive by the sense of taste; to perceive or experience the taste or flavour of.
b. figurative. To perceive or recognize as by the sense of taste. [Obsolete]
c. absol. or intransitive. To experience or distinguish flavours; to have or exercise the sense of taste.
5. transferred (transitive) To perceive by some other sense, esp. smell. Now only poetic or dialect.
6a. To try the flavour or quality of by the sense of taste; to put a small quantity of (something) into the mouth in order to ascertain the flavour, etc., spec. to test the quality of by tasting, for trade purposes. Also absol.
b. intransitive with of: see 12a.
c. spec. (transitive) To test or certify the wholesomeness of (food provided) by tasting it; also absol. to act as taster to a person. Also figurative.
d. figurative. To make trial of as by the sense of taste; to try the quality of. Also with object clause, and absol. or intransitive. Cf. sense 2
7a. To have or take a taste of (food or drink); to take only as much as is sufficient to try or perceive the taste of, to eat or drink a little; but often by meiosis, simply for ‘eat’ or ‘drink’. Negatively, not to taste = not even to taste, not to eat or drink at all. Also figurative to get a ‘taste’ of.
b. absol. or intransitive. Elliptical for ‘taste wine or alcoholic drink’; to take a little drink. (Scottish)
8. To like the taste of (usually figurative); to relish, approve of, enjoy, like, take pleasure in; in earlier use something in neutral sense: to appreciate. Now archaic or dialect.
9a. intransitive. Of a substance: To have a taste of a specified or implied kind; to produce a certain taste in the mouth; to have a taste or flavour of.
b. figurative. To produce a particular effect upon the mind or feelings; to partake of the nature, character, or quality of; to savour of.
c. transitive. To savour of. Scottish. [Obsolete]
10. To cause a pleasant taste in (the mouth); to affect (the palate) agreeably; hence figurative to please, suit, be agreeable to. [Originally intransitive with dative object; in quot. 1672 with to. Obsolete] 1672 A. Marvell Rehearsal Transpros’d i. 184 Nothing less will taste to your palate.
11. To impart a taste or flavour to; to flavour; also figurative. Now rare.
12. to taste of; (a construction used in several senses, sometimes simply = taste, sometimes = take a taste of, eat or drink a little of). So to taste on (now dialect), to taste to [obsolete]. In some cases, perhaps a literalism of translation (not found in the Vulgate, Wyclif, or Rhemish New Testament) but see of prep 39c. and cf. take a taste of.
a. To make trial of by tasting, to try the taste of; = 6. Also figurative. [Archaic]
b. To eat or drink only a little of; with negative, not to eat or drink at all; =7. Also figurative.
c. To have experience or knowledge of; to feel, experience; = 3.
d. = 3b. Obsolete. 1607 T. Middleton Revengers Trag. ii. sig. D4^v I do embrace this season for the fittest To tast of that yong Lady.
Author’s note: I know it is expected of me as an Indo-Guyanese, Filipinx-Spanish person who appears yellow-brown to present ‘my culture’ on a plate, in the form of an ‘authentic’ recipe, the ‘gross’ things we consume that westerners do not.⁶
2. smell
An aid for insomnia—a fragrance oil by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab called Stinky. Its official description:
A cure for sweaty bits and sticky wilting. Stinky is a summer refresher foom [sic] for people that don’t dig run-of-the-mill ‘clean’ scents: newly-washed skin with a dusting of milk, white honey, and baby powder.
A small 5mL bottle whose scent I find soporific as I dab it on my inner wrists, recalling Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder, and how talc is a carcinogen. Yet one cannot survive childhood in a humid country without such powder.
3. sight
This German Shepherd mug in the hospital—clearly not standard issue. I text a friend whom I trust to talk to about the acuteness of my mental illnesses. I keep telling him how daggy and how ugly this mug is, and about whether or not I should steal it. At this stage, I’m still afraid of dogs, especially dogs that look like the one on the mug. It looks happy, but I often mistake what looks like a happy dog for an angry one.
It’s clearly a badly-printed transfer of someone’s pet onto a mug. I don’t even steal from the hospital library: I do take books I like, or want to read, but I always replace them with books I’ve already read that sit unwanted at home.
The mug eventually disappears. I lament not having taken it. The dog on the mug looks like the dog on the label of my ‘Stinky’ fragrance oil. I eventually end up becoming the owner of a generic cat mug, with the same low-quality graphic—another stock photograph—long after the ‘Stinky’ mug disappears. Someone smarter than me seems to have taken it.
4.sound⁷
(in memoriam John-Paul D’Amico)
The reader is recommended to listen to the music links as they come up for 3 minutes. depending on how long the text is within the hyperlink.
depression is an existence for the habitual sufferer of what is known as (mental illness) morning lows can be avoided if you take a route straight through what is known as (breakfast) they’ve got non-baby blues, they’re not intimidated by their dirty
body they love a bit of life (shower) who's that $dollar sign$ marching? you should cut down on your party life mate, get some exercise all these people (so many people) we all go hand in hand foot-in-mouth through their what life? know what I mean? I get up when I want except on everydays when I get brutally awakened by the renovators (class life) put on my trousers, have three cups of tea think about leaving the house (fight-flight) feed my pussy sometimes feed myself too it gives others a sense of enormous well-being (show-(h)er) then dissociate for the rest of the day safe in the knowledge there will always be a bit of my head devoted to surviving (take meds) all these quibbles so many quibbles they all go hand in hand through what is known as co-morbidity know what I mean? know what it means? it's got everything to do with one’s vorsprung durch technik ya know (fuck life) it's not about you joggers who breathe round and round and round (fit life) all these quotidian ac-ti-vi-ties so many of them go hand in hand should go to ‘functioning’ (ouch, life.) all these symptoms, so ma-ny symptoms & they all go [aujourd’hui
(ʰᵉʳᵉ)?⁸
5. taste
dad coming home from work
me in forest backyard
(happy as a clam...sigh)
gives me a piece of his birthplace to chew
like it’s precious
(it is)
i take this green-yellow stub
analogue rock candy w/o placename
running down its core
it remains nameless as i chew through
(indentured labour)
fibrous sugar cane, far far from home
(where is)
hint/s: your grandfather, he woz a cayne cutta, in da fields
(sorry dad my tongue butchers your music)
do i have to go there to try ‘firewater’
*
Sir Philip Sidney said
‘A place cunninglie set
with trees of the moste
tast-pleasing fruits’
in his Arcadia, unknowingly
describing the perfect fresh mangga
fuck the blandness of english
rubbery meat ‘n’ two overboiled veg:
litson-lechon...during Fiesta get over yourselves
if you think filipino cuisine is day-goo-las-suh
yes you, foreigner, who scrunches up face
this is how i translate that french word:
brush up on your history.
the food came from the Spanish
other scents, textures mingle & get tangled
in the body’s hard drive;
charred corn cobs, marinated bbq chicken skewers
ube embodies everything purple though all those
cishet white male eyes see is sexsexsex
the female fruit is not worshipped satisfactorily
by those who consume it;
what gender be jackfruit, starfruit, papaya, ampalaya?
a country fond of gender policing surely should know.
*
agony is bland savoury beef mince rice,
pushing green peas littered throughout
with disinterested fork, my poor brother
he can’t leave the dining table till he
finishes! that! meal!
he’ll “never walk alone” at that table (while i exist).
i smuggle tissues from godknowswhere,
scoop gentle spoonfuls & wrap up carefully
tucking little food babies under carpet
of a house doomed to whichever motorway
late 1980s south-east London is planning now
no one will smell it go off
if the house is being turned to flavourless chalk
(my god, the trouble i’ll get in if caught
she can’t smell the rot down under
?
engloutir sounds like the action)
*
assimilation tastes like
politicians policing proficiency
(the alliteration is not intentional)
in a language that does not even
belong on this here ‘sunburnt country’⁹:
beg to buy all those aeroplane jelly flavours
that sound deliciously alien to your curiosity
the ones the white folks probably didn’t even
bother to try for some anniversary they made up
an eight-year-old tongue wanting to try
tantalisingly tinted, gluey water in
lil-ly pil-ly, quan-dong, mid-jin-ber-ry;
all good as long as none of the
dangerous creepy crawlies
bite us; you get older it gets harder
to distinguish whatwherewhen the threat really is
baigan emoticons = male fecundity? what are they insin–
you turn off the news to shut out the screeching
of those pretending to act in society’s best interest
(who ever asked them)
it’s trendy now, in cuisine to crave bush tucker
you can get it in non-alcoholic beer, no joke:
stay sobahᶦᵒ with finger lime, pepperberry, lemon aspen;
over two hundred years ago, them first we should have
murderers
we should have asked them who knew best first so so many
murderers
so much knowledge better than ours we should have asked
murderers
not taken we should have asked all them who were here first
you bloody mur-de-rers.
¹ "taste, n.1.", OED Online. oed.com/view/Entry/198050
² "taste, n.2.”, OED Online. oed.com/view/Entry/198051
³ Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body & Other Parties, Serpent’s Tail, London: 2017.
⁴ "taste, v." OED Online. oed.com/view/Entry/198052.
⁵ Dan Harmon (creator), Community. Television serial, 2009-2015.
⁶ cf. ‘5. ‘Taste’ section of this piece.
⁷ This poem is a remix of the song lyrics of ‘Parklife’ by Blur, from the music album Parklife (Food Records, 1994).
⁸ The full playlist for this piece can be found on Spotify here.
⁹cf. Dorothea Mackellar, ‘My Country’, first published in England as ‘Core of My Heart’, London Spectator Magazine, 1908.
ᶦᵒcf. Sobah Beverages, created by Gamilaroi man and psychologist Clinton Schulz, based in Yugambeh country.
Gemma Mahadeo is a Melbourne-based writer and occasional musician who came to Australia in 1987. Their work has appeared in various online and print publications nationally. They’re currently poetry editor for Concrete Queers zine, and reviews editor for Melbourne Spoken Word. You can find them at eatdrinkstagger.com, or on Twitter as @snarkattack.
