Various research over the years have claimed that music can influence our perceptions of taste and that’s the idea Sneha wants to play with at her workshop this Sunday at the Indian Cacao and Craft Chocolate Festival happening in the city.
“The basic idea is to have fun, get chocolate lovers to taste different types of chocolate while different kinds of music play in the background. Here, the music is acting as a stimulus for the participants to see what flavour gets more pronounced based on the musical notes that they are listening to,” shares Sneha, who is also a DJ.
She adds, “I have worked with music quite a lot and have experimented its effect on our emotions and general perception of things. In terms of food, I work with recipes, tasting etc…but here, for the first time I’m merging both the concepts.”
The sound of music…and chocolate
When Sneha came across the idea for the first time, she looked it up online and familiarised herself with the studies before trying out various kinds of food while playing classical music in the background.
“Music can change your perception of what you eat, not specifically chocolate, but food in general. Restaurants abroad tune their music to suit the ambience and also to accentuate the flavours of the food that they are serving. Another simple example is that of airline food. The food that’s served in flights tastes bland to us even though it may be flavourful on ground. And that happens because of the white noise. We may not actually hear the noise but the frequencies that get through our ears affect the way our palette perceives taste. As a result, one might not be able to catch all the flavours.”
At the interactive session lasting 30 minutes, participants will be served with different kinds of unnamed chocolate without mentioning what any of those tastes like. They will be asked to taste them while different kinds of tracks are played in the background after which the participants will note down whether it tasted sweet, umami or bitter. The results will be compared to see if everyone felt the same way and if not, how it turned out to be different.
We ask Shena what music she will be playing and how it will impact the taste, and she shares, “I’ll be playing some jazz, some band music, mostly tracks that are on the classical front, but definitely not something that you would hear in a club. I wouldn’t want to reveal how and which flavours will be enhanced as it would spoil it for those attending.”