Flavor Science: What's Really in a Pumpkin Spice Latte
If you take a look at an ingredients list, odds are you'll find natural and artificial flavors somewhere in there. Turns out there's a whole science to making your pumpkin spice latte taste...
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There is much more to a pumpkin spice latte than meets the eye. Or, rather, more than what you think is meeting your tongue! Say you take a big swig of a pumpkin-pie-flavored drink. The drink hits your tongue, and flows over your papillae, the little bumps where your taste buds live. Within each taste bud, special receptor cells bind with the compounds in the drink and send taste information to your brain. Meanwhile, the scent of the latte travels up your nose, where more receptor cells -- this time for smells -- tell your brain which chemicals they detect. Those signals, plus other information like the color and texture of your drink, combine to form what your brain interprets as the taste of pumpkin pie in delicious liquid form. But you haven’t actuall...
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There is much more to a pumpkin spice latte than meets the eye. Or, rather, more than what you think is meeting your tongue! Say you take a big swig of a pumpkin-pie-flavored drink. The drink hits your tongue, and flows over your papillae, the little bumps where your taste buds live. Within each taste bud, special receptor cells bind with the compounds in the drink and send taste information to your brain. Meanwhile, the scent of the latte travels up your nose, where more receptor cells -- this time for smells -- tell your brain which chemicals they detect. Those signals, plus other information like the color and texture of your drink, combine to form what your brain interprets as the taste of pumpkin pie in delicious liquid form. But you haven’t actuall...
