The Best Taste Buds make the Best Cooks?

One of my best films is RATATOUILLE. 'Why should a full grown woman with grey hairs like cartoons' you may ask, but for me life is about the message not the medium. In my journey through life in the kitchen, there are two things I have discovered about good cooks; they either love food or have wonderful taste buds, could actually be both. Take the best cook in my home for instance, he'll always say "Mummy, I love food", and true to his words, when he has finished concocting a menu from my stew and soup pots I am almost tempted to ask him to share with me.

Taste buds contain the receptors for taste. They are located around the small structures on the upper surface of the tongue, soft palate, upper oesophagus and epiglottis, which are called papillae. These structures are involved in detecting the five (known) elements of taste perception: salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and umami. Via small openings in the tongue epithelium, called taste pores, parts of the food dissolved in saliva come into contact with taste receptors. Olfaction or olfactory perception is the sense of smell. In humans, olfaction occurs when odourant molecules bind to specific sites on the olfactory receptors which are used to detect the presence of smell. Olfaction, taste and trigeminal receptors (also called Chemesthesis) together contribute to flavor. The human tongue can distinguish only among five distinct qualities of taste, while the nose can distinguish among hundreds of substances, even in minute quantities. It is during exhalation that the olfaction contribution to flavor occurs, in contrast to that of proper smell, which occurs during the inhalation phase (wikipedia).

From the information above, we cannot over emphasise the use of the tongue and nose in our culinary abilities. Basically without them we would not be able to differentiate our herbs, spices and even salt. If you have a problem with either of the senses go get tested, we would not want to 'oversalt' or 'underflavour' our food now would we? 

Cheers!