g.johnson

That's true (also as far as my limited understanding goes). Sure you need olfaction (and memory and a classification system) to distinguish two dry, tannic wines. But the point I was trying to make was that a super-taster might not like any dry, tannic wines because of his physiology. And how can we say that she's wrong.

There are two flawed assumptions in your argument (not bad – you’re improving). First, you assume, without evidence, that there are no restaurants for super-tasters. I can think of several restaurants where the food seems bland to me. How do you know that those are not the restaurants where the super-tasters congregate? Second, you assume incorrectly that super-tasters find all ‘normal’ food unpleasant. There is no evidence to support that assumption. Indeed the articles I’ve found mention dislike of the same few foods – cabbage, grapefruit, etc. I see no particular difficulty in avoiding those few foods in restaurants.

I'm not sure that's true. The ‘tastes’ that we do perceive from the taste buds -- bitter, sour, salt, sugar, unami -- do color our overall perception of flavor. Thus a super-taster could find a dish that you or I think perfectly balanced overly sweet, say. I think this applies equally well to wine since much of the overall impression is derived from the balance of sweetness, acid (sour) and tannin (bitter). Moreover, if the super-taster has a normal olfactory response it will, presumably, throw out the balance of olfactory and tongue sensations.

Do gay men have better taste than straight men? They have better taste in men.

I don't see that this is obviously false. Why shouldn't variations in physiology result in variations in taste? Even learned responses might become sufficiently hardwired to be irremediable.

Tommy’s right. Performing a really good epidemiological study is next to impossible. The first problem is that relatively few of your study population are going to get cancer during the course of a study of reasonable duration (i.e., less that ten years). Second, the difference in cancer rates between the study and control populations is likely to be small – maybe 2% of vegetarians get cancer during the study and %2.05 of meat eaters. (I find it difficult to believe that there will be a huge difference.) These two factors mean that you have to use a huge study population which makes it difficult to control for cultural factors – you can’t be too picky since you need the bodies.

It's because they become bored to death before the cancer gets them.

My guess is that the vast majority of eGullet contributors are medium tasters. Super-tasters are, by definition, picky eaters and non-tasters probably don’t have much interest in food. However, having learnt that you think Sprite is an appropriate accompaniment to steak, I’m happy to concede that you might be a non-taster.

If I could inject a little objectivity into this discussion (which is no longer about snobbery, but taste), I’d like to bore you all with science derived from this article. Different people have different numbers of taste buds. Those with few taste buds (non-tasters) are much less sensitive to sweetness, bitterness, etc. than those with many taste buds (super-tasters). Super-tasters are highly sensitive and tend to dislike coffee, grapefruit, cabbage (too bitter) and chocolate (too sweet). Super-tasters are not rare but comprise 10% of men and 35% of women. So the position that all educated observers will reach the same conclusions about taste is simply false. It is quite conceivable that a super-taster would find the heirloom tomato preferred by medium tasters like Plotters too sweet. To suggest that the super-taster is wrong would be an absurdity.

(Before frying.)

We also had a pretty lousy meal at AZ last year. But Grimes gave it three stars when it first opened and many who’ve been recently recommend it. It’s possible that it went through a bad patch. (So bad in our case that we have no inclination to go back.) An alternative would be Annisa who also do the asian fusion thing.

Hazan's recipe also uses water. She specifically warns against using stock since she believes it ruins the balance of flavors.

One of the regulars at the pub where I drank in high school was an elderly and harmless schizophrenic who constantly talked to himself. One night I overheard the barmaid ask him what he’d had for supper. “Pig, badger and tomato.” Without missing a beat the barmaid replied, “Oh, your favourite.”

Mrs. Peel. She was married to a pilot, lost in the jungle, whose reappearance was the cause of her retirement if I remember correctly.

I’d feel more confident taking advice on what to drink with steak frites from someone who could spell steak frites. But I’m an intellectual snob.

Snobbery involves ostentation and vulgarity. Having good taste does not make you a snob. Telling everyone about it does.

Remind me where you work again so I can avoid it.

Snob? Moi?

I think it’s the air of ambiguity that makes Wilfrid so dreamy.

Above, I tentatively tried to suggest that the bacteria might be forced into the nooks and crannys of the bird by the processing. Trichinosis is very rare in farmed pigs -- it was only a problem when they were fed on rubbish. Besides, it's killed below 140F, when the meat is still rare. Finally, first you call be a gay scientific bastard, and then you misspell the name of the hospital where I work. BellEvue. And it's not a psychiatric hospital (though it does have a psych ER).

BRIT!

Race traitor.

We had a wonderful amuse of cream cheese flavored with truffle oil at Gordon Ramsay in London. I tried to reproduce this and the result was disappointing because, I think, the truffle oil wasn’t very good. Which raises the question, does anyone have a favorite brand?