Colour–taste correspondences: Designing food experiences to meet expectations or to surprise

Abstract

Recent research demonstrates the existence of a number of surprising associations (otherwise known as crossmodal correspondences) between seemingly non-related features in different sensory modalities, such as between basic tastes and colours. These correspondences have been incorporated into a dish called ‘The Four Tastes’ by chef Jozef Youssef. The dish is presented with four separate elements, each having a distinctive colour. Diners are instructed to match the colour to the appropriate taste (bitter, sweet, salty and sour). After establishing the association, the modernist chef, molecular mixologist, food designer or culinary artist can then either choose to design tasting experiences that align with these crossmodal correspondences or else play against them (to create incongruency and surprise). The former strategy typically leads to increased liking, possibly as a result of the diner being able to process the sensory information more fluently. The latter, by contrast, can elicit disconfirmed expectations, which can result in positive or negative experiences. While surprise is something that a growing number of diners are coming to expect when they visit a modernist restaurant, it tends to be a much harder approach to implement successfully in other contexts. Here, we present the literature on colour/taste correspondences, and discuss the implications of crossmodal (in)congruence in food design.

Towards Multisensory Storytelling with Taste and Flavor

“…49]. Here, the storytelling may be based on the incorporation of multiple courses and audio-visual scenes, based on semantic congruency (e.g., food and scene representing similar identities or meanings, e.g., [31,50], that convey a specific short story. Similarly, though perhaps somewhat more difficult to scale up, MetaCookie, a system that integrates vision, olfaction, and food might provide further inspiration [38].…”

“…Independently of the approach one pursues, the incorporation of multisensory inputs in new media experiences should be based on the principles that govern the systematic connections that exist between the senses [26,50]. Designing new experiences is not an easy task, in particular given the challenges associated with synchronizing and meaningfully mapping audio-visual with chemosensory (e.g., taste and smell) or multisensory (e.g., food) contents.…”

Magic on the Menu: Where Are All the Magical Food and Beverage Experiences?

“…Just take The Roca Brothers white-coloured dark-chocolate ice-cream, or Heston Blumenthal's Beetroot and Orange Jelly, for the playful/surprising disconnect between the colour or visual appearance and flavour in a dish. However, it is worth pointing out here that disconfirmed expectation, at least as far as flavour is concerned, is challenging to pull off successfully without giving rise to a negatively-valenced 'disconfirmation of expectation' response [68][69][70][71].…”

Pairing flavours and the temporal order of tasting

“…On the one hand, one hears those working on the system suggesting that: "…we have developed a computational creativity system that can automatically or semi-automatically design and discover culinary recipes that are flavourful, novel, and perhaps healthy." (Varshney et al [65,94], p. 14). On the other hand, however, those who have tried Watson's bartending skills have not always been that impressed [95].…”