Taste Experiments

Taste and smell instead of dicing and driving

Children can smell and taste very well. You can also use it playfully at the family table.

"Mom, this trout tastes like sea water, like oyster," said our son at the table the other day. In fact: The trout from organic farming was fresh from the pot, but the taste was much more intense than you would normally expect from this fish.

Again and again we find that our six-year-old's sense of taste is pronounced. We have long since made a game of it. So on a Sunday morning we like to taste three teas side by side - whereby the smell of Pu-Erh is described in the words of the son something like: "Smells like hay with dirt." Nevertheless, he drinks it and he even likes it. Incidentally, we can understand his association, because in the nose Pu-Erh, the fermented tea from Asia, can actually smell very strongly.

With scents and flavors, you can play real games at the family table that are at least as exciting as a match-four or annoying you. And in terms of sensor technology, children even have a valid chance to score against adults. Sensing scientist Christine Brugger from Aromareich.ch explains: "Interestingly, children are visually less stressed and can therefore often recognize fragrances and aromas very well, regardless of the forms presented." It tells of a test in which candies with “wrong” colors were given to children. Brugger: "It was crazy how well children recognized the flavors, even if a berry candy was yellow and not red."

Give it a try. For example, we occasionally use the wine aroma fragrance set to test our nose. We then try, together with the son, to find out which bottle now smells of cassis, which smells of blackberry and which smells of tar. According to Christine Brugger, however, natural aroma carriers are almost even more ideal for such sensor games. For example, you can put spices in a mug and cover it and then smell it. Or you can start very simply and just blindly taste two apples of different varieties.

However: With free associations to the smell and taste of a food, the children can have a small disadvantage. Christine Brugger: "An important element in sensor technology is the vocabulary, which of course is more or less pronounced depending on the age and care of the eating language in the parents' house."