Spoon fed: how cutlery affects your food
So you’re having friends
for dinner. You’ve worked out a delicious menu, paying careful attention
to the colours and flavours of the dishes. Perhaps you’ve even thought
about music and lighting. But did you remember to consider the flavour
of your cutlery?
Dr Zoe Laughlin and Professor Mark Miodownik, co-directors of the
Institute of Making at University College London, think you should. They
and their colleagues have conducted a series of scientific experiments
into the way spoons coated in different metals affect the tastes of
food. And recently, they held their first spoon-tasting dinner, an event
attended by materials scientists, psychologists and culinary luminaries
such as Heston Blumenthal and Harold McGee, who had flown over from the
US for the occasion.In a private room at Quilon, the Michelin-starred restaurant in London, guests tried seven courses of delicately spiced southwest Indian food with seven different, freshly polished spoons: copper, gold, silver, tin, zinc, chrome and stainless steel. The base of each spoon was engraved with the periodic table symbol of the element with which it was plated.
Laughlin and Miodownik are materials scientists who wanted to find out how identically-shaped objects such as cubes and bells behaved when they were made from different materials. Curiosity about how the materials might taste grew from this work. “It seemed obvious to do this with something that people felt comfortable putting into their mouths, which is why we ended up with spoons,” says Miodownik.
Laughlin, who is an artist as well as a scientist, designed the spoons and had them electroplated with metals that were – if not exactly edible – at least non-toxic, and essential, in trace quantities, for human health. She and her colleagues ran experiments in which human guinea pigs were blindfolded and given spoons to suck – on their own, and filled with simply-flavoured creams. What they found was that their subjects could distinguish between the flavours of the different spoons, and that the metals affected the perceived bitterness, sweetness and pleasantness of the creams.
After three years of research, they unleashed the spoons on this complex Indian dinner, served with a flight of seven beers. The sight of 15 adults sucking their spoons like babies was an unusual start to a dinner party, but they had surprisingly different flavours. Copper and zinc were bold and assertive, with bitter, metallic tastes; the copper spoons even smelt metallic as they gently oxidised in the air. The silver spoon, despite its beauty, tasted dull in comparison, while the stainless steel had a faintly metallic flavour that is normally overlooked. As Miodownik pointed out, we were not just tasting the spoons but actually eating them, because with each lick we were consuming “perhaps a hundred billion atoms”.
When the spoons were tasted with food, there were some surprising revelations. Baked black cod with zinc was as unpleasant as a fingernail scraped down a blackboard, and grapefruit with copper was lip-puckeringly nasty. But both metals struck a lovely, wild chord with a mango relish, their loud, metallic tastes somehow harmonised by its sweet-sour flavour. (“With sour foods, like mango and tamarind, you really are tasting the metal,” says Laughlin, “because the acid strips off a little of the surface.”) Tin turned out to be a popular match for pistachio curry. And Laughlin sang the praises of gold as a spoon for sweet things: “Gold has a smooth, almost creamy quality, and a quality of absence – because it doesn’t taste metallic.”
The idea of a meal as a multi-sensory experience is nothing new; what is recent is the science that’s illuminating the complexity of our perceptions. Professor Charles Spence of the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, another member of the spoon research group, has shown how playing crunchy, crackly sounds to people eating crisps makes them taste crisper, and that increasing the weight of spoons makes the food they carry taste better, sweeter and more filling.
So, might chefs one day consider the taste of their cutlery as part of the flavour of a dish? Heston Blumenthal has been known to serve edible cutlery made of chocolate dusted with silver. “I can imagine a spoon being part of a dish,” he says. “I’ve been surprised at the range of metal flavours we’ve tasted, and at the way some sit quite well with certain sour notes in food, like the zinc and copper with mango. I’ve always been sensitive to metallic tastes and had thought of the cutlery as interfering with the food; but here, the metallic note can, with some flavours, be more enjoyable than otherwise.”
Although the evening was thought-provoking, I didn’t feel the spoons added much to what was, in itself, a marvellous dinner. The sweet-peppery prawns were perfectly balanced, and did not require an astringent lick of copper, or even a smear of gold. By the end of the second course my tongue was beginning to taste as though it had been electroplated with metal. And even if eating honey ice cream with a golden spoon had an air of magic about it, I’m not sure I’ll be hurrying to plate my own spoons in gold.
Still, Laughlin and Miodownik hope eventually to produce a set of spoons designed, for example, for stirring coffee or eating crème caramel, and accompanied by tasting notes and recipes. “It would be a kind of spoon piano,” says Laughlin, “to play the food and make your own music.”
For more information on the Institute of Making, visit www.instituteofmaking.org.uk
Quilon: www.quilon.co.uk
金屬餐具左右美味！作者：英國《金融時報》 扶霞•鄧洛普
您做東請朋友吃飯，絞盡腦汁準備了一桌美味佳餚，對菜的色香味也費盡心思，甚至還考慮了佐餐的音樂與燈光效果，但您是否考慮過餐具的滋味？
佐伊•羅克林博士(Zoe Laughlin)與馬克•麥道尼克教授(Mark Miodownik)是倫敦大學學院(University College London)材料學院的聯合院長。他們與同事進行了一系列的科學試驗，研究塗抹不同金屬材料的勺子如何影響食物的味道。前一陣子，他們舉行了首場品味勺子晚宴，邀請了材料科學家、心理學家、廚藝大師赫斯頓•布盧門撒爾(Heston Blumenthal)與哈羅德•麥吉(Harold McGee)等嘉賓參加，後兩人還是專程從美國坐飛機趕赴現場。
在倫敦米其林星級餐館奎隆(Quilon)的包間裡，嘉賓們用七把擦得鋥亮的勺子（銅、金、銀、錫、鋅、鉻以及不銹鋼）品嚐了印度西南地區七道美味佳餚：每把塗抹金屬的勺子底部刻有其對應的元素週期表符號。
羅克林與麥道尼克兩人是材料科學家，他們想搞明白的是：不同材料製作的外形一模一樣的物體（如立方體與球體），究竟有何不同特性。對各種金屬材質的勺子究竟有何不同口感的好奇也是源於這項研究。
羅克林既是位科學家，也是位藝術家，他設計了勺子款式，並鍍上了相應的金屬（即便不能食用，至少也得無毒，而且攝入少許對人體還有益處）。她與同事進行了試驗：給實驗者（就像豚鼠一樣）蒙上雙眼，然後讓他們舔勺子（單獨做，而且勺子裡是各種單一口味的奶油）。實驗表明實驗者能夠分辨出不同勺子的滋味，而且塗抹的金屬影響了奶油原有的苦味、甜味和味覺的愉悅感。
經過三年的研究，他們決定在花樣繁多的印度大餐上試驗塗抹金屬材料的勺子，並依次端上七杯啤酒。看著15位成年人像嬰兒一樣吮吸著勺子，這樣的晚宴開場場面頗為壯觀，但出人意料的是，勺子的滋味各不相同。銅勺與鋅勺的味道厚重些，略帶一絲金屬苦味；銅勺由於在空氣中略微氧化，所以聞上去甚至有股金屬味。銀勺儘管好看，但索然無味，而不銹鋼勺有一絲淡淡常遭忽視的金屬味。正如麥道尼克所言：我們不僅僅是在嘗勺子，而是在吃金屬，因為每舔舐一次，很可能就吃進去了“幾千億個金屬原子”。
用勺子吃食物時，往往會有一些意想不到的發現。用鋅匙吃烤黑鱈魚就像用指甲刮黑板一樣使人生厭，用銅勺吃柚子令人咂舌，使人噁心。但用這兩種金屬勺吃芒果風味的食物時會有一種盡在不言中的美妙感，它們厚重的金屬味能被芒果的酸甜味所中和。 （“吃芒果與羅望子這種酸東西時，您就像在品嚐金屬，”羅克林說，“因為酸能置換出一點表面塗抹的金屬。”）用錫勺吃黃咖哩再合適不過了。羅克林對用金勺吃甜食贊不絕口：“黃金表面光滑、有種綿密柔順的感覺，而且不會串味——因為它嘗起來並無金屬味。”
通過用餐來品味多種口感的實驗想法由來已久；新的只是用來說明我們感覺能力複雜的科學道理。牛 津大學實驗心理學系(Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University)教授查爾斯•思彭斯(Charles Spence)是研究小組的成員，他演示了給正享用脆食的人發出嘎吱嘎吱的易碎聲音時，會讓感覺食物更脆，而且增加勺子重量會感覺吃的東西味道更好、更甜、更有飽足感。
因此，是否廚師們有朝一日會把餐具的滋味算作菜餚風味的一部分？赫斯頓•布盧門撒爾以製作可食性餐具著稱，該餐具由巧克力做成，並在表面灑了銀末。 “我能想像勺子成為菜餚一部分會有什麼結果，”他說。 “本人沒想到的是：我們可以品嚐出來那麼多味道的金屬，而且有些與食物中的酸味交相輝映，比如用鋅勺與銅勺吃芒果。本人一直對金屬味很敏感，原以為有味的餐具會破壞佳餚的美味；但這次品勺晚宴，用有味的金屬勺享用各種美味佳餚，真是妙不可言。”
雖說晚宴是有目的而來，但我並不覺得勺子會給這頓本身就無與倫比的晚宴添色多少。甜辣對蝦味道恰到好處，根本無需銅勺的澀味助陣，更無需勞金勺之大駕。吃完第二道菜後，我的舌頭感覺就像被鍍了一層金屬似的。即便用金勺吃蜂蜜冰淇淋感覺恍如隔世，但我肯定也不會心急火燎地用黃金去鍍自家的勺子。
即便如此，羅克林與麥道尼克仍希望最後能專門製作一套勺子，如專門用來攪咖啡與吃奶油焦糖，並伴之以品味美酒與佳餚。 “這就好比一架勺子做的鋼琴，”羅克林說，“用它們來享用美食，並演奏出一曲交相輝映的華美樂章。”
欲知烹飪學院更多詳情，請瀏覽以下網址：www.instituteofmaking.org.uk。
奎隆餐廳網址：www.quilon.co.uk。
譯者：常和
