Other than taste, savor, and flavor, few words name gustatory sensations directly. Certain words do distinguish among types of tastes—sweet (saccharine, sugary, cloying); sour (acidic, tart); bitter (acrid, biting); salty (briny, brackish)—and several other words describe specific tastes (piquant, spicy, pungent, peppery, savory, toothsome).
In the following passage, M. F. K. Fisher describes the surprisingly “delicious” taste of tar:
Tar with some dust in it was perhaps even more delicious than dirty chips from the iceman’s wagon, largely because if we worked up enough body heat and had the right amount of spit we could keep it melted so that it acted almost like chewing gum, which was forbidden to us as vulgar and bad for the teeth and in general to be shunned. Tar was better than anything ever put out by Wrigley and Beechnut, anyway. It had a high, bright taste. It tasted the way it smelled, but better.
—M. F. K. FISHER, “Prejudice, Hate, and the First World War”
Fisher uses suggestive words not typically associated with taste.
Fisher tries to evoke the sense of taste by comparing tar that acted like chewing gum to actual Wrigley and Beechnut chewing gum. More surprisingly, she compares the taste of tar to its smell.
Ernest Hemingway, in a more conventional passage, tries to describe taste primarily by naming the foods he consumed and giving details that indicate the intensity and quality of the tastes:
As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY, A Moveable Feast
Hemingway combines taste and touch (the feel of the food in his mouth).
Writers often use words like juicy, chewy, and chunky to evoke both the taste and the feel of food in the mouth.
In the manner of Hemingway, take notes as you eat a particular food or an entire meal. Then write a few sentences describing the tastes you experienced.
Turn to John T. Edge’s “I’m Not Leaving Until I Eat This Thing” in Chapter 3 (pp. 69–71), an essay about pickled pig’s lips. Read paragraphs 7 and 18, underlining any language that describes or suggests the sense of taste. How well does this sensory description help you participate in the writer’s experience?