It’s basic biology that through taste receptors, a person can
taste four flavors:
sweet, sour, salty and bitter. However, the average person can
distinguish up to 10,000
smells. We’re not quite as good as the bloodhound, which can
detect more than 400,000
smells. But we do all right.

Just out of my office last spring was a bank of native
azaleas — yellows and oranges,
pinks and whites. Every time I went out I just had to go by and
enjoy the fragrance. Just
down the way are several giant magnolias. Since I was a kid,
magnolias have drawn me. I
just can’t pass them up without getting my nose yellowed.

In horticulture, we try to enhance the quality of life by
giving people fruits, flowers
and vegetables for consumption and beauty. Fragrance is often a
part of that pleasure.
Horticultural fragrance enters the picture in many ways.
Fragrance’s interaction with
taste is one of the most delightful.

Smell How Good It Will
Taste

We look at a fresh, ripe peach and can just taste how good it
is by the fragrance it
gives off. We brush by a rosemary bush, and it reminds our taste
buds of savory lamb or
pork, just out of the pan and juicy. I ask kids if they like
basil, if they like the
smell, if they’d eat it. Usually the answer is no. But their
response changes when I tell
them they often eat it on pizza.

We say the first tomato of the season tastes great, though
many people put on salt or
other seasonings, which become the dominant taste.

Exploding
Fragrance

As we taste that first tomato, we’re tasting the sweetness of
the sugars (yes, it does
have sugars) and the sour part from the acidity. But most of what
we “taste” is
the fragrance that explodes inside the mouth when we bite into
the fruit. Taste and
fragrance or smell combine to give us the entire experience of
eating that first great
tomato.

Now, if you add basil leaves under that tomato with mozzarella
cheese on top and place
it all on wonderful Italian bread that has been rubbed with olive
oil and garlic and then
toasted — that gives you all the taste and fragrances you can
stand or will need for a
while.