One of the lesser enigmas of life is why so many people order tomato juice on aeroplanes. Like Pavlov’s dog, I often start craving it myself the minute I do my seatbelt up. Lemon, Worcester sauce, no ice (which I find dilutes the salty thickness too much).
In the general run of things, few of us sip tomato juice for breakfast or as an aperitif, yet this savoury beverage forms 27% of all drinks orders on planes, with or without added vodka. According to one survey of more than 1,000 passengers, nearly a quarter of people will choose tomato juice when flying, even though they never drink it under other circumstances. This is exactly the kind of puzzle that interests Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology. In Gastrophysics, Spence notes that the “really special thing about tomato juice and Worcester sauce (both ingredients in a good bloody mary) is umami, the proteinaceous taste”. When Spence and colleagues investigated, they found that the blaring sound of being on an aeroplane – around 80-85 decibels of background noise – interferes with our ability to taste sweetness. That gin-and-tonic which tastes so sweet back on land is dulled in the air. By contrast, the noise actually increases our perception of the intensity of savoury umami flavours such as tomato juice. As we merrily ask the flight attendant to pour us a bloody mary, we have little notion that we may be driven to do so by what is happening to our ears as much as to our mouths.
One study found that people enjoyed a cup of coffee less if the coffee machine emits a horrible high-pitched noise
'Patagonian toothfish' may not sound appetising, but the same repackaged as 'Chilean seabass' is suavely aspirational
Continue reading...