News Lifestyle Why the Color of Your Mug Can Make Your Coffee Taste Better Brunch just got a little bit more interesting. By Merlyn Miller Merlyn Miller Title: Social Media Editor, Food & WineLocation: New York, New YorkEducation: Merlyn graduated with a bachelor's in anthropology from Cornell University. While at Cornell, she centered her studies on the role that food plays in human culture and archaeology.Expertise: sustainable food systems, food history, Southern and Cajun cuisines, food media trends.Merlyn Miller is a social media editor and writer with a love for the ever-changing modern food culture. She curates visual directions for social media, identifies topics and content that appeal to a brand's audience, and follows new trends in food media.Experience: Merlyn Miller began her tenure in food media by working with Mold, a publication about the future of food. She developed a social media strategy for Mold, wrote about food design and sustainability, and edited the work of others. After her stint there, Merlyn moved over to Cook Space Brooklyn, a cooking studio that hosted recreational cooking classes. She was responsible for keeping tabs on food trends, managing the brand's Instagram, and curating classes for students. Merlyn subsequently worked with cast iron cookware brand Field Company, where she managed the company's social media accounts, wrote about cast iron care, and even developed a few recipes. Food & Wine's Editorial Guidelines Published on August 8, 2023 Trending Videos Photo: Grace Cary / Getty Images If you’re like me, then you center your life around food. I think about my next meal, what I’m going to cook this weekend, or what restaurant dishes I want to try almost twenty-four seven, and the end goal of it all is just to taste something good. Of course, there are other parts of eating and drinking that are wonderful — you can create memories with friends, admire the impeccable interior design of a particular establishment, or get tipsy and text an ex from the bathroom. But at the center of it all, is taste, which is why it’s worth asking: If you could change the way you taste and find new pathways to appreciate what’s on your plate, wouldn’t you want to? In her new book How To Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life, Mandy Naglich breaks down what taste is, and how you can fine tune your tasting abilities. With certifications in beer, wine, and cheese tasting, Naglich is (literally) an expert on identifying flavors and describing what she detects on her palate. Her recent release draws on this expertise, thorough research aided by her background as a journalist, and interviews with everyone from scientists to sommeliers to decode pretty much everything about taste. Naglich’s goal with How to Taste is to help you become a more active taster, someone who thinks about the way they savor anything on their tongue. Read on to find a few fascinating tidbits I learned about the factors that underlie how we taste, and where they can be applied to your regular life. How to Taste Wine Like a Pro Coffee tastes better if you sip it from a green mug The number one takeaway you’ll find from Naglich’s book is that the way something tastes to you isn’t just dependent on what’s physically on your tongue. Taste is multisensory; What you touch, see, smell, and hear can all impact the flavor you perceive. This means that the colors used for wallpaper, interior decor, plateware, and more can all help shape taste. Studies on the associations between color and taste reveal that people tend to link certain colors with certain flavors; For example, red is usually connected with sweetness, while green is considered more sour. Although sourness isn’t an attribute we necessarily seek in many foods, it is a large part of what gives coffee its flavor and depth. So, if you drink coffee from a green mug, you might perceive it to be more complex and sour, and it might taste better to you. Your mucus is the secret to making sure everything tastes great while on vacation Have you ever noticed that your skin, nose, and eyes feel super dry after you fly on an airplane? This is because, as Naglich points out, the air on planes is so dry that it actually has a lower humidity than the Mojave desert. Unfortunately, this means your nose will have less mucus after a flight, and mucus is important for helping bind the particles of food that we interpret as smells to the olfactory receptors in our noses. Simply put: When your nasal passages are dry, it’s harder to smell, and because scent is actually responsible for roughly 80% of what we taste, it’s also harder to taste. This means that when you’re on an airplane, the food will be more bland no matter how good it is! Luckily there’s a simple fix to help you appreciate all that poke once you land in Hawaii, or plates of arancini in Sicily. Naglich recommends drinking a lot of water and packing a travel humidifier — just start blasting it as soon as you arrive at your hotel room — when you fly, to help replenish your mucus supply more quickly. This will allow you to replenish your tasting powers more quickly after you get off a plane. 7 Ways to Make Wine Taste Better Try putting some mustard in your brownie batter Naglich dives deep into basic tastes like salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami, as well as how they can affect one another when combined. She points out that saltiness can suppress bitterness. (If you want to test this for yourself, a chef once taught me to try eating a radicchio leaf both with and without salt sprinkled on it. It’s pretty clear that it tastes less bitter once seasoned.) A mustard expert that Naglich consulted for her book explains that the sour, slightly bitter flavors in the condiment can help intensify the cocoa flavor in brownies, and make it seem more rich. This might sound strange, but it’s the same principle that leads to many chocolate cake recipes including a little bit of coffee. How to Taste will arm you with a better understanding of what factors contribute to a sense of taste, familiarity with how different flavors go together, a mix of excellent fun facts you can whip out at parties, and more. But the most exciting part of Naglich’s work is that she also breaks down how to apply these findings to everyday life, so you can make your world taste a lot better. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit