Recently gave a talk about pairing tea with foods/herbs/spices to a lively group of tearoom people. Started out with my favorite receptor experiment, one that you can do at home:
Mint and Cinnamon. Photo courtesy tea connoisseur Marzi Pecen — thanks Marzi!
Take a mild cinnamon candy and a mild peppermint (I use Brach’s® cinnamon hard candy and Lifesaver® peppermint candy). First put the cinnamon candy in your mouth, get a good cinnamon flavor going, then take the candy out. Next put the peppermint candy in your mouth: the cinnamon flavor instantly disappears. Then wait—after a short while the mint flavor disappears, and gradually the cinnamon comes back, faintly but perceptible for most people.
What is happening? The cinnamon slowly binds to the hot receptor TRPV1, where it stays. When you put the mint in your mouth, the menthol activates the cool/cold receptors (TRPM8 and TRPA1). Activation of these receptors turns off TRPV1, so you no longer taste the cinnamon. The amount of time that menthol stays on these receptors is short (= short residence time), so the menthol flavor disappears. Meanwhile, the cinnamon sits on its receptor for a longer time, and is still there when you take out the mint. Therefore, once the mint flavor is gone, the cinnamon receptor is no longer inhibited, so you can now taste the cinnamon again.
This is a good demonstration of what can happen when you eat a meal, with items that activate one or another receptor. Once you call your attention to this kind of progression, you will experience it again and again.
More about the talk I gave in the next post.
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