It’s no secret that we “eat with our eyes” first. In fact, it’s the basis for gourmet restaurants everywhere. Tremendous care is taken when “plating” a dish with painstaking detail. Concentric rings of chocolate? A swish of sauce? Towering salads? All of these elements are thought about and multiple “drafts” of a dish’s plating design are created until a final plate is determine – all to maximize the visual pleasure of the dish.
When you’re sitting at the table of one of these fine dining establishments, and the plate is placed in front of you by the server, then rotated to face you properly – it’s because that’s how the chef intended for you to first view the dish and maybe even entices you to start eating it in a specific way. Of course, the minute that plate is in front of you and the server walks away, suddenly the other dinner guests (including the ones you’re dining with) disappear into the blurred background. All you can sense is the dish in front of you – the beauty of its composition, the play of negative space on the plate, the aromas of those delicate flavors slowly wafting up into your face. Your mouth is already salivating (of course, you’re too polite to let it show), but your eyes cannot hold back. The base, lustful desire to just tear into that dish – with dignity of course – is just splayed across your face.
Well, turns out, how a dish looks can actually influence the perceived flavors of the dish – it may even enhance some flavors over others! A recent study, conducted by Polytechnic University of Valencia and Oxford University published in the Journal of Sensory Studies, has determined that the color of the vessel or plate will actually change the perceived flavors. Their test with 57 participants indicated that hot chocolate served in an orange- or cream-colored mug made the beverage taste “better” – i.e., “tasted sweeter and was much more aromatic.”
Betina Piqueras-Fiszman, one of the authors of the study, is quoted as saying:
The color of the container where you serve food and drinks can enhance some of its attributes, like flavor and aroma. There’s no fixed rule to tell which color enhances what food. This varies depending on the type of food but the truth is that the effect is there. Companies should pay more attention to the container because it has a lot more potential than what you imagine.
Interesting….Additional experiments indicated, for example, that strawberry mousse tasted more intense or sweeter when served on a white plate as opposed to a black one. Interestingly, lemon-based beverages taste “more refreshing and lemony” in a blue vessel, whereas the same beverage in a pink vessel was perceived as being sweeter. Coffee too is a slave to this phenomenon: brown makes it taste stronger and more aromatic, red reduces it’s perceived strength, and yellow/blue make it taste smoother. This opens up a whole new bag of marketing strategies…..