Why you can never describe coffee

The language simply doesn’t have the words to describe tastes. Try describing an idli and chutney or a korma or a butter naan. But there’s a cure for it — synesthesia

Here’s a simple word challenge I guarantee you won’t pass—describe the taste of a cup of coffee in a word. I’ll give you a minute. 

Yes, I know you failed. Don’t feel too badly about it. The English language just doesn’t have any precise way of describing the taste of coffee. Oh, no doubt you can describe it by analogy, calling it nutty, floral, smoky, acidic or bitter. Not one of those words would tell you what it tastes like.

There is no particular compound or molecule that gives a good coffee its unique taste, though methylxanthines, such as caffeine itself, play a defining role. But describing that familiar taste in a word has flummoxed writers and lexicographers forever. Their best was words like earthy, rubbery, grassy, winey and tart. A group of coffee connoisseurs, asked to identify five flavours they associated with coffee, could not name even one. They loved the taste but that was all.

Nor is coffee alone. Can you describe a pav bhaji’s tastes in two words? Delish and yummy don’t count. Butter chicken? The taste of butter naan? Sambar?

I live in a country, Thailand, that is famous for its rich and thrilling heritage of food and exquisite spicing. I come from a country that has 32 major cuisines, each one utterly distinct from the others in tastes, ingredients and cooking styles. Yet, even as a writer proud of his romance with food, I could not find the words to describe the taste and the aromas of any of the amazing dishes I have eaten in my life.

Try it. Describe the taste of an idli with coconut chutney. Knock yourself out.

I read once that different cultures have the most words for describing the things that matter to them the most. For example, the Inuits of Canada, living in igloos amid freezing sub-polar landscapes, have at least 93 different words that describe ice and snow. These range from kanik (snow falling), apt (snow on the ground) and qinu (slushy ice by the sea) to igalaujait (ice which looks like windows) and qautsaulittuq (ice that breaks after its strength has been tested with a harpoon).

In English alone, I see no paucity of words to describe what we see with our eyes—words like blurred, opaque, shimmering, iridescent, radiant, opalescent, shiny, translucent. Nor is there a problem with sounds—screeches, whispers, whoops, shrieks, bellows, scrunches, rustles and so on. Touch? No issues—gravelly, smooth, pulpy, oily, moist, grainy, sandy, and so on. You might conclude, correctly, that we really get a lot out of our eyes, ears and sense of touch.

Does this mean that we have pretty crude systems for tasting and smelling? How many different smells and tastes do we not have words for? Turns out we have about 400 different types of odor receptors in our nostrils. Don’t jump with joy yet—the average German Shepherd dog has 225 million. 

Yet, with just 400 receptors, we can apparently distinguish between a million to a trillion odors and tastes, as well as around 100,000 flavors. That’s a lot of important tastes and smells we have no words for. 

It seems we’re specially fascinated by foul smells. Even more damning, we are far more accepting of our own farts and foul emanations than that of others. Indeed, studies have found that we will often judge another person’s very character on how they smell. Thousands of people would be paid good money on a day in 2015 to stand in a serpentine queue outside the Chicago Botanical Gardens to smell a flower—redolent of rotten fish, sewage and dead bodies. The 4.5-foot tall Corpse Flower is called Alice, blooms once in a decade and stays in bloom for about eight hours.

Needless to say, no one can find words to describe Alice’s disgusting odours, but only in English. The Farsi, Laos and Cantonese tongues have nuanced vocabularies for describing hundreds of tastes and smells. English is left in the dust.

Now that we’ve established that I’m a food writer whose pathetic vocabulary cannot begin to describe the food he eats or cooks, let me tell what I want to be in my next life. A synesthete. 

All babies are born synesthetes, unable to tell their senses apart from each other. But in a rare group of people, this condition, called synesthesia, never goes away. Some see colours when they hear sounds. Some taste foods when they hear words.

That’s the kind I want to be. A synesthete literally ‘tastes’ words. Sounds like “eh” or “mmm” make them taste mint, while words with an “aye” take them straight to bacon. In a test, one synesthete heard the word phonograph and instantly tasted Dutch chocolate.

I’d talk all the time. Every conversation would be a feast.

Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com

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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper

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