Eating With the Eyes.
The same strawberry mousse, from the same bowl, was rated about 10 % sweeter on a white plate than on a black one.
Flavour is built in the brain from taste, smell, texture, temperature and sound (XI.1) — and from what the eyes see first. Colour sets expectations: red and pink suggest sweetness and ripeness, green sourness or freshness, brown roasting; a food whose colour does not match its taste is often misidentified, as in classic experiments with dyed drinks. The plate is part of the picture. Psychologists working with chefs — Charles Spence's "gastrophysics" — have found that the same dessert is rated sweeter and more flavourful from a white plate than a black one, round plates and soft shapes suggest sweetness, angular ones bitterness, and heavier cutlery and bowls make food seem more substantial.
Arrangement matters as much. In one study the same salad ingredients, arranged like a Kandinsky painting, were rated tastier than the same ingredients neatly but plainly laid out, and diners said they would pay more for them; heaped or careless plates suggest carelessness in the kitchen. None of this can rescue a badly cooked dish — expectations raised and then disappointed make it worse — but a cook who controls appearance controls the first impression against which everything else is measured. The next plates turn this into technique: composition (XXXII.2), colour (XXXII.3), texture (XXXII.4) and sauce (XXXII.5). The workshop changes a plate.
Below: the same dessert on a white or black plate, arranged with care or heaped (drawn on the plate bench), and teaching estimates of how diners rate its sweetness and how much they would pay, built from effects reported in published experiments.
- Explain how appearance shapes taste.
- Choose a plate colour and shape.
- Arrange food with care.
- Avoid raising expectations the food cannot meet.
Set the expectation, then meet it
In the teaching estimate the dessert rated 6 for sweetness on a black plate rates about 6.6 on a white one, with no change to the recipe; arranged with care, diners say they would pay about 9.2 ¤ instead of 8. These are averages from experiments with many people — your guests may differ — but the direction is consistent across studies, and chefs use it: pale desserts on dark plates look dramatic but may taste a little less sweet; a reduction in sugar can be partly hidden by a white plate and a red garnish.
Practical habits: choose plates that frame the food — white or pale for most dishes, dark for pale food that needs contrast; leave a clean rim (XXXII.2); arrange with intent, not by dropping; wipe drips; keep portions in proportion to the plate (a large plate makes a portion look smaller, and diners eat less from smaller plates); and make the dish taste at least as good as it looks. Describe it honestly on the menu: a dish that promises more than it delivers disappoints twice.
Serve the same dessert to two people, one on a white plate neatly arranged and one on a dark plate heaped. Ask each to rate its sweetness from 1 to 10.
Terms
- Gastrophysics
- The study of how the senses and setting shape eating.
- Expectation
- What diners predict before tasting, which colours what they perceive.
- Multisensory flavour
- Flavour built from taste, smell, touch, sound and sight.
- Plate contrast
- How strongly the food stands out from the plate.
Sources
- B. Piqueras-Fiszman, J. Alcaide, E. Roura and C. Spence, "Is it the plate or is it the food?", Food Quality and Preference 24 (2012) 205–208: the same strawberry mousse was rated about 10 % sweeter and more flavourful from a white plate than from a black one. C. Michel, C. Velasco, E. Gatti and C. Spence, "A taste of Kandinsky", Flavour 3 (2014) 7: an art-inspired arrangement of the same salad was rated tastier and diners would pay more for it. C. Spence and B. Piqueras-Fiszman, The Perfect Meal, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.
- A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.