"Sweetness is a basic taste most commonly perceived when eating foods rich in sugars."
Sweetness, as a taste sensation, is often used to balance the bitterness or sourness of a food or beverage as well as to add depth and complexity to the flavor profile.
Taste receptors: Understanding how our taste buds work and how they perceive different flavors is a key aspect of learning about sweetness.
Sweetness intensity: Different foods have varying levels of sweetness intensity, and understanding how this intensity is measured and perceived is important in understanding sweetness.
Sweeteners: There are many different types of sweeteners, both natural and artificial, and understanding their properties and uses is important in learning about sweetness.
Sugar: Sugar is perhaps the most well-known sweetener, and understanding its properties, types, and effects on the body is essential in understanding sweetness.
Fruit: Fruit is a natural source of sweetness, and understanding how different fruits impart sweetness and how to use them in cooking and baking is important in learning about sweetness.
Cooking techniques: Different cooking techniques can affect the sweetness of foods, and understanding how to use these techniques to enhance or reduce sweetness can be valuable.
Flavor balance: Sweetness is just one aspect of flavor, and learning how to balance sweetness with other flavors is important in creating delicious dishes.
Pairing sweets with savories: Combining sweet and savory flavors can create complex and interesting flavor profiles, and understanding how to pair sweets with savory dishes is key in exploring sweetness.
Sensory analysis: Sensory analysis is a scientific methodology for evaluating the sensory properties of foods, including sweetness, and understanding this process can help you develop a more sophisticated palate.
Culture and history: Understanding the cultural and historical contexts of different sweet dishes and ingredients can provide a deeper understanding of sweetness and its role in different cuisines.
Fruity: Sweetness that is reminiscent of various fruits like citrus, berries, tropical fruits, etc.
Floral: Sweetness that has a floral aroma, like rose, lavender, jasmine, etc.
Nutty: Sweetness that is added by nuts, particularly the roasted nut flavor.
Earthy: Sweetness that has earthy notes like mushroom, root vegetables, beet, etc.
Spicy: Sweetness with a spicy or a warm-hot flavor, like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, etc.
Herbal: Sweetness with a refreshing herbal taste, like mint, basil, thyme, etc.
Malty: Sweetness that is derived from malted grains, like barley malt, etc.
Caramel: Sweetness with a caramel flavor, often achieved by a caramelization process.
Chocolate: Sweetness with a rich chocolate flavor, sometimes added by cocoa powder, chocolate extract, etc.
Smoky: Sweetness with smoky or burnt notes, like roasted coffee, hickory, mesquite, etc.
Buttery: Sweetness with a buttery flavor, like butter cookies or butterscotch.
Honey: Sweetness with a distinct honey flavor, from actual honey or honey flavoring.
Vanilla: Sweetness with a sweet, creamy, and floral vanilla flavor, added by vanilla extract, etc.
Brown Sugar: Sweetness with a mild earthy flavor derived from molasses.
Maple: Sweetness with a distinct maple flavor from maple syrup or maple extract.
Fudge: Sweetness with a rich, creamy, and fudgy flavor, from fudge flavoring.
Cream: Sweetness with a creamy flavor, like cream soda, whipped cream, etc.
Berry: Sweetness with a specific berry flavor, like strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, etc.
Citrus: Sweetness with a distinctive citrus flavor, like lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit, etc.
Savory: Sweetness with a sweet yet savory or salty flavor, like salted caramel, etc.
"Some are sweet at very low concentrations, allowing their use as non-caloric sugar substitutes. Such non-sugar sweeteners include saccharin and aspartame."
"Other compounds, such as miraculin, may alter perception of sweetness itself."
"The perceived intensity of sugars and high-potency sweeteners, such as aspartame and neohesperidin dihydrochalcone, are heritable, with gene effect accounting for approximately 30% of the variation."
"One theoretical model of sweetness is the multipoint attachment theory, which involves multiple binding sites between a sweetness receptor and a sweet substance."
"Studies indicate that responsiveness to sugars and sweetness has very ancient evolutionary beginnings, being manifest as chemotaxis even in motile bacteria such as E. coli."
"Newborn human infants also demonstrate preferences for high sugar concentrations and prefer solutions that are sweeter than lactose, the sugar found in breast milk."
"Sweetness appears to have the highest taste recognition threshold, being detectable at around 1 part in 200 of sucrose in solution."
"By comparison, bitterness appears to have the lowest detection threshold, at about 1 part in 2 million for quinine in solution."
"In the natural settings that human primate ancestors evolved in, sweetness intensity should indicate energy density."
"Bitterness tends to indicate toxicity."
"The high sweetness detection threshold and low bitterness detection threshold would have predisposed our primate ancestors to seek out sweet-tasting (and energy-dense) foods."
"Even amongst leaf-eating primates, there is a tendency to prefer immature leaves."
"Immature leaves tend to be higher in protein and lower in fibre and poisons than mature leaves."
"The 'sweet tooth' thus has an ancient heritage."
"While food processing has changed consumption patterns, human physiology remains largely unchanged."
"In addition to sugars like sucrose, many other chemical compounds are sweet, including aldehydes, ketones, and sugar alcohols."
"Such non-sugar sweeteners include saccharin and aspartame."
"The perceived intensity of sugars and high-potency sweeteners, such as aspartame and neohesperidin dihydrochalcone, are heritable, with gene effect accounting for approximately 30% of the variation."
"The chemosensory basis for detecting sweetness, which varies between both individuals and species, has only begun to be understood since the late 20th century."