Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World

by Mark Miodownik

However, cooked chocolate tastes different from eating chocolate for another reason. Although basic taste is generated on the tongue by the taste buds, which distinguish between bitter, sweet, salty, sour, and umami (meaty or savory), most flavor is experienced through smell. It is the smell of chocolate from within your own mouth that is responsible for its complex taste. When you cook chocolate, many of its flavor molecules evaporate or are destroyed by the cooking. This is a problem not just for hot chocolate but also for coffee and tea. It is why you need to drink those drinks within minutes of being brewed, otherwise the flavor disappears into the air. It is also why you lose much of your sense of taste when you have a cold—because the smell receptors in the nose are covered by mucus.