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Relishing the taste of food

Nature Food volume 4, pages 342–343 (2023)Cite this article

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Foods that had relish were once highly desirable. That no longer seems to be true today, hinting at our changing tastes.

When was the last time you really relished the taste or flavour of a dish? Nowadays, this once popular attribute or descriptor would seem to have taken on something of a nostalgic connotation, as with those stores offering bottles and jars of Gentleman’s Relish often supported by a vintage label1. (Although this anchovy paste, first made in 1828, would not seem to have the sour sharp taste that the term is normally taken to denote.) Could it be that the word ‘relish’ (used as either a noun or a verb) has simply fallen out of fashion in the context of food or instead could the sharp and powerful taste itself that the term once described have disappeared from the culinary landscape? A study of the changing use and meaning of the term in relation to foods and flavour would in other words seem long overdue. A quick online search reveals that the term itself still appears in food writing. For instance, Eleanor Morgan asked the readers of Epicurious Magazine: “Would you relish a powdery apple, or congealed oatmeal?”.

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Fig. 1: Yorkshire Relish.

References

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  1. Crossmodal Research Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Charles Spence

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  1. Charles Spence
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Correspondence to Charles Spence.

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Spence, C. Relishing the taste of food. Nat Food 4, 342–343 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-023-00735-8

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