I love food. I take it very very seriously. And there’s been one food realisation that’s been haunting me for some time now: food tastes better when someone else makes it.
I could make the same sandwich with the same fillings and it will never taste as good as when my mum makes it for me.
I know I make a mean scrambled eggs but, despite using the same ingredients, my boyfriend’s always taste 100x better.
It’s beyond a joke – it’s stopping me from enjoying my food because it’s just never as good as I remember it.
What am I doing wrong? Surely I’m not that bad a chef? Are my tastebuds just cooked?
I know, I know, it’s the definition of a first world problem but, like I said, I take my food very seriously.
So I did what I always do when I have a question I need the answer to: I Googled it. And it turns out there’s a legitimate reason to why food tastes better when someone else cooks it up.
Some researchers at Carnegie Mellon University reckon that when we make our own meal, we gradually become less excited to eat the meal. This ultimately means we enjoy the food less when we finally take that first bite. When someone else makes food for us, we haven’t “pre-consumed” the food by watching it be made.
I personally reject this hypothesis because I am always excited to eat food no matter who’s made it.
However, there’s also another theory as to why food made my someone else tastes better: smell. Specifically, how our sense of smell is linked to our sense of taste.
Throughout the cooking process, we are constantly smelling and therefore tasting the food that we’re making. The repeat exposure to the smell changes the way that we taste the final product. We don’t get that clean, first-bite thrill and it’s always a little bit disappointing. It’s more of a confirmation than a discovery.
BUT when someone else makes food for us, the taste is more surprising and delicious because we haven’t spent ten minutes smelling all the ingredients.
So the next time someone insists the sandwich/scrambled eggs/filet mignon they made tastes different to yours, don’t call them a bad cook. Just blame their nostrils instead.