五味に及ぼす油脂の影響

抄録

In various foods, it is often experienced that a presence of oil in food complicates the taste of the foods and makes it mild and sometimes even very delicious. However, this effect of oils on the taste of food has not been studied systematically. This paper deals with the effect of oil on so-called “five tastes”. Sugar, salt, tartaric acid, quinine hydrochloride and monosodium glutamate were chosen as the representative of five tastes, namely sweet, salty, sour, bitter and glutamate taste (“Umami”, in Japanese), respectively. Taste panel consisted of about 15 persons, who were the stuff of our laboratories and our students.
Two series of experiments were carried out.
1) Taking the case of sweet taste, emulsions typed of w/o and o/w of 5.46% aqeuous solution of cane sugar and corn oil were made. Each of 7.20, 6.28, 5.46, 4.75 and 4.13% solutions of cane sugar were also made. The panel made the guess which solution were equal to the sweetness of these o/w and w/o emulsions. Such experiments were also done on other four tastes as well as on some real foods such as margarine, cream and mayonnaise.
2) Also taking the case of the sweet taste, 7.20, 6.28, 5.46, 4.75 and 4.13% solutions of cane sugar were made, while o/w and w/o emulsions of these solution and oil were made. The panel carried out the difference tests on these series. The number of the errors in these experiments was compared. As the results, it was found that intensity of tastes were much decreased in the w/o emulsion. In the difference tests on the emulsions of both w/o and o/w type it was much difficult to describe the differences than those on mere ageous solutions. These results seem to be able to explain to some extent the general belief, “oil makes the taste of food mild and delicious”.