Similar texture but different aromas? The taste of both apple sauce and pear sauce is the same–sweet. It is the aroma that is different and that tells the difference between them. They also have the same basic texture–and color, for that matter.

You might try cheeses–you might try a strong aged cheddar vs. mild cheddar. It is the smell that is different–the basic taste is the same. Lightly sweet with a bit of salt. Again, colorwise–you can get them exactly the same.

Olive oil is another good one where aroma is king. You can have them taste it on a neutral piece of baguette–just use the same loaf for each test piece! And just use the interior of the bread, not the crust–it has too much flavor and will change the taste of the oil.

Some oils are very mild and buttery, because they are mild in taste, and have a very gentle aroma.

Some are spicy and “grassy” tasting because they have a stronger smell.

I hope that these suggestions help you out–they are the simplest ideas I could come up with.

For the applesauce and pear sauce, what you want to do is make it from scratch, using little to no sugar at first.

Then, you want to taste them both and adjust sweetness so that they have the same basic level of sweetness–don’t just put the same amount of sugar in each one and think it will work. They will vary in how much natural sugar each one has.

Good luck, and let me know how it goes!

I am posting a comment on your blog because my attempts to contact you have proved failures.

This concerns a project I am working on for my Biology class. We were assigned research papers, as well as accompanying experiments, and mine is to discover if scent is truly employed more often in the connection of food to pleasure, or if it is taste which overrules in the art of distinguishing flavors. Upon finding your website, I discovered that it contained a plethora of information, which will benefit me greatly in my research, and I thank you profusely for providing that to the public (myself included)!

However, I am contacting you now because I need some of your expertise culinary advice. For my experiment itself, I have decided to test people of the same “supertasting abilities” with food of similar texture (so that wouldn’t be a dead giveaway in the mouth), but which varies in one particular characteristic, such as a slight difference in smell or taste (to contrast the two senses isolated in my experiment). However, being as I am not exactly the chef in my family, I have no idea where to start when searching for foods of similar taste but differing smell, or vice versa! Do you think you could possibly help me, by perhaps leading my in the right direction or placing me on the right track?

The information provided on your blog is already certainly more than enough, and I thank you again for providing it. However, it would be a great help if you could offer me suggestions on my experiment.

Again, thank you so much, just for reading this comment!

Your Amateur Experimenter,
Chelsea

Birdseye–You can often get someone to confuse a soft, not too acidic red wine vinegar with a young, acidic red wine if you close off their noses. Let them use their noses and they can catch it right off–but without the noses–it is amazing to see folks sip vinegar like it is wine.

Katie–There is a certain cookie that I ate at my Gram’s house, that if I smell it, I am suddenly back in her living room, and I can smell the carpet, the heater (she had an open gas heater in the front room fireplace) and the other mingled smells of that little house. It is amazing to me. The smell of fresh, ripe, sunwarmed strawberries makes me think of picking them with Grandma, and the way the sunwarmed dirt under our feet felt and smelled.