The Capacity of Humans to Identify Components in Complex Odor–taste Mixtures

Abstract

Despite the fact that humans experience mixtures of odors and tastes each time they eat, little is known of their capacity to detect the individual components of foods. To investigate this capacity, 43 subjects were trained to identify three odors and three tastes and were required to indicate which of these could be identified in stimuli consisting of one to six components. Although the odor and taste components of most binary mixtures were identified, subjects encountered substantial difficulties with more complex mixtures with only two components being identified in the four- to six-component mixtures. In general, tastes were more easily identified than smells and were the only stimuli identified in the five- to six-component mixtures. Several mechanisms are proposed to account for the poor identification of components.