Abstract

A growing body of scientific research has recently started to demonstrate how both music and soundscapes can influence people’s perception of the taste, flavour, and mouthfeel of food and drink. However, to date, far less research has investigated the question of whether the music that happens to be playing in the background might also influence the way in which chefs, home cooks, and others making food (or, for that matter, mixing drinks) develop or season their creations. One of the aims of this review is to highlight the markedly different views currently held by chefs concerning the appropriateness of music in their kitchens (and the different roles that it might play). Next, the evidence that has been published to date suggesting that the music people listen to can change the particular taste/flavour profiles that they create is reviewed. A number of putative explanations for the crossmodal effects of music on taste are evaluated, including the suppressive effect of loud noise on certain aspects of taste perception, priming through crossmodal correspondences, and/or the influence of any music-induced changes in mood on taste/flavour perception. Given that what we hear influences what we taste, and hence, how the person in the kitchen likely creates/seasons the dish, some commentators have been tempted to wonder whether the same music should perhaps also be played in the spaces (e.g., the restaurant or home dining room) where that food will be consumed in order to equate the conditions in which the dish or drink is seasoned/created with the environment in which it is tasted. This opinion piece ends by stressing the limitations with such an approach. One of the main problems being the kinds of music that the majority of chefs apparently prefer to listen to while working in the kitchen, music which is often chosen to motivate the staff who will likely be working a long shift.

Highlights

  • Music from the kitchen Unlike the sentiment captured in an ad of a few years ago from AEG Electrolux for its kitchen appliances that had the strapline "The kitchen that sounds like a library.", kitchens, especially busy commercial kitchens, are places that are full of noise—or at least they should be

  • Over-and-above any role that the music has in motivating one’s staff to keep chopping, one has to wonder whether the chef in charge of the restaurant might not want to match the music playing in the kitchen to the dishes/sauces that they happen to be preparing?. As this opinion piece has hopefully made clear, professional chefs hold very different views concerning the appropriateness of music in the kitchens they run

  • My sense from the literature is that music has become a more common feature of restaurant kitchens in recent years

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Summary

Introduction

Music from the kitchen Unlike the sentiment captured in an ad of a few years ago from AEG Electrolux for its kitchen appliances that had the strapline "The kitchen that sounds like a library.", kitchens, especially busy commercial kitchens, are places that are full of noise—or at least they should be. As chef Zakary Pelaccio, founder of the Fatty Crab and Fatty 'Cue restaurants in North America, puts it in his book “Eat with your hands”, “Instead of a silent kitchen, with all the vitality of a courtroom, you want a kitchen that’s a party. Turn on some music”...“Every professional kitchen I have ever run and every home kitchen I have ever spent time in has been filled with music. You’ll notice that everyone’s cooking to the beat. Good cooks all have a natural groove to begin with—you can see it in their step, hear it in the way they chop or in the pound of their pestle. That groove is the subtle manifestation of a cook’s connection with his ingredients. Turn the music up.” ([28], p. 14).

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