In the Summer of 2021, Fisher London presented "Good Taste', an exhibition of antiques which add flavour. Inspired by the five flavours - sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami - a range of glass, ceramics, silver, watercolours, botanical prints, treen, antiquities and tribal art were categorised and displayed in the showroom according to a flavour ‘map’ of the tongue. Sweet and savoury refreshments were served to compliment each of the five taste senses.
Extract from the exhibition guide:
Writing in his 1825 book, The Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin noted that ‘animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating’.
Taste is not only about flavour, in fact, the word taste is derived from the Latin word ‘taxare’: to touch, to value, to judge. Its culinary meaning is secondary, overlaid. More broadly, taste came to indicate a preference, and eventually a value judgment.
Most of us have happy childhood memories of watching miracles unfold in the kitchen, of watching with wide eyes as feats that looked very much like alchemy or sorcery miraculously resulted in something delicious to eat. Cooking has always held a mystical position in our cultural consciousness as, in ancient Greek, the word for ‘cook’ and ‘priest’ was the same – ‘mageiros’, a word that also shares an etymological root with the word ‘magic’.
Link to the 'Good Taste' Exhibition Guide
