Friday, March 23, 2007

Food Jargon of the Day: Taste-Blind

Taste-Blind
“In America we eat, collectively, with a glum urge for food to fill us. We are ignorant of flavour. We are as a nation taste-blind.”

"Frederick the Great used to make his own coffee, with much to-do and fuss. For water he used champagne. Then, to make the flavour stronger, he stirred in powdered mustard.

Now to me it seems improbable that Frederick truly liked this brew. I suspect him of bravado. Or perhaps he was taste-blind."

Coined in 1937 by M.F.K. Fisher in Serve It Forth, "taste-blind" is as useful a descriptor of the American palate now as it was then.