▲ Assorted pancakes, which are fried in a well-heated pan with oil, are a staple on the table during the holidays. The “oily flavor” that fills your mouth with a bite is attractive. ⒸPixabay
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A vacation without ‘distancing’ has come for the first time in three years. The memories of Chuseok’s short vacation are the leftovers in the refrigerator. Shortly before Chuseok, the Sungkyunkwan Ritual Institution Committee announced the “Standard Draft for Orders” and recommended that there be no need to submit the exhibit. This is because it is not polite to use fatty foods for ancestral rites, and it is not necessary to fry in oil or put the foods of earthquake victims on the table.
While it has nothing to do with “yes”, various types of jeon are an indispensable highlight of the holiday table. The taste is different depending on the ingredients such as Dongtaejeon, Yukjeon, Gochujon and Donggrantin, but the oily flavor that fills your mouth when you take a bite stimulates the appetite. Why do we keep reaching out before being freshly baked, forgetting about the heat?
Chemical reactions that determine the flavor
The taste of food is determined by both taste and aroma. It’s the same reason COVID-19 patients with reduced olfactory function claim that when they eat food, they can’t know what it tastes like, so their appetite has decreased. As before, in the process of cooking at high temperatures, many flavoring ingredients are created. Because of the “Maillard” reaction.
Jeon is cooked at a temperature of around 200 ℃ and as the pancakes are roasted, the color becomes more intense, crunchy and the flavor comes to life. When the proteins and carbohydrates in foods are heated, their taste, color and aroma are created, a process called the Maillard reaction. It was discovered in 1912 by French chemist Louis Camille Maillard and this discovery scientifically proved that food tastes like umami at high temperatures of 120 ° C or higher. ‘2AP (2-acetyl-1-pyrroline)’, a chemical that smells like popcorn, is a typical fragrance produced by the Maillard reaction.
▲ The crunchy tip of large pancakes, such as kimchi pancakes and pajeon pancakes, is the best part. The moisture contained in the gluten film composed of the wheat evaporates and becomes crunchy. The relatively thin tip is crisper. ⒸPixabay
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The crunchy texture stimulates the taste buds when eating a freshly baked jeon, attracted by the “scent of the party”. Crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside. Gluten is an insoluble protein component in wheat flour and when the flour and moisture meet, a gluten film forms on the surface. When you put the jeon on a hot pan, the moisture contained in the gluten film evaporates. A hole is made where the moisture escaped. This texture gives us a crunchy texture. The relatively thin tip part has a higher specific gravity of the hole, resulting in a crisper texture than the middle part.
Fatty foods are attracted to the “secret passage” between the gut and the brain.
If you keep eating salty flavored jeon, you will come across “Steamed meat quickly”. Even if you eat few calories before cooking with oil, it is equivalent to a bowl of rice. I’d blame the taste for making me eat fatty food over and over, but there’s nothing wrong with my taste. Recent research suggests that the attraction to fatty foods is in the gut, not the taste receptors on the tongue.
Researchers at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute in the United States provided the mice with oily water containing soybean oil and water with a strong sweetener. The mice initially drank both waters, but within a few days they found mostly oily water. The preference for oily water continued even though the mouse’s ability to taste was eliminated by eliminating taste receptors. There is something else that makes you prefer it even when you can’t taste it.
To find something, the researchers fed the mice fat and measured brain activity. Neurons in the caudate nucleus high-speed pathway (cNST) in the brain stem were activated. The signal that stimulated the caudate nucleus was initiated in the intestine. The intestine sent a signal directly to the brain via the vagus nerve when the fat component was inside.
▲ American researchers have analyzed that the gut has a ‘secret path’ that transmits preferences for fatty foods to the brain. In the figure above, the vagus nerve, which transmits signals to the brain, is expressed in blue and the cells responsible for fat preference are expressed in green. ⒸZuckerman Institute of Columbia
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The researchers then discovered two types of cells that transmit a fat response in the gut. One type responded to essential nutrients like sugar and amino acids in addition to fat, while the other only responded to fat. When the researchers blocked the signaling of these cells, the vagus nerve stopped responding to the fat in the gut. Later, when the neurons in the caudate nucleus were inactivated, the mice lost their appetite for oily water.
Interestingly, the part of the brain that responds to fat is the same part of the brain that responds to sugar. In a study published in Nature last year, researchers found that the tail core’s high-speed reactor activates even when there is sugar in the gut. In this study, the researchers gave the rats sugar water and sweetener water, but when they drank the sweetener water, the caudate nucleus was not activated. This is why diet sodas like ‘Cola Zero’ cannot provide perfect satisfaction.
Although still at the level of animal testing, the reason people like sugar and fatty foods is that these molecules transmit signals to the brain through a “secret passage”. A neurological basis was discovered that made it difficult to suppress the sweet and oily taste.
Can the taste of oil be recognized as ‘the sixth taste’?
▲ Taste of oil is a candidate for the ‘6th taste’ after sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. ⒸPixabay
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There is a saying that “shoes are delicious even fried”. It means that no matter what the ingredients are, cooking them in oil will make them tastier. Furthermore, studies on the ‘sixth taste’ of oil taste continue to be published, that is, the taste that detects fat, after sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami.
A representative example is a study published in 2012 in the international academic journal “Journal of Lipid Research” by the team of Professor Nada Aumrad at the University of Washington. The research team has published a result of a study showing that the greater the number of receptors called “CD36”, which recognize fat molecules in the taste buds on the upper surface of the tongue, the greater the sensitivity to the taste of the oil. Due to this receptor anomaly, people who feel less fat in food consume more fat and gain weight.
The fatty taste has not yet been recognized as the sixth taste. It still competes with various candidates such as the taste of water and the taste of carbohydrates. The taste of umami was first demonstrated by research in 1908, but it wasn’t until 1985, 80 years later, that it was recognized as the fifth taste. We do not know how many parties will be repeated until the protagonist of the sixth taste is decided, but we should aim to win the bait of the intestines to attract fatty foods at each party.
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