Turns out the colour of our coffee cup matters
#27—Taste is a very strange thing.
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My mum recently bought two lovely professional barista-style coffee cups. They’re larger and thicker than a teacup and made of quite a weighty ceramic that sinks comfortably into my hands. Thick rimmed and softly rounded, their touch on my lip is so soft it’s hard to sense where it begins and ends. So delightful are these coffee cups that all other cups have been rendered redundant and anyone desiring a coffee will handwash the new cups over and over in preference to taking a perfectly clean cup waiting in the cupboard.
I hadn’t put too much thought into why I instinctively enjoy using these cups until I saw two baristas talking about how the shape and colour of a cup changes the way coffee tastes.
Taste is a funny thing. Much of what we taste is actually determined by the assortment of wonderful (and sometimes not so wonderful) smells that grace our nasal passages, which is why aromatic herbs, spices, garlic and ginger can have such a profound impact on flavour. If the thought of those smells has brought you a sense of pleasantness, I apologise for interrupting it with the word mucus, but not without reason, because mucus plays the important role of dampening the nasal passages and binding odours to its proteins, heightening our sense of smell. If the mucus dries out, like it often does in airplanes, our sense of smell, and therefore taste, is impeded, which is why airplane food never, ever tastes good.
Smell is what gives us the pleasure of variety because our taste buds have quite a limited capability; they only sense five flavours: bitterness, saltiness, sourness, sweetness, and umami (a rich savory flavour released through cooking, curing or aging).
Other factors also impact taste, such as texture, which controls the way in which flavour is released into the mouth, slowly melting or bursting within. Texture also determines the way food feels in our mouths, which is crucial to enjoyment.
The last element—colour—is a perceived taste rather than a real one, but it’s nevertheless important because the brain rules the roost. For example, in a small experiment I once read about, a group of people in a dimly lit room were each served a plate of steak and mashed potato. It looked appetising and all appeared to happily devour their meal in the ambience until the lights were turned up to reveal that their steaks were in fact green, instinctively prompting them to stop eating and possibly puke. Our brains have learnt that green meat is rancid, and there is nothing appetising about that. That’s a rather extreme example. In a more nuanced way, the brain has catalogued how it expects certain foods to look, and colour is a strong visual indicator used to determine if the food will indeed taste good. If the brain decides it doesn’t like it, enjoying the food becomes very difficult, regardless of its taste.
The brain bundles all these sensory experiences into one, which, when we sit down to our sticky date pudding with vanilla bean ice cream, we simply describe as taste.
So how does a cup change all this?
The idea of a cup influencing the drinking experience is nothing new—at least not when it comes to wine, which is why wine glasses differ by variety. For instance, the shape of the glass controls how the wine’s aroma is concentrated, greatly impacting the taste; a narrow flute preserves and compacts the release of champagne bubbles, increasing the pleasure of their texture on the tongue, and even the long stem is designed to avoid the transfer of heat from our hands to the vessel. The lip, as with a teacup, is thin, allowing the liquid to roll cleanly over the edge and onto the tongue.
Knowing this, I was surprised to discover I had never considered how cups in general impact the taste of other beverages, except for acknowledging that coffee never tastes as good in paper takeaway cups.
So when I saw a clip of two baristas discussing cups, I paused and took note. The cup in question is called a Ni cup (Japanese for ‘two’), because it has one thick lip that peters out into a thin lip at the opposite end of the circumference. According to these baristas, the thin lip highlights fruity notes and acidity within the coffee and the thick side highlights sweetness and mouth feel, allowing the crema to slide onto the tongue. The wide shape allows the warm aroma to waft into the nose, and apparently, its pink colour increases the coffee’s perceived sweetness by up to 20%.
There are quite a few references to studies that apparently prove all this, however, I would rather call them experiments because I don’t want to suggest they are in the league of peer-reviewed scientific research. From what I can make out in regards to colours, white cups have a greater contrast with the darkness of coffee, providing a sense of increased bitterness, while pink compliments and softens that contrast, creating a visual perception of sweetness. Another ‘taste expert’ preferred green cups because it highlighted bitterness.
I can neither confirm nor deny that any of this is advice worth taking, except that I do really enjoy using my mother’s professional cups, which are black with white insides and have wide openings. One thing I have observed, however, among my own collection of mugs—some designer, mostly not—is that prior to discovering any of this, I had already developed a preference for drinking my coffee in the el cheapo IKEA mug, which has a pleasantly thick and smooth rim, a wide opening and a soft cream tone that compliments the colour of the crema. In contrast, I always choose the thin-lipped Royal Albert mug for my tea.
Things I’ve enjoyed on Substack this week
Paul has the wonderful skill of being able to reach in and draw out our emotions, an ability he demonstrates so beautifully in this poem.
On distraction (or, did I accidentally take the dog’s heart medicine?)—by
We’ve all been there… well, at least almost there. Tash tells a very funny story.
"This stupid bitch" was a fascinating writer—by
Spend this lovely moment thinking about Aurore Dupin, better known as the writer George Sand.
Etymology Monday
For those who missed it, this week’s word is: cheap
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Thank you for mentioning God Bless You, Jacob in your your post—I’m grateful, Alia!
I hadn't thought about it quite this systematically, but the shape of the drinking vessel changing the experience of the drink makes a great deal of sense. I like fine china cups for good tea but for my standard cuppa – the cheap earthenware mug with the Guildford Banjo Jamboree logo is comfortably familiar and brings back happy memories.
Further to our visual sense affecting the gustatory experience – do you remember those 'dining in the dark' restaurants that used to be a thing? Diners commented on how their perception of what they were eating was radically changed by the lack of vision.
In German there's a saying 'Das Auge isst mit' – The eye eats as well.