Need Help Adjusting Flavor Profiles

[Kittychanley 1,002]

One of our current projects for build 79 is messing around with the idea of flavor profiles being implemented in the meal creation system. This means that each food will have a value assigned for the 5 different flavor categories: Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, and Umami (Savory). While I am fairly proficient in the culinary arts, it has been decided to open up these values to community input and opinions, especially since neither Bioxx nor myself have actually tasted some of these foods. Below are the values currently assigned to each food. Each number is out of 100, and the categories are completely independent of each other, meaning that they do not have to total to any certain value. If you think that any of these values should be changed, please post what you think it should be changed to, and why. If you have any questions regarding why certain values were chosen, feel free to post those as well.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Images were the only way I could cleanly post all of the tables. If you have trouble reading them, you can see and download the excel spreadsheet here:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8sno6fpm4j7mksk/Food%20Profiles.xlsx

 

Edit: Accepted Changes:

• Whole and Grain of all food in Grains category have a bitter value of 5.
• Tomatoes - Salt: 0, Sour: 5
• Strawberries - Sweet: 80
• Elderberries - Sweet: 20, Sour: 40
• Raspberries - Sweet: 45, Sour: 15, Bitter: 5
• Blackberries - Sour: 30
• Bananas - Sweet: 50, Sour: 5
• Rye (All) - Sour: 15
• Barley (All) - Bitter: +5

[Miner239 47]

oh my gabe they made this real

Why did all of the grains have 20 umami? Last I tasted cooked rice(and i mean everyday), they are plain bland. All grains(but not flour and the products) should also have a little bitter as their skin(word?) is still intact. Perhaps 3 or 5.

Salted meat?

[WetCheerios 24]

Naturally, doesn't all meat have some salt in it? I mean blood has lots of different minerals and such in it, and salt is definitely prominent in the flavour I would say, perhaps a salt value of 10?

[Miner239 47]

You eat meat, not blood. My mom just said that raw meat are not salty.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Why did all of the grains have 20 umami? Last I tasted cooked rice(and i mean everyday), they are plain bland. All grains(but not flour and the products) should also have a little bitter as their skin(word?) is still intact. Perhaps 3 or 5.Salted meat?

 

We just used 20 as a filler value for anything that we though would have even the basic amount of umami. The main reason we put this value on grains was because of the way your mouth waters when you smell freshly baked bread, and the generally heaviness that it has on your tongue. While cooked rice might not have very much flavor, it does have a richness value to it in my opinion. I agree that whole and grain versions should have a bitter value of 5 of them.

 

Salted meat is not its own item in the code. It is literally the cooked/raw meat item with an added nbt tag. The food prep will look for this NBT tag and increase the saltiness of the meal, it doesn't need to be added into the code of the item itself a second time.

 

Naturally, doesn't all meat have some salt in it? I mean blood has lots of different minerals and such in it, and salt is definitely prominent in the flavour I would say, perhaps a salt value of 10?

 

In properly butchered meat, there is no blood. The main reason that many people associate "salty" with meat is because it is common practice to heavily season meat while cooking it. If you've ever had chicken that wasn't properly seasoned, you'd know that it is extremely bland and has almost no saltiness to it at all.

[WetCheerios 24]

Fair enough.

[Miner239 47]

I don't see soy. 10 sweet and 25 umami?

EDIT: Didn't look hard enough.

EDIT2becauseipostedtoomuch: Any flavoring to spice up meals?

EDIT3: Get some sleep, Kitty.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

I don't see soy. 10 sweet and 25 umami?

 

EDIT2becauseipostedtoomuch: Any flavoring to spice up meals?

EDIT3: Get some sleep, Kitty. 

 

It's in the protein table after cooked chicken. 10 Sweet, 40 Umami

 

Edit Response: Spices will probably be a thing in the far future. But that's a whole other suggestion entirely.

 

Off Topic Edit Reply: Psssh, it's only just after midnight.. and I slept until 3pm today anyways. I'm currently binge watching the final season of Lost and needed something else to do during the boring parts.

[Miner239 47]

Ground rock salt? 100 salty, 10 bitter. Vanilla sugar should be useful too. Sugar and salt(not or) increases warm bonus and prolongs it, even when it's getting cold again, but only for a little while.

Roaming here just to occupy Kitty's time.

[Terex 108]

Cool idea. I hope that this system leads to meaningful meal creation and more predictable tastiness (thus higher saturation bonus).

[Agt_Awesome 0]

Huh, I was looking at the forums for a meal topic, and found this. Made an account so I can give my two cents.

 

The saltiness aspect of the tomato struck me as a bit odd. I always associate savory and tangy as flavors of a tomato. I have never (that I can remember) experienced a salty tomato. Also, after doing a quick google search, I found that a fresh, raw tomato contains no salt and is classified as a low sodium food. So, perhaps re-attribute the 10 salty points to another category? (My opinion is that the points should be added to sour)

 

As an aside, I hope sweets and baked goods won't be forever left out of the foods, I gotta have my deserts 

[Kittychanley 1,002]

The saltiness aspect of the tomato struck me as a bit odd. I always associate savory and tangy as flavors of a tomato. I have never (that I can remember) experienced a salty tomato. Also, after doing a quick google search, I found that a fresh, raw tomato contains no salt and is classified as a low sodium food. So, perhaps re-attribute the 10 salty points to another category? (My opinion is that the points should be added to sour)

 

Derp, you're correct. I had added the salt value to tomatoes because I've always eaten them raw and covered in salt and pepper growing up. It didn't even cross my mind that I associate salty with them because I drown them in salt. I'll add that change to the OP.

[gufferdk 7]

I find elderberries less sweet and raspberries more sweet than you have written.

Also I think some cheese can be a little sweet.

[Omicron 62]

Hmmm, bananas being the sweetest of all foods? I'm not so sure. A true, sun-ripened strawberry straight from the field beats it any day, IMHO. I feel qualified to say this because I devour downright inhumane quantities of strawberries every season. And while the average, yield-bred pale supermarket strawberry requires sugaring to be at their most tasty, there are some local fields where I can get small, natural strawberries so dark and sweet, I can hardly tell the difference between them and pure sugar.

 

Bananas on the other hand are a little different from most fruits in the way they are perfectly palatable even when not fully ripe. They have very little sweetness at that point, but they still taste good and are still nutritious. They then get sweeter as they continue to age - both on the tree and while harvested, incidentally. They are not reliant on remaining on the tree to ripen, because they are already fully formed. Meaning, it really depends on when you harvest them and how long you store them. You probably want a more "average" score for them, something like 40.

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

I would start by taking a look at the nutritional content of the various foods. For example, potatoes have 6 mg of sodium per 100 g of tato, with little to no sugars, however onions have 4 g of sugar per 100 g

 

So I've done a bit of research. It's true that flavor is mostly limited to the 5 outlined above, but taste is very much affected by smell, and so I think it's important to include further or separate attributes, such as pungency (how strong a flavour or odour is) and something like spicy, which I'm sure everyone has experienced, and could be an attribute of peppers and the like. 

 

Many other factors play a part in food perception, such as over all moisture content in a food. A baked potato can have a dry, starchy texture, whereas a potato in a stew is softer and much easier to eat.

 

I guess I wasn't around when the discussion about all this happened, but I figure I can still contribute

[WetCheerios 24]

I find elderberries less sweet and raspberries more sweet than you have written.

Also I think some cheese can be a little sweet.

I can actually vouch for this as well, having many wild elderberries in our area there isn't really a time they're ever sweeter then they are sour (or at least the sour is very much more noticeable). Also I feel like unless you really time the picking of blackberries, they tend to be quite sour themselves, more so then raspberries I'd say? Of course I'm not looking at any official charts here, just going off of my personal experiences with the fruits. 

[kaldskryke 27]

I'm so excited to see this! Has it been decided how flavors determine if a meal tastes good? Is there still any element of randomness, or will optimum recipes will be static accross all worlds?

 

Now for actual constructive input

Rye is often made as a sourdough bread, because a lower pH inhibits rye amylases (which can prevent a pure rye bread from rising, ie pumpernickle). Thus I'd suggest a bit of sourness for rye, even though it's not a strict truth.

Barley bread is often described as having a "nutty" flavor. Some extra bitterness perhaps?

[Kittychanley 1,002]

I find elderberries less sweet and raspberries more sweet than you have written.

Also I think some cheese can be a little sweet.

 

I can actually vouch for this as well, having many wild elderberries in our area there isn't really a time they're ever sweeter then they are sour (or at least the sour is very much more noticeable). Also I feel like unless you really time the picking of blackberries, they tend to be quite sour themselves, more so then raspberries I'd say? Of course I'm not looking at any official charts here, just going off of my personal experiences with the fruits. 

 

The sweet/sour values that are there for elderberries are based completely off of the nutritional profile, because I've never tasted them myself. It was very hard to try and come up with even those values because all I could think about while researching them was the stupid quote from Monty Python. I will change elderberries to Sweet 20 and Sour 40.

 

The fruits are actually the thing that I wanted the most community input on, because their profiles can vary so much just from harvest to harvest and how ripe the fruit actually is. I agree that the sour values for raspberries and blackberries could be swapped, and raspberry's sweet could be increased to 45. However, I'm currently debating also changing raspberry's bitter to 5 now that I actually focus on my memory of how they taste.

 

The flavor profile of cheese could really be almost anything, considering just how many different types of cheeses are out there. Considering the method that is used to make cheese however (curdled milk and vinegar), I would assume that it would be similar to farmer's cheese where there is a more strong and pungent almost sour taste than sweet.

 

 

Hmmm, bananas being the sweetest of all foods? I'm not so sure. A true, sun-ripened strawberry straight from the field beats it any day, IMHO. I feel qualified to say this because I devour downright inhumane quantities of strawberries every season. And while the average, yield-bred pale supermarket strawberry requires sugaring to be at their most tasty, there are some local fields where I can get small, natural strawberries so dark and sweet, I can hardly tell the difference between them and pure sugar.

 

Bananas on the other hand are a little different from most fruits in the way they are perfectly palatable even when not fully ripe. They have very little sweetness at that point, but they still taste good and are still nutritious. They then get sweeter as they continue to age - both on the tree and while harvested, incidentally. They are not reliant on remaining on the tree to ripen, because they are already fully formed. Meaning, it really depends on when you harvest them and how long you store them. You probably want a more "average" score for them, something like 40.

 

Strawberries were supposed to be 80, not 50 Sweet... no idea how I screwed that up in the chart.

 

Bananas are another food that it's hard to pick a good profile for, because like you said their flavor changes so drastically as they ripen. A barely yellow banana with a bunch of green would probably be closer to 10 Sweet, 40 Sour and 10 Bitter, while a banana that is ideal for eating in my opinion (consistently yellow, lots of brown freckles) is very sweet, not bitter at all, and maybe only the tiniest hint of sour to it. I was leaning more towards the fully ripe flavor profile only because of how quickly the decay kicks in on the fruit, which in my opinion suggests that the banana is already pretty ripe when you first get it. I will consider moving the profile a bit closer to the middle, with values maybe of 50 Sweet, and 5 Sour. The lowest I'd be willing to crank the sweet value back to would be 45, so that it is still higher than green apples and lemons.

 

 

I'm so excited to see this! Has it been decided how flavors determine if a meal tastes good? Is there still any element of randomness, or will optimum recipes will be static accross all worlds?

 

Now for actual constructive input

Rye is often made as a sourdough bread, because a lower pH inhibits rye amylases (which can prevent a pure rye bread from rising, ie pumpernickle). Thus I'd suggest a bit of sourness for rye, even though it's not a strict truth.

Barley bread is often described as having a "nutty" flavor. Some extra bitterness perhaps?

 

It hasn't been completely decided yet how the mechanic will work, but if I had to guess I would say that each individual player on a seed will have a different randomized taste profile. We need these numbers to be finalized before making any more decisions on the mechanic though, to make sure that no matter what system is implemented, it is always possible to make a fully satisfying meal for a player.

 

I completely agree with adding sour to rye. I avoid that stuff like the plague because I hate that flavor in it. Considering that corn's sweet value is 15 higher than the other grains because of my memory of getting corn off the sweet corn stands growing up, I would think that adding a value of 15 to Rye's sour would be a good balance in comparison.

 

As for the bitterness on barley, I would maybe change that value only to 5 or 10, considering that the flavor isn't as prominent.

[WetCheerios 24]

Just looking at the chart, Garlic and a Potato have nearly the same taste pallet.. other then a dash of salt. There must be some other kind of value to drastically separate their tastes considering garlic is used pretty much as a spice, not to be eaten by the pound.  Is spiciness not something that could be added to this table?

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

most taste comes from odour, which hasn't been included. The table is complete for flavour. Taste is flavour + odour. (remove the "u"s if you live in america, that sentence had a lot of them )

[WetCheerios 24]

most taste comes from odour, which hasn't been included. The table is complete for flavour. Taste is flavour + odour. (remove the "u"s if you live in america, that sentence had a lot of them )

Yah that's what it's missing! I'm perfectly happy with it in that case, and yes, I am Canadian so we also favoUr the "U's".

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

Yah that's what it's missing! I'm perfectly happy with it in that case, and yes, I am Canadian so we also favoUr the "U's".

hey, I'm in Toronto

[Kittychanley 1,002]

hey, I'm in Toronto

 

Dunk isn't a real Canadian though because he doesn't absolutely love maple syrup.

[Omicron 62]

So that's why he hasn't implemented maple tree tapping for syrup and sugar production yet?

[Bioxx 796]

It's important for me to point out, as kitty as already done, that this feature is still experimental. I like it a lot in theory but it remains to be seen how well it will work and how much trouble it may become going forward, so nothing is set in stone yet. I just need some sane values to be able to work with for me to begin implementing the next parts. As far as the other tastes such as pungency, coolness, metallicness etc I opted out of using stats beyond the basic tastes for simplicity sake. However, hotness may have a role in the future.