Edible Mushroom Research Revealed New Flavors

The history of flavor research in the United States dates back to the first half of the 20th century — though a look at the USDA’s website reveals that a lot of that early research focused on fruits, vegetables and meat. Those aren’t the only things found in nature that humans eat, though, and research into the world of edible fungi like mushrooms is helping to expand scientists’ knowlege of what flavors are possible.

A paper published earlier this year in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry helps to demonstrate what this research can reveal — and how much we have left to learn. The paper’s authors write that “[a]lthough numerous mushrooms taste bitter, the corresponding substances and receptors are unexplored.” The work described in this paper sought to reveal more about how the brain processes these under-represented flavors.

What did they learn? “Mushroom bitter compounds may be among the most potent natural bitter substances,” they conclude — and call for more research into the connections between mushroom flavors and our sense of taste.

The paper also works to dispel one myth surrounding the taste of mushrooms: that their levels of bitterness correspond to toxicity. “From a biological perspective, it may seem somewhat odd that the mushrooms analyzed here are considered extremely bitter-tasting but not poisonous and thus edible,” the authors write. They also note that the accurately-named death cap mushrooms reportedly taste far better than some of their edible counterparts.

In an article for Scientific American, K.R. Callaway expanded on some of the researchers’ findings. This goes beyond simply learning more about how the body processes mushrooms as food. The University of Miami’s Nirupa Chaudhari cited the relationship between taste and insulin as one area where this resarch could help improve our overall health as well.