Weekend Meditation: Bitter

Recently I'm discovering that I have an appreciation for the bitter flavors: almost unsweetened chocolate, endives and radicchio, Campari, even molasses and certain olives. Certain beers, too. What used to make my sweet-tooth recoil is now interesting, complex, cleansing.

How absolutely odd and delightful!

Bitter is one of the tastes I associate with winter when grapefruit, kale and endive are in season and I pour molasses over my pancakes. Bitterness has a brightness, a kind of vivid nature which wakes up my sleepy, hibernating palate. I imagine slivers of deep red radicchio in salads, the juice of a grapefruit used in the dressing. Or just the taste of a good, bitter chocolate melting in my mouth, chased by a shot of espresso.

The synonyms for bitter are for the most part quite negative: rancorous, peevish, nasty, ill-natured. A bitter woman is someone best avoided; a bitter blow is far more agonizing than a mere upset. But despite the fact that we are inclined from birth to like sweet things, we also have an appreciation for the bitter. Easy proof: if it were just caffeine people wanted every morning, we'd down a can of Pepsi instead of cup after cup of rich, bitter coffee.

I'm excited to explore my newfound bitter flavors this season. I'm happy, too, to discover that my tastes are still changing and evolving, that I wake up each day not quite the same person that went to bed the night before. How exciting, and strange, and bittersweet it is!

(Image: Radicchio up close from Italian Culinary Tradition)

Comments (11)

Haha, maybe I'm still too young to appreciate the bitter - because I hate bitter greens and won't touch coffee. But my mom loves bitter things like deep dark chocolate, grapefruit, coffee, and greens. It would be really weird to wake up one day and crave something bitter...

Something I heard about recently is that we have our taste buds for sweet react to only 1 thing (sugars) and it's the same for salty and sour, but that our bitter taste buds react to lots (potentially hundreds) of different compounds, and so our taste for bitter things can be a lot more complex than other tastes. Also, there's a lot of variation in how people taste bitterness, some people genetically think some veggies (like broccoli) are very bitter, while others taste them as being relatively bland, and a lot of people fall somewhere in between.

Huh. Never thought that one's genetic taste perception would play into it, but I guess it makes sense. This link here says that those who are less sensitive to bitter may technically be able to imbibe more alcohol and are less prone to eat sweets. (http://www.decodeme.com/bitter-taste-perception)
I will for the most part eat most anything fairly bitter, but I start to duck out on the extreme stuff. 85% cacoa, really bitter grapefruit with the pith still on, bitter melon, and I still think that alcohol is nasty (I am not a drinker,and the few I've tried had enough sugar to give me cavities for a year).

I find the discussion of genetic predisposition so interesting. I cannot taste bitter at all! I've always thought there was just something wrong with my taste buds, but apparently I'm just not 'sensitive'. Either way, I'm not so bothered to be missing out.

If you wake up one morning craving something bitter, take a pregnancy test!

I'm a lover of bitter flavors, always have been. Now I wish I had some radicchio in the house.

<blushes> thanks, lcline3. Fixed!

I love this post and feel nearly exactly the same way!

I love anything bitter - chocolate, coffee, bitter melon, raddichio, citrus peel, dandelion greens, etc. Yum.

Is bitter different from astringent? I love tastes that make me pucker: vinegar, lime juice, tonic water, pomegranate molasses...

Since when is grapefruit bitter? Grapefruit is sour maybe, but not bitter. There's a difference.