Classical Sauce: if music be the love of food....

Heston Blumenthal has become one of the world's finest chefs. He has done so in a relatively short time and by taking infinite pains. Most of his recipes are too technological complex, unusual or time-consuming to be tried at home. But now here is an idea you can....

Blumenthal now offers an 'audio option' to his tasting menu. As one eats oysters, for example (it's probably only one oyster, after all, this is a tasting menu), one listens to the sound of the sea on an iPod. Apparently, research (in labs, not in the Fat Duck) shows the same oysters taste better and saltier when listened to with some aural background.

It's a gimmick - the iPod is glued inside a big sea shell - but it also is not. Quite obviously, restuarants go to great lengths to make their decor and ambience attractive. This applies to the background music too. One of the great attractions of my local sushi bar is that they play Classic FM. Perhaps I should try drinking my espresso to the sound of the Coffee Cantata...

In any case it is easy for Blumenthal to justify what he is doing - each of the five senses does indeed have an influence on the others.

From my side of the fence, it is interesting to think whether this is also true in reverse. What else is going on when one listens to a particular piece as a critic? A bad mood? A nice glass of wine? A new fragrance from a scented candle? A sunset? Did the circumstances then influence the review?

When doing producing work for CDs, I have been struck that some takes sounded better by day, others at night. And that's even before we start worrying about mechanical reproduction itself - different speakers or CD players....

So, as we can demonstrate endlessly, there is no objectivity, but the struggle to move closer to it remains a general, and laudable intellectual aspiration.

Ying Chang