TONGUE TASTE VS HAND TASTE

Koreans traditionally make a distinction between the “tongue taste” and the “hand taste” of a food.

Tongue taste is the straightforward chemical phenomenon that takes place whenever molecules make contact with taste buds, something that happens with any food as a matter of course. Tongue taste is the kind of easy, accessible flavor that any food scientist or manufacturer can reliably produce in order to make food appealing.

Hand taste, however, involves something greater than mere flavor. It is the infinitely more complex experience of a food that bears the  unmistakable signature of the individual who made it — the care and the thought and idiosyncrasy that that person has put into the work of preparing it. Hand taste cannot be faked, and hand taste is the reason we go to all this trouble, massaging the individual leaves of each cabbage and then folding them and packing them in the urn just so. What hand taste is, I understood all at once, is the taste of love.