Question

How does smell affect taste? How would you test this?

Answer 1

There are specialized cell present within the nose that pick up the ordorants, airborne odor molecules.Odorants stimulate receptor proteins found on hairlike cilia at the tips of the sensory cells, a process that initiates a neural response. Ultimately, messages about taste and smell converge, allowing us to detect the flavors of food.The odor Receptor in nosal cavity mainly help in smelling if the Receptor loss then it affect the taste. So smell is very important to sense of taste.

By eating and drinking we mainly taste the food .Along with these two by smelling the flavor / odor approximate 80 of disireness come .
You can test it: suppose chicken curry is making by your mom in the kitchen and the smell come to our study room. It means the disireness of taste to the chicken increase.Some time saliva come from mouth.Before taking food you feel the taste by smelling for which saliva come from mouth.
So both smell and taste have chemoreceptor that help in taking food.By this way smell help in taste.

Hope it clear your doubt.Thank You