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Music from the kitchen
Charles Spence
1,2
Abstract
A growing body of scientific research has recently started to demonstrate how both music and soundscapes can
influence people’s perception of the taste, flavour, and mouthfeel of food and drink. However, to date, far less
research has investigated the question of whether the music that happens to be playing in the background might
also influence the way in which chefs, home cooks, and others making food (or, for that matter, mixing drinks)
develop or season their creations. One of the aims of this review is to highlight the markedly different views
currently held by chefs concerning the appropriateness of music in their kitchens (and the different roles that it
might play). Next, the evidence that has been published to date suggesting that the music people listen to can
change the particular taste/flavour profiles that they create is reviewed. A number of putative explanations for the
crossmodal effects of music on taste are evaluated, including the suppressive effect of loud noise on certain aspects
of taste perception, priming through crossmodal correspondences, and/or the influence of any music-induced
changes in mood on taste/flavour perception. Given that what we hear influences what we taste, and hence, how
the person in the kitchen likely creates/seasons the dish, some commentators have been tempted to wonder
whether the same music should perhaps also be played in the spaces (e.g., the restaurant or home dining room)
where that food will be consumed in order to equate the conditions in which the dish or drink is seasoned/created
with the environment in which it is tasted. This opinion piece ends by stressing the limitations with such an
approach. One of the main problems being the kinds of music that the majority of chefs apparently prefer to listen
to while working in the kitchen, music which is often chosen to motivate the staff who will likely be working a long
shift.
Keywords: Music, Taste, Flavour, Culinary creation, Seasoning, Crossmodal correspondence
Introduction
Music from the kitchen
Unlike the sentiment captured in an ad of a few years
ago from AEG Electrolux for its kitchen appliances that
had the strapline "The kitchen that sounds like a library.",
kitchens, especially busy commercial kitchens, are places
that are full of noise—or at least they should be. As chef
Zakary Pelaccio, founder of the Fatty Crab and Fatty 'Cue
restaurants in North America, puts it in his book “Eat with
your hands”,“Instead of a silent kitchen, with all the vitality
of a courtroom, you want a kitchen that’s a party. So turn on
some music”…“Every professional kitchen I have ever run
and every home kitchen I have ever spent time in has been
filled with music. If you watch closely, you’ll notice that ev-
eryone’s cooking to the beat. Good cooks all have a natural
groove to begin with—you can see it in their step, hear it in
the way they chop or in the pound of their pestle. That
groove is the subtle manifestation of a cook’s connection
with his ingredients. So turn the music up.”([28], p. 14).
1
All of the recipes in Pelaccio’s [28] book come with a
musical recommendation concerning what to listen to
while preparing the dish. So, for anyone thinking about
cooking, the chef ’s Frog leg clay pot, for example, the
musical suggestion is “Ghostland Observatory, or any
other cheesy, fun dance music, will keep you on your
toes so you don’t overcook the croaker. As you listen,
hop around a bit in homage.”([28], p. 19).
2
In a sense following up on Pelaccio’s [28] suggestion,
Sweden’s Per Samuelsson literally makes music with the
sounds from the kitchen. He records the sounds of prep-
aration, the noise of peeling, chopping, slicing, dicing,
grinding, shaking, and stirring as the chefs work to
prepare the dishes that will later be served (see Fig. 1).
3
These sounds are then used as the elements (or
Correspondence: charles.spence@psy.ox.ac.uk
1
Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
2
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1
3UD, UK
© 2015 Spence. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://
creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Spence Flavour (2015) 4:25
DOI 10.1186/s13411-015-0035-z
instruments if you will) in his musical compositions. A
key element of these performances is that they are very
much site/event specific. That is, the musical composi-
tions are played back to the diners while they are tucking
into the fruits of the chef’s labours. They literally hear the
food being made. It is easy to imagine how such an ap-
proach might help foster a closer connection between the
kitchen and the diners. Indeed, it would certainly be intri-
guing to conduct the appropriate experimental research to
assess this claim empirically. According to Samuelsson
[34], one of the aims behind his compositions is to high-
light the often under acknowledged effort that is involved
in creating the food that the diner all too happily eats. At
the same time, Samuelsson hopes to create an immersive
multisensory environment that enhances the experience
of the meal for those who are lucky enough to be dining.
Silence in the kitchen
In stark contrast to Pelaccio’s [28] professed preferred
sonic accompaniment whenever he is cooking, you would
not have heard any music had you been lucky enough to
stumble into the kitchen of the ElBulli restaurant near
Rosales, Spain. It was forbidden! In fact, just before the
restaurant closed its doors for the last time, the great chef
Ferran Adrià was quoted as saying “We never listen to
music in the kitchen—we can’t”[24]. Silence was also the
order of the day in Chicago’s famous Alinea restaurant
(note that this restaurant is frequently ranked amongst the
world’s best). According to head chef Grant Achatz “There
is no music in the restaurant at all…And no music in the
kitchen.”[12]. The reason being that Achatz did not want
anything to interfere with the cooking (not to mention the
diner’s savouring of each and every bite of the food that
he and his team prepared). Other famous restaurants with
music-free kitchens include New York City’s Eleven Madi-
son Park. According to the chef, Daniel Humm “The kit-
chen has its own music. Based on the sound in the
kitchen, you can tell how things are going. Music would
interrupt that.”[12].
Music in the kitchen
There is, though, another school of thought as to whether
music should be played in the kitchen. Pelaccio is certainly
not the only chef who believes that music is a good idea.
According to one young chef at Recette, in New York’s
West Village, for example, music helps the creative juices
to flow.
4
As the chef there puts it “When it gets too hectic
and overwhelming, I just turn on a tune. And I focus.”[12].
So perhaps rather than thinking of music in the kitchen as
a distraction, one should consider the important role that it
can play in terms of motivating the staff who are working
there [2], not to mention in facilitating the creative process.
Indeed, there is a fairly extensive literature documenting
the role of music in encouraging creativity (e.g., [3, 11, 45]).
According to one journalist who researched the topic,
Recette is not unique in encouraging music in the
kitchens: ““Ask around, and you’ll hear a spate of testimo-
nials like that. Many chefs in New York and across the
country, especially those who are younger than 40, depend
on music as such a pivotal part of their creative process
that they would feel adrift in the kitchen without it.”…“I
would kill myself,”said chef Emma Hearst, 25, who could
be found with her team, one evening in March, cranking
Led Zeppelin’s“Custard Pie”by the stove at Sorella, on
the Lower East Side. “Iwouldn’twanttoworkwithsome-
one who didn’t play music. I just wouldn’tbehappy…
Music is the secret ingredient (on full blast) at Recette,
and it’s not the sort you would automatically associate
Fig. 1 Per Samuelsson on stage at the 2014 Sensibus Festival in Finland. The projection in the background shows the musician making the initial
recordings in the kitchen for one of his performances
Spence Flavour (2015) 4:25 Page 2 of 7
with a delicate presentation of, say, roasted foie gras or
blue prawn crudo. At this urbane bistro, those elegant
dishes ride out of the kitchen on the percussive thunder-
clouds of Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, Alice in Chains,
Metallica and Tool.”” [12]. More recently, other journalists
have started to provide lists of the preferred music playing
in the kitchens of restaurants stretching all the way from
Dallas [23] to Washington D.C. [1].
Motivational music
The young Franco-Colombian chef, Charles Michel, cur-
rently the Chef in Residence at Oxford University’sCross-
modal Research Laboratory describes Frank Cerutti, chef
de cuisine at “le Louis XV”restaurant in Monaco’sHotel
de Paris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Louis_XV_(res-
taurant)), putting on heavy metal during the “mise en
place”in order to make the kitchen staff go faster! Indeed,
this anecdote hints at the part of the reasoning behind the
chef’s decision to deliver music being that it will hopefully
motivate the workers. As Colin Lynch, the executive chef
of Barbara Lynch Gruppo, comprising restaurants such as
Menton and No. 9 Park, puts it “Idon’t think I’ve ever
worked in a kitchen that didn’thavesomeformofmusic
in it. The whole energy of the kitchen changes. The speed
at which people work changes depending what we listen
to. During prep, you zone out. You’re doing one thing for
45 minutes straight. It helps you keep that rhythm”[10].
Musical seasoning: assessing the evidence
Now, the question that one has to ask at this point is
whether the music being listened to by all those chefs
working the long shifts in the kitchen might not exert
some influence on the way in which they end up prepar-
ing/seasoning the food. One early study that collected
evidence that is in some way relevant to this question
comes from Ferber and Cabanac ([9], Experiment 2).
These researchers had a group of 10 men mix together
either a pair of sweet solutions (one weak, the other
strong) in order to obtain the most pleasant-tasting mix-
ture of the two. They also had their participants mix to-
gether two salty solutions in order to make the least
unpleasant-tasting solution. While mixing the solutions,
and for the 20 min beforehand, these experimenters ex-
posed their participants to one of four background noise
conditions: unpleasant white noise presented at 70 or
90 dB, the participant’s own preferred pleasant music se-
lection (at 90 dB), or silence. Interestingly, however, no
difference in people’s preferred taste for the solutions
was found as a function of the presence versus absence
of noise when the drinks were analysed. Contrary to
what might have been expected, given some of the opin-
ions quoted so far in this paper, the atmospheric sound
did not exert any effect on the composition of the drinks
that were made, at least not in this early study. That
said, one might wonder whether the solutions were
complex enough to really allow the music to exert its
full effect.
5
Certainly, anything served in a home kitchen
or restaurant setting is likely to be much more complex
in terms of the tastes, textures, aromas, and flavours that
are all competing for the diner’s limited attention. The
reason why complexity matters here is that any effects
of selective attention may have more chance of affecting
perception under those (complex) conditions where
there are a number of elements of the flavour experience
that the participant’s attention can be drawn to. If one
takes the contrast case of, say, a solution that has no
taste/flavour other than sweetness, it may be difficult to
draw the participant’s attention away from that domin-
ant taste.
Recently, a group of Finnish and Argentinian researchers
arrived at a rather different conclusion with regard to the
impact of music on taste composition [18]. These re-
searchers had four groups of people, made up from the
general public who happened to turn up to a public science
fair, listen to music. The key manipulation was that the
music had been pre-selected to have either a “sweet”or
“sour”musical connotation (see Table 1).
6
As an initial san-
ity check, the food/taste word associations that came to
people’s mind on listening to the music were assessed first.
7
As expected, analysis of the data revealed that the associa-
tions were indeed connected to the putative taste of the
music.
The participants in Kontukoski et al.’s [18] study were
provided with a range of sweet and sour ingredients
to play with and were invited to mix a drink that,
in some sense, matched the music that they were listen-
ing to. The sweet ingredients included mango juice,
orange juice, and liquid honey, while the sour juices in-
cluded grapefruit, lemon, and pineapple. Analysis of the
Table 1 The four music tracks that were used in Kontukoski et al.’s
[18] recent study. Listening to these pieces, some idiosyncrasies
associated with the performances should perhaps be mentioned.
First, the breathing of the pianist is clearly audible in the Satie piece.
The Schumann recording is not of the highest quality. There is
audience noise, and the recording itself is rather sharp sounding,
and this aspect of the recording could possibly have affected the
results reported by Kontukoski and colleagues
Sweet music
Trois Gymnopédies, No.2 Lent et triste by Erik Satie, composed in 1888,
piano music (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = 1loSL7CjE_w);
Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6 No. 18, Nicht schnell, C major, Eusebius by
Robert Schumann composed in 1837, piano music (http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIHsNlwD6jQ);
Sour music
Superscriptio by Brian Ferneyhough, composed in 1981, flute music
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYnYimo8z2Q);
Fragments of transformed Argentinian tangos by Bruno Mesz (2012)
Spence Flavour (2015) 4:25 Page 3 of 7
composition of the drinks at the end of the study re-
vealed that significantly sweeter drinks had indeed been
mixed (123 g/l of sugar and 8.6 g/l total acid content)
while listening to the “sweeter”musical selections than
while listening to the putatively sour music (97 g/l of
sugar and 11.9 g/l total acid content). It is, though, per-
haps interesting to pause for a moment here in order to
think about how else these results might have turned
out. A priori, one might have anticipated either an as-
similation or a contrast effect (see [29, 35]). The “sweet”
music might have been expected to prime the associated
taste and hence result in the participants making drinks
thatwere,onaverage,sweeter.Alternatively,however,the
“sweet”music might have been expected to result in the
participants adding less sweetness to their drink (since
some sweetness was provided by the music playing in the
background).
Kontukoski et al.’s [18] intriguing results fall some way
short of demonstrating that the nature of the music that
just so happens to be playing in the background in the res-
taurant (or, for that matter, home) kitchen will necessarily
bias the nature of the dishes that are made, or at the very
least, the seasoning that is applied. That said, these results
most certainly do represent a step in the right direction
when it comes to assessing such a claim empirically. It
will, then, be an intriguing question for future research to
determine what would happen if this particular study, or
one quite like it, were to be repeated with a new group of
participants. In this case, though, the participants would
simply be instructed to mix a drink to their own preferred
taste, while the background music was unobtrusively (and
incidentally) changed between sweet and sour from one
drink to the next or vice versa.
On the crossmodal correspondence between music and taste
Kontukoski et al.’s [18] results can be framed in terms of
the growing literature highlighting the sometimes-
surprising crossmodal correspondences that exist in all
of us between the music we hear and certain specific
tastes, aromas, and flavours (e.g., [6, 14]). What this
means, in practice, is that by playing a certain piece of
music, our attention can be biased in terms of the ele-
ments (i.e., tastes and/or flavours) that we concentrate
on [7]. So, for example, play high pitched tinkling piano
or wind chimes and people’s attention will be drawn
toward the sweeter tastes in a dish. By contrast, play
lower pitched and/or brassy music and the bitter notes
of e.g., dark chocolate or coffee will be accentuated (see
[5, 43]). However, while attention may be a necessary pre-
condition for certain crossmodal correspondences to exert
their effect, it would seem likely that other correspon-
dences may operate in the absence of any explicit atten-
tion on the part of the participant to the component
unisensory stimuli.
Mood music
Now it is, of course, important to bear in mind here that
the taste of the music (i.e., whether it is “sweet”or
“sour”) is not the only way in which what we hear might
be expected to influence how we prepare or season the
food or drink. There is also the possibility that music
can induce a certain mood or emotion in those who
happen to be listening to it [17]. This, in turn, might be
expected to influence taste perception, and hence, the
way in which a chef seasons a dish [42]. So, for example,
it has been shown that a person’s mood can influence
their ability to detect both olfactory (e.g., [31]) and gus-
tatory stimuli (Heath et al., 2006; [39]).
8
In one represen-
tative study, Pollatos et al. presented their participants
with pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures from the
International Affective Picture System (IAPS) database.
After having viewed a selection of the unpleasant pic-
tures, the participants’sensitivity to olfactory stimuli was
lowered, as a result of the negative emotional stimula-
tion. Elsewhere it has been shown that those individuals
who are anxious tend to be less sensitive to bitterness
and to salty tastes (Heath et al., 2006; [39]). Normal indi-
viduals who are stressed, meanwhile, show increased
sensitivity to the bitter taste of saccharin [8]. Emotion
has also been shown to affect olfactory perception [4].
It would not seem like too much of a stretch to im-
agine that certain kinds of background music might put
the chef (or whoever else happens to be in charge of
preparing or seasoning the food) in a particular mood,
either positive or negative. This, in turn, may be ex-
pected to subtly influence their taste/flavour perception,
and hence, the way in which they end up seasoning a
dish. Just such a suggestion was, in fact, captured some
years ago by Salman Rushdie in his prize-winning novel
“Midnight’s Children”when the narrator says “..and
Amina stirred her disappointments into a hot lime chut-
ney which never failed to bring tears to the eyes.”([33],
p. 172). Given that our mood affects our perception of
the taste (and flavour) of food and drink, it would cer-
tainly be intriguing in future research to investigate
whether listening to an uplifting versus to a depressing
piece of music would really affect the way in which a
chef seasons his/her food. Certainly, the suggestion from
those eating in the restaurant itself is that if you get the
music right the food just tastes better. Just take the fol-
lowing, “…I’m sitting in a restaurant–there’s music. You
know why they have music in restaurants? Because it
changes the taste of everything. If you select the right
kind of music, everything tastes good. Surely people who
work in restaurants know this…” ([21], pp. 81–82).
9
Masking taste with loud noise
Finally, here, in terms of the putative mechanism(s)
underlying the crossmodal effect of music on taste, it is
Spence Flavour (2015) 4:25 Page 4 of 7
worth noting that loud sounds have been shown to sup-
press our ability to taste (see [41]). Here, think only of the
loud noise (c. 85 dB) of the engines on the airplane. Such
loud background noise suppresses the ability of people to
taste sweetness and saltiness, but counterintuitively en-
hances their ability to perceive the taste of umami ([46];
[47]).
10
The problem of loud background noise is not re-
stricted to the air, though. The noise levels in many popu-
lar restaurants are, in fact, much louder. With the noise in
many restaurants (made up of both the background music
and the noise of animated conversation) coming in at 90–
100 dB, it is no wonder that a growing number of restaur-
ant critics now include noise ratings alongside the quality
of the food (see [40], for a review).
It is, though, an open question as to whether this kind
of restaurant noise would exert the same idiosyncratic
effect on the perception of different tastes as the sound
of aircraft engines has recently been shown to do. Cross-
sensory masking is, then, a likely third route by which
what we hear changes what we taste and how much we
end up enjoying the experience.
Application
Given what we have seen so far in this opinion piece,
one could easily start to become convinced that the test
kitchen in Splendid Ice Creams in Columbus Ohio
might really be on to something: According to one jour-
nalist who visited the site, each room has a different
sound, depending on the ice cream flavour that is cur-
rently being concocted. She continues, “If employees are
languorously toasting marshmellows with a blowtorch,
you may hear Schubert. If they’re stirring ancient ingre-
dients like frankincense and honey and almonds for one
of the holiday flavors, the backdrop may be the somber,
runic ballads of a Danish singer named Agnes Obel.
Summery, cake-studded batches come to life to bright
and shiny pop by the likes of Lady Gaga, Katy Perry,
Madonna, and Nicki Minaj.”[12].
Over-and-above any role that the music has in motiv-
ating one’s staff to keep chopping, then, one has to won-
der whether the chef in charge of the restaurant might
not also want to match the music playing in the kitchen
to the dishes/sauces that they happen to be preparing?
Conclusions
As this opinion piece has hopefully made clear, profes-
sional chefs hold very different views concerning the ap-
propriateness of music in the kitchens they run. While
some chefs cannot cook without it, others have banned it
entirely from the kitchens they operate. That said, my
sense from the literature is that music has become a more
common feature of restaurant kitchens in recent years.
Not in all of them, for sure, but certainly in a growing pro-
portion. The evidence that has started to emerge now
demonstrates that what we hear, be we a chef or home
cook, can, at least in certain cases, influence the way in
which we season the food. This might be as the result of
the crossmodal correspondence between the sonic proper-
ties of the music and taste/flavour perception. Alterna-
tively, however, it might also result from the potential
mood-altering or emotion-inducing effect of music and
the consequent effect of mood/emotion on taste/aroma
perception. Finally, it is certainly important not to forget
the suppressive effect of overly loud background noise on
taste perception (what is referred to by some as crossmo-
dal masking; see [40], for a review). Of course, over-and-
above any effect that music has on the way the chef sea-
sons the food, it is important not to neglect music’smotiv-
ational role, its ability to alleviate boredom, and perhaps
also its role in creative problem solving (e.g., [11, 45]).
In closing, there may be those out there who may
be wondering why we should care about what, if any-
thing, the chefs play in the kitchen. Well, the evidence
reviewed here certainly suggests the musical trends in
the kitchen are increasingly making their way into the
dining rooms of many a popular restaurant [40]. Fur-
thermore, given that what we hear can influence what
we taste, and hence, how the person in the kitchen cre-
ates/seasons the dish, one might be tempted to speculate
about whether the same music should also be played in
the spaces (e.g., the restaurant or home dining room)
where that food will be consumed. This perhaps surpris-
ing suggestion was first captured by First [10] in a piece
where it was stated that “Certainly, if the way the food
tastes, and how much we like the experience really is in-
fluenced by the music that happens to be playing in the
background then it might well make sense to adopt the
strategy of playing exactly the same music in the
kitchens as in the dining room.”
However, that said, one should always remember that
“No matter how elegant the food at a restaurant, the
music that plays as it’s prepared is likely to be less re-
fined. No one is listening to Vivaldi as he buffs baby veg-
etables and dismembers ducks”[10]! Having said that,
though, there are certainly some commentators out
there who would be tempted to argue that whatever the
music, it has to be better than the muzak that has been
playing for too long in so many of the restaurants
around the developed world [16, 22].
11
Endnotes
1
Though, there are many out there who believe that
that is exactly where such music should stay (i.e., in the
kitchen; e.g., see [30]; [40]).
2
However, given that the chef starts his book with the
following: “Not sure what beat will get the party started?
Well, I’ve taken the liberty of suggesting the perfect
music-recipe pairings. These suggestions are the result
Spence Flavour (2015) 4:25 Page 5 of 7
of rigorous experimenting and consultations with MIT
sound scientists—actually, I just made them up. While I
can’t say with any certainty that listening to the sug-
gested tunes enhances the flavour of a dish, I can tell
you that you walk (and cook) taller when you have
theme music.”([28], p. 14), perhaps we shouldn’t take
his musical choices as indicating anything more than
merely personal preference.
3
Samuelsson’s approach is not to be confused with that
of Linsey Pollak, an artist/performer who makes musical
instruments out of vegetables (e.g., see http://www.lin-
seypollak.com/).
4
According to research by Mehta et al. [25], a moder-
ate level of background noise (c. 70 dB) can be condu-
cive to problem solving (at least when compared to a
50 dB quiet condition).
5
Though, here it has to be admitted that defining
“complexity”when it comes to flavour is no simple mat-
ter. Immediately, one might think of chemical complex-
ity [32]. However, it is important to note that there is no
simple mapping between chemical complexity and per-
ceived complexity ([36-37]; [38]). Here, in the text, I
have in mind perceived complexity.
6
Analysis of the musical selections showed that the
sour pieces were both rougher and brighter than the
sweet musical selections. Roughness here refers to the
sensory dissonance in the music, whereas brightness re-
fers to the proportion of high-frequency spectral energy
in the piece (see also [15]).
7
Note that in this between-participants study, each of
the participants only heard one piece of music.
8
Taking things even further, those individuals who suffer
from a mood disorder, or else suffer from major depres-
sion, have been shown to find it harder to detect olfactory
and gustatory stimuli. That is, their sensory thresholds ac-
tually increase (e.g., Heath et al., 2006; [20]; [27]; [45]).
9
There is, of course, a danger of tautology here, in that
what counts as “the right music”is defined by its having
a positive impact on people’s experience of the taste/fla-
vour of the food.
10
As to why background noise should have different
effects on different tastes is not currently known. One
possibility suggested by Yan and Dando [45] is that there
may be some interference from the auditory nerves on
those that transmit information about the taste of food
and drink from mouth to brain.
11
It should be noted here that while the term “muzak”
is used in everyday language as a pejorative term for
background music that the listener does not like, it is
the more precise usage of the term that is being referred
to here (see [19]).
Competing interests
The author declares that he has no competing interests.
Acknowledgements
CS would like to acknowledge the AHRC Rethinking the Senses grant
(AH/L007053/1). Written informed consent was obtained for publication of
this manuscript and accompanying images.
Received: 21 May 2015 Accepted: 30 June 2015
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