Does music make food taste better?

A good meal in a loud restaurant can taste a little flat. Then you have much the same meal somewhere quieter, and it tastes better. It’s hard to say whether that was the kitchen or the noise.

Music can change the taste of food a little. Researchers at Oxford and elsewhere reviewed this whole area in 2019. They reported that when people like the music, they tend to like the food more, and that background noise mostly gets in the way of tasting by distracting people. Most of the studies they looked at measured small changes in ratings in a lab.

Loud noise seems to change how some things taste, at least in a lab. In a 2011 study, people ate blindfolded while they heard quiet or loud background noise. With the loud noise, they rated the food as less sweet and less salty, and as crunchier. The noise was a steady hiss, though, and not music or the sound of a crowd.

In 2015, researchers at Cornell had 48 people taste the five basic tastes with and without the roar of an airplane cabin playing. Sweet things tasted less sweet in the noise, and savory things (umami) tasted stronger. Salty, sour and bitter didn’t change, so the two studies disagree about salt. Both were lab studies, and neither one used music.

Music seems to change how people describe a wine. In a 2012 study, groups of people drank the same wine while different music played, and the way they described the wine followed the character of the music they were hearing. Those were ratings given in a lab.

Researchers have tried it with live musicians, too. At a real wine tasting in 2015, live classical musicians played two pieces chosen to suit two wines. Half the tasters heard the piece meant to match each wine, and half heard the other one. The music changed how acidic and how fruity the wines seemed. The researchers couldn’t say whether a better match made the evening any better overall, and it was only one event.

The best music for a dinner party is probably whatever the people at the table are likely to enjoy, at a level they can talk across. In a 2022 study in a Finnish cafeteria, 248 people ate lunch with slow music, fast music, cafeteria noise or silence. Meals lasted longer with any sound than in silence, and longer with slow music than with fast, but people didn’t eat more. How much people liked the sound went along with how much they liked the food. That was one cafeteria at lunchtime.

For a client dinner, a wine dinner or a dinner party at home, a jazz duo or a solo musician can play under the meal at that level. Want to know more about volume? Check out our post on how loud background music should be.