Music from the kitchen*

A GROWING body of scientific research has recently started to demonstrate how both music and soundscapes can influence people’s perception of the taste, flavor, 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.

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 everyone’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).

(Photo © Wavebreakmedia Ltd | Dreamstime.com)

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).

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 preparation, the noise of peeling, chopping, slicing, dicing, grinding, shaking, and stirring as the chefs work to prepare the dishes that will later be served. These sounds are then used as the elements (or 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 compositions are played back to the diners while they are tucking into the fruits of the chef’s labors. They literally hear the food being made. It is easy to imagine how such an approach might help foster a closer connection between the kitchen and the diners. Indeed, it would certainly be intriguing to conduct the appropriate experimental research to assess this claim empirically. According to Samuelsson [34], one of the aims behind his compositions is to highlight 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 savoring 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 Madison Park. According to the chef, Daniel Humm, “The kitchen 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. 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]).

Motivational music

The young Franco-Colombian chef, Charles Michel, currently the Chef in Residence at Oxford University’s Crossmodal Research Laboratory describes Frank Cerutti, chef de cuisine at “le Louis XV” restaurant in Monaco’s Hotel de Paris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Louis_XV_(restaurant)), 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 “I don’t think I’ve ever worked in a kitchen that didn’t have some form of music 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 preparing/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 mixture of the two. They also had their participants mix together two salty solutions in order to make the least unpleasant-tasting solution. While mixing the solutions, and for the 20 min beforehand, these experimenters exposed their participants to one of four background noise conditions: unpleasant white noise presented at 70dB or 90dB, the participant’s own preferred pleasant music selection (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 analyzed. Contrary to what might have been expected, given some of the opinions 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. 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 flavors 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 flavor experience that the participant’s attention can be drawn to. If one takes the contrast case of, say, a solution that has no taste/flavor other than sweetness, it may be difficult to draw the participant’s attention away from that dominant taste. –

*This article by Charles Spence is taken from The Flavour Journal

References

2 Baker T. Cooking to music: why chefs listen to heavy metal. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/oct/21/cooking-music-chefs-heavy-metal on 12/05/2015.

3 Burns MT. Music as a tool for enhancing creativity. J Creat Behav. 1988; 22:62-69. Publisher Full Text

9 Ferber C, Cabanac M. Influence of noise on gustatory affective ratings and preference for sweet or salt. Appetite. 1987; 8:229-235. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text

10 First D. Music to prep by: the tunes they name can lighten or quicken the mood before service. Boston Globe, July 27th. 2011. Downloaded from http://www.boston.com/ae/food/restaurants/articles/2011/07/27/food_and_music_are_complements_in_most_kitchens___before_its_time_to_focus_on_service/ on 12/05/2015.

11 Fitzpatrick F. Why music, Part 6: music and creativity. The Huffington Post, 20th February. 2013. Downloaded from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-fitzpatrick/music-and-creativity_b_2253464.html on 27/06/2015.

12 Gordinier J. Who’s rocking to the music? That’s the chef. The New York Times, April 23rd. 2012. Downloaded from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/dining/when-the-music-moves-the-chef-and-the-menu.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 on 27/07/2014. 

24 McKnight R. Exit interview: Ferran Adrià. GQ Magazine, 7th July. 2011. Downloaded from http://www.gq.com/food-travel/restaurants-and-bars/201107/ferran-adria-exit-interview-el-bulli on 26/07/2014. 

28 Pelaccio Z. Eat with your hands. Ecco, New York, NY; 2012.

34 Samuelsson P. Taste of sound—composing for large scale dinners. Keynote presentation given at the Sensibus Festival, Seinäjoki, Finland; 2014.

45 Weinberger NM. Creating creativity with music. MusICA Research Notes, V(2). 1998. Downloaded from http://www.musica.uci.edu/mrn/V5I2S98.html#creating on 27/06/2015.