Ask Anything: What Does Water Taste Like?
A Splash of Water Momoko Takeda/Getty Images For thousands of years, philosophers claimed that water had no flavor. It’s the baseline for the sense of taste, they said—a starting point and null condition. What water is to tongues, darkness is to eyes and silence is to ears. “The natural substance water per se tends to be tasteless,” wrote Aristotle. In his view, it serves only as the vehicle for flavor. But eventually, scientists began to notice that a draught of pure distilled water could provoke a certain taste. Some found it bitter on the tongue; others said it was insipid. By the 1920s, evidence was mounting that water changes flavor depending on what you happen to have tasted just before. Take a sip of Poland Spring after putting something acidic on your tongue, and it may taste a little...