I was searching for the distinction between “savory” and “umami” and apparently savory encompasses a variety of tastes. I agree that it does but wouldn’t those be tastes that exist in addition to umami and the other four tastes?
Also I know the nose can recognize many more different chemicals and that it plays a role in taste perception, but I’m pretty sure there’s more than five types of taste when I eat even without a sense of smell. This is IMO the kind of question that should be obvious but isn’t answered.
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When you chew and swallow food, volatile molecules enter your nose from the back, via your throat. This means you end up smelling your food as you eat it, and interestingly some smells are interpreted differently depending on whether they are detected *retronasally*, i.e. entering the nose from the back, or *orthonasally*, i.e. through the front (*retro* literally means “backward” – *ortho* does not mean anything to do with front or forward, but rather something like “correct” or “normal”, as in the way we normally associate with smell).
This retronasal smell contributes a lot to your perception of flavor, and explains why the diversity of flavors we can perceive is so great.
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