why does browning on food, such as grill marks or roasting, taste so good?
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Almost every part of our biology was designed to take advantage of something in some way.
A lot of these advantages presented themselves as random mutations or just happen stance changes
Now our taste buds and how we taste is no different and it comes in as two different factors.
The first one is genetic and has to do with the benefits of cooked food. Cooking your food helps to break it down and make more of the nutrients accessible, it also kills micro organisms so your chances of getting sick eating some meat or vegetable that’s cooked goes down.
Now clearly ancient humans didn’t know this and this is where natural selection comes in , those that preferred that cooked taste would end up healthier and live longer meaning they would have more and more kids and over time they would become the dominant population.
Now the second one is a bit more direct , babies tend to have preferences for the food their mother ate during the pregnancy , so that food preference can be carried down through mother to child as well
So to summarize , the reason that cooked flavour tastes so good is because it was evolutionarily beneficial to like that flavour so it was a trait that was dominant , and if your mother liked that flavour she could also pass it on in utero as well
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