Up to eighty percent of taste comes not from our taste
buds, but from our sense of smell. Taste buds allow us to
identify bitter, salty, sweet, and sour flavors. But we depend
on the smell of foods to give us most of our sense of flavor.
So without smelling the aroma of a food, it is difficult to
distinguish one flavor from another. (Incidentally, this is why
food loses its flavor when you have a stuff ed-up nose!)