the.com/sourness
the tongue's bouncer, screening acids before they sneak into your gut
means The sharp, acidic taste sensation — like lemon or vinegar — or, figuratively, a bitter, ill-tempered mood.
from From the Old English "sur," meaning sour or acid, with the "-ness" suffix marking it as a state or quality. The root reaches back to a Proto-Germanic "suraz" (still visible in German "sauer" and the Scandinavian "surt"), and it's likely a distant cousin of words across Indo-European languages clustering around the idea of bitter or salty. So the taste came first; the surly disposition is a later borrowing of the flavor, the tongue lending its vocabulary to the temper.
- acid detector
- Sour taste is your mouth measuring hydrogen ions
- spoilage alarm
- It evolved to flag rotten, dangerous food
- kids love it
- Children tolerate sourness far better than adults
- face reflex
- Lemons trigger an involuntary universal pucker
- hidden sense
- Same cells may detect water in your mouth
sour cherry — montmorency variety, 15% acid content, used in michigan for 75% of us tart cherry production
sourdough starter — san francisco bay lactobacillus fermentation, produces 0.5-1% lactic acid, oldest cultures traced to 1847
sour cream — lactobacillus lactis fermentation of cream to 0.5% lactic acid minimum, standardized in 1940s us