Host an unforgettable meal with science and a personal touch

Imagine settling in for an elegant fish dinner and you’re asked to hold a seashell to your ear. You abide, and hear the incessant squawking of seagulls. You’re not likely to forget that meal.

Restaurants and chefs have all sorts of escamotages they hope will ensure that your experience is memorable and meaningful. That seashell stunt, for example, is chef Heston Blumenthal’s signature plate, Sound of the Sea, and it uses those additional elements to enhance your perception of the meal. Cooking is, after all, the intersection of science and art, and eating is a unique experience strongly influenced by many sensory systems. Sure, the gustatory system plays a role, but only a small one—some researchers think it may even comprise less than half of the whole tasting experience.

“We never put anything in our mouth without looking at it first, and our brains have already decided what it is or what we think it is, and very often those orthonasal smell cues are, again, setting our expectations,” says Charles Spence, experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford and author of Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating. “And then when we actually taste, we’re mostly just kind of occasionally comparing what we taste to our expectation of what we think we should be tasting.”

Chefs, scientists, and sociologists have spent years trying to decipher the formula for the perfect meal and developing new ways to dazzle guests. Standing on the shoulders of those giants, you can replicate such wonder too. So the next time you want to treat your guests to an indulgent, entertaining, scrumptious, and memorable experience, plan to engage all their senses.

Make them forget their quotidian life

When you’re hosting, you control the setting. Create one that will help your guests transition from their everyday routines into a realm solely dedicated to a single pleasurable moment: your party. You can do this by decorating the room to fit the theme of your food—there’s an experimental restaurant in Shanghai that serves fish and chips while projecting a Union Jack on the table, for example. Or you can try to create some sort of “mental barrier” for your guests, like letting them play a board game while you prepare the meal, so they stop thinking about what happened during their day and start transitioning into this new moment.

“Do something funny or tell a joke to get people to switch out of whatever state they might’ve been in and make sure they’re in a good mood,” says Spence. “I call it a mental palate cleanser. The better the mood the better the food will taste.”

Personalize their experience

Tailoring the experience to your guests is an easy way to make a meal memorable. Memory is key, because you will be able to measure how successful your party was by how much people remember it afterward.

Creating some sort of surprise or giving guests a peek behind the scenes can also help. Spence suggests showing some of the preparation, or adding a finishing touch once the plate has already been served, all to establish an element of theatricality—think how popular Salt Bae (real name: Nusret Gökçe) got with his quirky salt sprinkle.

And don’t forget some sturdy cutlery alongside your carefully crafted plate, as there’s evidence that the heft of utensils can heavily influence how much people enjoy a meal.

Name your dishes, and go all-out

Give your dishes names, using descriptive, elaborate adjectives to really drive home the crunch, crisp, seasonality, or provenance of the food. “Storytelling sort of knits it all together,” says Spence. “Calling them ‘twisted zingy carrots’ rather than just ‘healthy carrots’ really makes a difference to the experience.” Another cheeky tip from Spence: telling people how expensive the wine is makes them think it tastes better too.

Give your guests a good look at the food before they eat it

You may be tempted to serve your guests and let them dig in immediately, but there’s no guarantee they’ll take a moment to appreciate what’s in front of them. Make sure they behold its full glory by making a deliberate presentation—now’s a good time to rattle off the dish’s name and ingredients, too. This will also allow them to smell the meal if they haven’t already, activating a sense that’s incredibly important to how humans experience food.

“It’s a little bit paradoxical,” says Dipayan Biswas, a marketing professor at the University of South Florida. “Even though scent has a stronger effect than visual cues in determining perception, the effect of the scent is actually stronger when you have a visual cue before it too.” 

[Related: This weird trick can make an onion taste like an apple]

He would know: he and two colleagues recently conducted a study that asked almost 200 students to look at and smell—or just smell—some red strawberry-flavored fruit snacks before eating them. Overall, the participants enjoyed the treats more when they stared, then sniffed.

There’s an ongoing debate about exactly how much of a role scent plays in how we taste, but the percentage is high. Our sense of smell is incredibly powerful and catering to it can make or break the dining experience. If you really want your guests to indulge in the odor of your food, try using a cloche to keep the scent contained before opening it in front of them.

Certain scents will also make people feel certain ways: eucalyptus and peppermint make people feel cooler, while cedar and cinnamon make them feel warmer. Citrus can make you feel more alert, and lavender can make you feel more relaxed, Biswas says. Try to harness these smells to further set the mood—light some autumnal candles if you’re serving a hearty Thanksgiving meal, for example.

Use color as a cue

Warmer colors like red and orange tend to make people more excited and likely to choose more indulgent foods. Lighter colors, like blue or off-white, meanwhile, are more conducive to healthy eating, Biswas says. Certain colors also allude to certain tastes, like if you put coffee in a pink cup it’ll taste sweeter compared to some served in a black or green cup, Spence says.

The same goes for colorful ambient lighting. With color-changing light bulbs, you can manipulate the guests’ sensory experience. Red light will bring out the fruitiness of wine, while green light will make the vino suddenly taste sour and fresher, according to Spence. If you find your guests are polite enough to say the wine isn’t quite to their taste, it’s worth trying to adjust the color of the bulb before buying a new bottle.

Dim the lights

Speaking of lighting, darker rooms are typically associated with more upscale places. Simultaneously, dim lighting makes people choose more unhealthy foods because it dulls the senses and affects our melatonin production, Biswas says. So, dial down the brightness a bit if that helps the overall vibe.

Match music to mission

Adjust your strategy depending on your guests