Gustatory Vocabulary in Baking

Tamurko I. Gustatory Vocabulary in Baking : bachelor’s thesis : 035 Philology / supervised by O. Borysovych. Kyiv, 2025. 100 р.

Sensory linguistics investigates how human sensory experiences are encoded and communicated through language. Among the five sensory modalities, taste – also known as gustation – plays a central role not only in human survival and biological functioning but also in the expression of cultural, emotional, and personal identities. Gustatory vocabulary, as a linguistic means of conveying taste perception, has received growing scholarly attention in recent decades, yet remains relatively underexplored compared to visual or auditory modalities. Within this field, the domain of baking presents a particularly rich area of inquiry, offering a diverse range of taste-related language embedded in both technical and expressive culinary vocabulary.
This study investigates the linguistic features, semantic nuances, and pragmatic functions of gustatory vocabulary within the specific context of baking. Drawing from a corpus of 1,034 examples collected from 40 recipe articles published on the Bon Appétit website, the research analyzes how taste is represented in both recipes and reviews of baked goods, including cakes, cookies, brownies, pies, bread, and biscuits. The findings reveal that gustatory vocabulary in baking is dominated by adjectives, emphasizing the experiential and evaluative nature of sensory language. Key descriptors such as creamy, buttery, and sweet recur frequently, while rarer terms offer nuanced portrayals of texture and flavor. Semantically, the gustatory lexicon includes a high proportion of synesthetic and evaluative expressions, reflecting the affective and metaphorical dimensions of taste description.
By focusing on gustatory vocabulary in baking recipes, this research contributes to sensory linguistics by illustrating how taste is linguistically constructed and culturally mediated. The results have practical implications for lexicography, language teaching, culinary writing, food marketing, and translation, offering a deeper understanding of how language bridges sensory perception and human communication.