Loud noise and cabin pressure do weird things to the human body.
Been told you should always order a Bloody Mary on a flight? It’s not just because it’s a luxurious long drink worthy of a first class ticket, it also comes down to science. Sitting pretty at 30,000 feet affects how things taste – see, it’s not just because it’s “plane food” that your trolley meal tastes bland.
In the early days of air travel, inflight meals were a gourmet affair – hard to believe, we know. Fewer passengers meant more space for functioning kitchens, and a lack of cabin pressurisation kept the food from drying out. Of course, every step forward in airline innovation has come at the expense of the food. As the number of passengers grew, kitchens were swapped for seats. More seats meant more meals in less space, and the whole concept of in-seat fine dining and on-board chefs went out the window (well, not literally). Nowadays, the quality of the food on the plane is not the main reason most people travel, and it turns out science isn’t helping us there either.
Before we get to the Bloody Mary, we have to look at why things taste different on a plane to begin with, something several studies have examined. It turns out there’s a few reasons. The first is that lower air pressure, which happens as the plane rises, reduces the sensitivity of taste buds to sweet and salty foods – a study by Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics found that we lose our perception of these flavours by about 30%. This temporary change in body chemistry is what makes most food and drink taste pretty dull at altitude. The same study also found that the dry cabin air hinders our ability to smell, which, of course, affects how we taste food and drinks. That same low humidity is the reason why most food served on board is slathered in sauce – without it, it’d be dry as hell.
The third reason is even weirder: the noise level on an aeroplane influences your perception of taste. And that’s where the Bloody Mary comes in. According to a 2016 study by a group of Cornell researchers published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, tomato juice, the main ingredient in a Bloody Mary, tastes better with aeroplane ambiance.
The study of 48 participants asked them to sample an array of tomato juices with different flavour profiles, including sweet, salty and bitter options. During the tasting, researchers increased the noise levels and asked participants to rate the intensity of each flavour throughout the process. The results showed that in a noisier environment, it was harder to detect sweetness, however savoury flavours (that alluring fifth taste known as ‘umami’) were still easy to perceive.
Airlines do try to design inflight menus based on this information, opting for more savoury dishes (despite what you might think). But it’s because of all this that Bloody Marys are the perfect sky-high order. They’re made even more savoury than an average tomato juice with the addition of umami-rich ingredients like Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco, meaning they remain a robustly flavourful drink in a sea of options that are bland, overly fizzy (cabin pressure messes with a soft drink’s bubbles) or too acidic (wines can taste more acidic and tannic in the air).
“All those travellers who order a Bloody Mary after the seat belt sign has been turned off have figured out intuitively what scientists are only now slowly coming to recognise empirically,” a team of British researchers speculated in 2014. If you’re the type who seems to only enjoy a Bloody Mary 30,000 feet in the air, it might be because the usual high-acidity of the drink is masked while those savoury qualities remain unchanged.
The science not quite lining up in your mind? No problem – all you need to know is that after getting to the airport, through check-in, security, your gate and the over-head cabin jostle, you deserve a drink, and that drink should be a Bloody Mary. Let the holiday begin.
