SMART way to improve vocabulary | TOP Collocations for tastes and smells

[Music] hi there this is harry and welcome back to advanced english lessons with harry where i try to help you to get a better understanding of the english language so in this particular lesson we're going to take a look at collocations and the collocations that i have for you today are connected with food and drink to do with taste and smell okay so collocations connected with taste and smell so advanced english looking at collocations about taste and smell as always i'm going to go through the list that i have for you one by one then i'll go back through them and give you some examples and situations when you might use those so in total we've got 10 okay 10 in total so let's start subtle flavor or subtle flavors in the plural distinctive aroma distinctive aroma to bring out the flavor bring out the flavor a bitter aftertaste a bitter aftertaste a bland taste bland taste peculiar taste to give off a smell overpowering stink revolting stench and finally to catch a whiff to catch a whiff of something usually okay let's go through them one by one subtle flavor or subtle flavors well often when you select or find or look at a new recipe for some dish you haven't tried before you are really excited about how it's going to look and most importantly how it's going to taste and when you look at the ingredients that are required as you read down to the recipe you see some very interesting spices that you haven't used before all of those spices together will add subtle flavors to the taste of the food so when you finish cooking it and you can smell it you give a little sample taste and you get those subtle flavors of almond or those subtle flavors of sweetness that the spices have added and something perhaps that you weren't quite expecting but you're really really pleasantly surprised because it really gives that extra little bit of something to the meal so you find the recipe you let your family know that tonight we're going to do something a little bit different you're not quite sure how it's going to turn out because it's the first time you've done it and when you see the smiles on their faces and the mmm the nice sounds you know that it's been a success and so they can taste those little subtle flavors of something different so the taste of apricot or the taste of coconut or whatever it is that you've added that will give that little bit of something special that will make it memorable and a dish that you will repeat perhaps time and time again okay so subtle flavors distinctive aroma well distinctive means something very noticeable something very special so when something's distinctive you can recognize it immediately so if somebody has a distinctive feature perhaps on the side of the face or on the head or whatever it's something that's easily recognized so a distinctive aroma is a the aroma is the smell of something so certain perfumes this perfume that my wife prefers has a distinctive aroma a smell that you can get so if you go into the kitchen when somebody's been cooking and no matter what it is you get that aroma of coconut or you get the aroma of cinnamon or you get the aroma of some particular spice that she's added you're not quite sure what the dish is but you know instantly when you go into the kitchen that there's a distinctive aroma that you can smell so oh that smells really really good i really like the the smell of that i hope it's my favorite dish yeah okay so it's something that you can smell when you go in the aroma for example of fish if you're cooking some particular salmon you'll always get that distinctive aroma of of that fish baking in in the oven when you walk into the kitchen so distinctive something very very noticeable the aroma the smell that gets into your nose and really really pleasant to associate it with the food that's been cooked to bring out the flavor well when we are cooking we always want to bring out the flavor particularly the flavor of the meat so when you're reading the recipe and you see the various tips that these special cooks and celebrity cooks give you it's all about bringing out the flavor so of course anybody can take a lump of meat stick it into the oven and roast it but unless you follow the recipes that they they give you it's not so easy to bring out the flavors at christmas time i like to cook the turkey it's one of my favorite jobs to do at christmas i always follow a recipe of jamie oliver a very well-known celebrity chef in the uk now he has wonderful recipes but he has a really really great recipe for roasting turkey and when you follow the simple step by step that he does usually in the preparation this is what is special about his recipe and it brings out the flavor and so for the last two or three years when i followed his particular recipe it really brings out the flavor of the turkey meat whereas previous years when i cooked it yeah it tasted fine but it was either a little bit dry or cooked a little bit too long but in the last few years excellent it's really brought out the flavor of the meat so that's what we mean by bringing out the flavor doing something different a little bit special a little bit of sauce a little trick that these chefs have that will help you to bring out the flavor of whatever you happen to cook a bitter aftertaste well some foods unfortunately when we cook them may not turn out the way we had expected or intended and when you bite into something it leaves a bitter aftertaste it makes you shake or shiver so an aftertaste is a taste that you find after you've bitten or swallowed that particular food and perhaps you have to take a quick drink of water to get rid of it and i don't like that bitter aftertaste perhaps the first bite is actually okay but later you get that aftertaste of something that's not quite so pleasant so there are certain foods that can do that for you for me mangoes i don't like mango fruit when i bite into it it smells nice it's a nice fruity smell and the initial taste but often for me it leaves a bitter aftertaste and i just don't like it so some people have food choices they like some that they don't like for me it just happens to be mango and i get that bitter aftertaste a bland taste well there's nothing worse than having bland food bland means ordinary or tasteless okay so you eat something you might as well be eating wet paper a bland taste and when something tastes bland or looks bland it's just nothing yeah you've got no excitement no interest and perhaps you were waiting for something special and described on the menu as something really good and tasty and then when you taste it nothing another another bite still nothing so it's a bland taste something like as i said tasting wet paper bland now when we use about taste we shouldn't say it's a sweet taste or it's nice taste you should say it has a nice taste or it has a sweet taste or we could just say it tastes nice or tastes sweet it tastes nice or tastes sweet it's not it is sweet taste or it is nice taste it has a sweet taste or it has a nice taste okay so just be careful how you use the english around that so next we have a peculiar taste well when something has a peculiar taste it could be that it's just something you don't recognize okay so for example it might be a new curry and you're not sure the recipe says curry and you put in all the ingredients that they've asked you to add you've mixed it the way it told you but it just has a peculiar taste like there's something either missing or just something about it that's not quite right so you continue with it it's not that it's bad it's and it's not that it's it's got a foul taste it's just a peculiar taste and it's just something you cannot put your finger on okay so you might ask your partner to taste it and see what he thinks so she thinks and they taste it go hmm yeah yeah why don't you try adding a pinch of salt or why don't you add a pinch of some other spice that will just change the flavor a bit and perhaps that will work so you get a peculiar taste not something you can immediately recognize or identify all you can say it's just a peculiar taste i'm not so sure i'll cook that again or if i do perhaps i might just change one or two of the spices because they're not really my cup of tea yeah so a peculiar taste when something gives off a smell it usually means something negative okay so for example if you come home from that holiday and you walk into the kitchen you open the fridge and there's something giving off a smell it usually means that you've left something in the fridge a little bit too long milk has gone stale cheese has gone moldy something there that just isn't right so you hunt around in the fridge smelling this and smelling like oh yeah god that's it yet so it gives off a smell so you're able to identify what it is and it gets binned immediately so when something gives off a smell it usually refers to something bad okay now it doesn't necessarily have to be food but in relating in relation to food it's usually something that hits your your nose as soon as you come into the house or into the kitchen could it could be a piece of over-ripe fruit that you've left in the fruit basket a banana or something that's just gone a little bit too long so you get that deadly sweet smell of the the rotten fruit so you just have to be really really careful it gives off a smell or if you walk into a greenhouse where there's lots and lots of vegetables and the sun is very hot there's a certain smell that you'll get in the greenhouse when you walk you walk in so it gives off a smell an overpowering stink well a stink again is a bad smell like a stink of the the smell of the shoes or the training gear that your kids have used and they've left in their gym bag for the last week and forgot to put it in the washing machine that will certainly stink yeah and that would be a very overpowering stink but if some food has been left in the fridge longer than it should be or somebody dropped something underneath the sofa behind the sofa and after a while it begins to smell particularly when the the summer days are long and hot so there's an overpowering stink you have to open all the windows and get some fresh air in very very quickly or indeed if you burn the meat in the cooker perhaps you put meat in the the cooker and then and then you have to run out to get something and you just forget about it you meet somebody and then you say oh my god my god i've left the the the food in the oven and you run home and there is your incinerated or your burnt piece of meat and there's an overpowering stink of burnt meat it's black yeah so it's not something that you can really serve up to the family and you have to throw it out and start all over again so an overpowering stink over power means something that almost knocks you out because it's so so strong so overpowering really strong stink very bad heavy smell okay and then we have a revolting stench again referring to bad smells or revolting something that's revolting is very very bad stench is a really strong steep smell like blue cheese i love it absolutely i love it my wife doesn't like it so much but it's amazing when you have it in its package or box looks absolutely beautiful when you open the box and slice into it a few hours later it's a really really strong smell or a stench of blue cheese and you know exactly what's in the fridge you don't have to be told by anybody but there's definitely blue cheese somewhere because you can smell it as soon as you walk into the house or walk into the apartment and you get you know for my wife it's a revolting stance she doesn't like it i like it i love the taste but the smell can be a little bit strong okay so a stench of blue cheese then finally to catch a whiff of something well it's not something overpowering it's not something bad a whiff is an informal way to talk about a smell so to catch a whiff of something is just oh somebody's having a barbecue i got a whiff of sausages cooking i wonder where that's coming from or you get a a whiff of pizza so one of the kids has come home and they've sneaked up the stairs with the box of pizza and so you follow the smell into the bedroom and there they are tucking into their favor favorite pepperoni yeah so you get or catch a quick whiff of food so it flows through the the apartment it flows through the house very very quickly so you can catch a whiff of coffee as you walk past the coffee shop you don't have to be told where you are just sniff the air and you can smell the aroma of coffee percolating on in the coffee machine so when you walk past a any sort of a coffee chain you'll you'll get that particular smell so really really pleasant not overpowering but you catch the whiff of coffee and you go yeah i think i'll go and grab one i'm going to get my americano okay so all of these are just collocations and dealing with the tastes okay so relating to taste and also to smell and a lot of the words we collocations have used in relation to smell or bad smells so they're usually the ones we notice first you know we get a stench or a whiff or something stink something quite strong so it's not so good but they can't be good smells as well but when we're talking about good smells then we use those words like aroma yeah okay the perfume the aroma so they all relate to good smells whereas stink and stench are usually relating to bad smells okay so let me give them to you one more time subtle flavor or subtle flavors a distinctive aroma bring out the flavor of something a bitter aftertaste when you chew into something it doesn't really taste so good a bitter aftertaste a bland taste really a taste of nothing bland taste peculiar taste something you really can't identify to give off a smell and usually when it gives off a smell it's a bad smell an overpowering stink a revolting stench and then finally to catch a whiff and to catch a whiff of something okay so again try to use those particularly when you're in the kitchen and you're cooking something you're opening certain packets see what you get a flavor of see what you get an aroma of see what is a an after bitter aftertaste or something that gives a particular or peculiar taste or a very very strong stench or stink practice them come back to me with any problems i'll try to help you and as always thanks for listening thanks for watching join me again soon

Channel: Learn English with Harry

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Keywords: speak better english with harry podcast, learn english, english collocations, advanced english lessons, food expressions english

Id: E8kbq7He2UM

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 17 2022