In 1454, Duke Philip of Burgundy made a genius brand-building move with sound, medieval style.

The Duke was known for his extravagant parties, but this one in particular was more than a display of wealth and power. The party, later named the “Feast of the Peasants”, was held to rally support for a crusade against the Ottoman Empire. The year before the Ottomans captured Constantinople and made Europeans wet their pants.

The Duke saw an opportunity to position himself as a leader in this cause and have the nobility and influential figures of his realm commit to the crusade. So how do you create a sense of urgency while also increasing your prestige among the wealthy?

You make that dinner unforgettable.

Picture this. The great hall is filled with the nobility of Burgundy, all dressed in their finest. They’re eating, and drinking, and suddenly a massive pie is carried into the hall. As it opens, a group of 28 musicians start to play. The audience is stunned. They see people with food remains on their clothes carrying lutes, harps, flutes, and various percussion instruments, playing martial melodies and lively courtly tunes.

The Met Gala of the 15th century felt like Spotify meeting Game of Thrones.

You might say it was one of the first audio branding stunts in history. He crafted a narrative that people would talk about for years. Since the Duke’s spectacle, the link between music and food has deepened in ways that would’ve been unimaginable in the 15th century.

If that spectacle left the audience in awe, wait until you see what came next.

More to music than meets the ear

While dining music in the 15th century served mainly for entertainment (and made monarchs look cool), its fusion with food has since been refined to more subtle levels.

Today it’s less about the shock value and more about enriching the sensory experience of eating.

The first revelation in this food-music journey was that eating is experienced as more than merely an intake of nourishment. All senses contribute to this experience and can be modified to serve different purposes:

• Make people eat their meals at a slower or faster pace.

• Influence people to spend more on their food and drinks.

• Guide customers towards buying specific products over others.

And change their perception of taste.

Scientists have created specific pairings between sound (or music) with food and drinks to enhance this experience. Here’s how.

The beginnings of sonic seasoning

Early studies of sonic seasoning focused on matching the frequency of a pure tone with food and beverages to boost or dampen a specific flavor.

In a disruptive study, scientists from Oxford University joined forces with the famous Fat Duck restaurant to explore how sound affects the taste of cinder toffee. They discovered that playing high-pitched sounds made people perceive the toffee as sweeter, while low-pitched sounds enhanced its bitterness.

Here’s a more visually appealing example. Beck’s launched a pitch-based activation beer where the pitch of music tracks would amplify or suppress the perception of the beer’s bitterness​.

As an audio branding consultant, I wanted to see this effect for myself.

I contacted a chocolate factory in Madrid and carried out a simple experiment with passing customers at their store. Participants would listen to a high-pitch or low-pitch sound while tasting a small piece of chocolate.

They would rate how sweet or bitter they felt that chocolate. Then, they would take another piece from another pile and hear the opposite pitch sound (i.e. if it was a high-pitched sound first, the second try would be the low-pitched one).

I would later reveal the trick to the participants and some were completely baffled. They would swear to me that the second chocolate felt different. But it was the same chocolate all along!

Sensory manipulation gets more sophisticated

Later studies would explore other music elements which would allow both scientists and chefs to design multisensory tasting experiences to influence:

• Taste qualities (sweet, sour, bitter, salty).

• Food textural properties (creaminess).

• Mouthfeel characteristics (the body of a red wine).

• Aromas (citrus, vanilla).

And also more complex flavor experiences combining the abovementioned elements.

The timing is also crucial. People feel a more pronounced effect when the sonic component is presented simultaneously with or before tasting.

Take this experiment of whisky as an example.

The Oxford psych wizard, Charles Spence, paired whisky tasting with different soundtracks. People would go into specially designed rooms like one styled to feel more earthy with the sounds of leaves and twigs being crunched underfoot and embrace the tasting experience. While immersed in this particular sound chamber, the whisky felt woodier than in the other rooms and brought out the oak flavors.

A similar thing happened in the other chambers. In each one, a different taste surfaced above all others. The funny thing is that people always had the same whisky in their hands, but they rated it differently every time.

The brain got tricked by their ears into tasting something different.

A brief tour of sonic meal experiences

Armed with this knowledge, restaurants started creating more immersive and memorable dining experiences. The intersection of art, science, and marketing found a new venue.

You’d probably want to go to a restaurant that uses auditory cues to embellish their dishes. I know I would.

Here’s a list of some of the top (and expensive) restaurants in this field:

• The Fat Duck (London, UK): Try the dish “The Sound of Sea” which is served with headphones playing the sounds of ocean waves.

• Ultraviolet (Shanghai, China): This restaurant is one of a kind. It offers a multisensory experience of food, with each course having its taste-tailored atmosphere in the form of lights, sounds, music, scents, and wild projections.

• Sublimotion (Ibiza, Spain): My ex-boss actually designed the musical experience for this one. Each of the 14 courses offered in this restaurant has its unique set of musical pieces and the experience is combined with 360-degree projections while you eat.

• Auricle Wine & Sound Bar (Christchurch, New Zealand): they specialize in matching wines with specific sound ambiances. A red wine, for instance, could be paired with a low-pitch and slow piece of music to enhance the body of the wine with each sip.

Are these examples making your mouth water already?

Final thoughts

From the dramatic reveal of musicians in a pie to the nuanced use of sound to enhance flavor perception, the journey of sonic seasoning is fascinating.

It reveals that eating is more than just ingesting nutrients.

We feel the texture, we hear every bite — sometimes more than we would like — and we like to eat things that look pretty.

It’s a continually evolving art form that restaurants are embracing fully.

And now you will certainly be more aware of sound interfering with your meals.

You might even enjoy these new sound ingredients in your life.