Question 10: Taste of flesh
Taste is an interesting character, but with which one must be extremely careful. In particular, an unknown mushroom to evaluate its taste.
The taste test is not mandatory, but it can prove efficient to help identify the species of certain boletes. When in doubt, you can always select "I don't know" in order to deactivate this criterion.
To evaluate a mushroom's taste more safely (but truly also less accurately), proceed as follows:
- cut a piece from the mushroom
- run the tongue on the exposed flesh, to determine if
- the taste is pleasant, mild of tasteless;
- the taste is bitter or unpleasant;
- the taste is acrid, spicy or astringent;
- exceptionally, if the taste clearly resembles a particular taste (this shouldn't be the case for boletes).
- In all cases, spit out immediately any fragment that you could have left in your mouth by mistake.
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