Question 21: Taste
Taste is an interesting character, but with which one must be extremely careful. In particular, an unknown mushroom to evaluate its taste. Always keep in mind that ingesting a few dozen grams of poisonous mushrooms are enough to kill an adult person!
The taste test is not mandatory, but it can prove efficient to help identify the species of certain families of mushrooms (brittlegills and milkcaps in particular). When in doubt or as a safety measure, 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 (menthol, meal, or radish for example).
- In all cases, spit out immediately any fragment that you could have left in your mouth by mistake.
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