How to Train Your Palate

Simple Techniques to Taste and Pair Food Better

If you’ve ever wished you could taste more deeply, pick up subtle flavors in wine, or understand why certain foods work beautifully together, you’re not alone. The idea of improving how we taste has captured the curiosity of cooks, wine lovers, and travelers worldwide. It’s the perfect moment to embrace the idea of how to train your palate, and perhaps even make it your New Year’s resolution. Imagine entering the coming year with a heightened appreciation for food, wine, and ingredients—and the skills to pair them more confidently.

In my recent Flavor of Italy podcast episode, I spoke with Ella Cusano, who has devoted the last several years to understanding flavor, taste, and sensory awareness. Ella is American with Italian heritage and now lives in Torino, one of Italy’s richest gastronomic cities. She earned her master’s degree at the University of Gastronomic Sciences (UNISG), also known as the Slow Food University, in Pollenzo. Founded by the creator of the Slow Food movement, UNISG is an extraordinary institution at the forefront of food culture, taste education, and global culinary study. You can read more about the university here.

Ella will soon be launching a brand-new online course with UNISG in 2026—designed specifically to help anyone learn how to mature and train your palate. It’s aimed at food lovers, home cooks, wine enthusiasts, and anyone who wants to build a more confident, sensitive sense of taste. Her goal is simple: to make the world of sensory analysis accessible for everyone, not just professionals.

How a Master’s Program Led to a Practical Course on Taste (How to Train Your Palate)

Ella arrived at UNISG with a business background and quickly discovered how overwhelming professional tasting terminology could feel. During wine, cheese, honey, and chocolate tastings, classmates easily identified notes like tobacco, oak, citrus, or grass—while Ella found herself thinking: “I’m tasting red wine. Where is everyone getting these flavors?” That moment sparked her idea to create a gentler on-ramp for beginners.

Her course introduces the five tastes—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami—using everyday foods you can buy anywhere in the world. It’s a structured way to begin understanding what your palate is experiencing and why. Instead of guessing, you learn to identify these tastes correctly, see how they appear in multiple ingredients, and understand how they interact. One example she shares is how celery naturally increases saltiness in a dish. Without adding table salt, you can adjust seasoning simply by choosing the right ingredients.

This is the heart of learning how to train your palate: noticing flavor in a more conscious way and learning to work with taste rather than relying solely on intuition.

Why Training Your Palate Matters in the Kitchen

Taste education is transformative for home cooks. If you’ve ever felt unsure about which ingredients to combine or how to balance your dishes, palate training changes everything. When you understand which ingredients deliver sweetness naturally, or which bring umami or bitterness, you can compose recipes that are more harmonious and satisfying.

Ella explains that a well-balanced dish succeeds because of complexity—layers of flavor that complement one another. Italian cooking is full of examples: bitterness from chicories or espresso, the savory depth of cured meats, the natural sweetness of tomatoes or carrots, and the bright acidity of citrus. Understanding these building blocks helps you take your cooking—and your tasting—to the next level.

How Diet and Culture Shape the Way We Taste, and How We Train Our Palate

Ella also shared fascinating insights into how our diet affects our sensory perception. Many Americans have a strong preference for sweetness, which can dull other taste receptors over time. Moving to Italy, she immediately noticed that foods tasted more natural and less processed, which helped reset her palate and sharpen her ability to detect subtler flavors.

Bitterness is central to Italian taste culture—think Aperol Spritz, Campari, amaro, radicchio, chicory, and classic Italian espresso. Children, meanwhile, naturally reject bitterness because their bitter receptors are more sensitive as a form of evolutionary protection. Over time, those receptors calm, making once-challenging foods more appealing. This is why it’s so important to keep offering vegetables like Brussels sprouts or cauliflower to children even when they initially resist them.

All of this connects beautifully to the idea of how to train your palate: you can reshape the way you taste at any age by what you eat, how you pay attention, and what you practice.

Inside the Slow Food University Experience

The University of Gastronomic Sciences is unlike any other institution in the world. Located in Bra, just outside Torino, it offers undergraduate and graduate degrees such as:

BSc in Gastronomic Sciences and Cultures
MA in Sustainable Food Innovation & Management
MA in International Gastronomies and Food Geo-Politics
Master in Food Culture, Communication & Marketing (Ella’s program)
Master in Wine Culture and Communication
Master in Design for Food

Students study an extraordinary intersection of humanities, biosciences, sensory science, anthropology, and food systems. Field study trips bring them directly to farmers, shepherds, fishermen, cheesemakers, winemakers, and food artisans throughout Italy and beyond. Students stay in local communities, taste regional cuisines, and learn deeply about food at the source.

There is even a remarkable wine vault on campus—Banca del Vino—where students can explore some of Italy’s most significant wines, and learn how to train their palates.

This academic environment deeply influenced the development of Ella’s course, grounding it in both science and real-world tasting experiences.

Why Now Is the Perfect Time to Train Your Palate

As the year draws to a close, this is the perfect moment to think about how to train your palate as a meaningful New Year’s resolution. It’s enjoyable, practical, enriching, and transformative—whether you’re cooking at home, tasting wine during your travels, or simply exploring new ingredients.

Ella’s upcoming 2026 online course through UNISG’s UniPlus platform will be an accessible and inspiring starting point. And if you’d like to deepen your Italian culinary journey even further, you can also explore my new e-book here.

Related Flavor of Italy Blog Posts

These posts directly connect to the themes of taste, sensory memory, Italian cooking, and umami—perfect companions to your journey in learning how to train your palate:

Food Memories – How Taste Connects Us
Understanding Umami in Italian Cuisine
Passito di Pantelleria: A Deep Dive into Italy’s Iconic Sweet Wine