Giddy with each other and the wine, they strolled outside through the Presidio, the old fort now housing restaurants and galleries. Jess explained that she wanted to devise a matrix for scarcity and abundance, frugality and profligacy. She thought that sweetness represented, and in some periods misrepresented, a sense of surplus and shared pleasure. "I don't think taste is purely biological," she said. "I think it's economically, historically, and culturally constructed as well. Sweetness means different things depending on availability, custom, farming, trade..."
She was shivering, and George took off his jacket. "Here, sweetness." He helped her into it and laughed at the way her hands disappeared inside the sleeves.
"Context is key- so the question is, What carries over? What can we still know about sweet and sour? Bitterness. What persists from generation to generation? Do we taste the same things?"
He kissed her, sucking her lower lip and then her tongue. "I think so," he said. "Yes.

Allegra Goodman