Do men and women experience taste and smell differently? And what happens when you eat a meal completely in the dark? Diane Fresquez, a former "Wall Street Journal" reporter, spent a year on the trail of obsessive scientists and entrepreneurs who are trying to reveal the secrets of flavor.

In this picaresque jaunt, Fresquez seeks out the people working to uncover the truths about taste, including a brewery owner who's developed a banana-flavored beer meant to appeal to young women, and an entrepreneur who won't rest until he develops the perfect mead, the ancient liquor considered the ancestor of all fermented drinks. We meet a young mother and a PhD student whose research shows that what a mother eats can influence the flavor of her breast milk, and a scientist in the Netherlands who does research on flavor and memory at an Orwellian university lab called The Restaurant of the Future. "A Taste of Molecules" will delight foodies and scientists alike. Recipes included

Diane Fresquez is a food and arts journalist based in Brussels, Belgium. She was for many years a special correspondent to the "Wall Street Journal," contributing to and editing for the newspaper's Weekend section in Europe.