How to Make Food Taste Sour (3 Steps)

The five basics tastes are umami, sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Sour flavors are found naturally in fermented foods like pickles and fruits like lemon, grapefruit, orange, grape and melon. To make food taste sour, simply add natural extract or juice from fruit. You can also achieve a sour flavor during the cooking, baking or food preparation process via man-made sour flavorings like artificial lactic acid or fumaric acid. Both methods introduce sour acid into the food, however artificial flavorings must be listed in the ingredients -- an important consideration for commercial food service applications.