Affordances

The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill (Harris, 2009). In other words, affordances can be considered to be what you get out of doing a certain activity. Aesthetics plays a large part when discussing cooking. Aesthetics is defined by the Oxford Dictionary (1999) to be artistically beautiful, or of pleasing appearance. Cooking can be pleasing for all of five senses, some more than others, obviously.
Lets begin with smell. Smell can be a huge factor when eating, especially if you are trying something new. If the food presented to you doesn't smell good, then you will probably be a bit apprehensive about eating it. On the other hand, if you smell good food, you can be immediately excited about what you are about to eat. Some foods have very comforting smells, such as freshly baked bread or fresh cakes or cookies. If I walk into my house and smell home-made bread being made before I even see it, I instantly feel happy and excited to eat it. Same goes with baking, I love walking into a home which has just taken some cookies out of the oven, the sweet scent can fill an entire room, making it feel cosy and comfortable.
Moving on to sight. Similarly to smell, sight can have a big impact on how you feel about what you are eating. Some foods just look absolutely delicious, just a wee glimpse can make the mouth water and the stomach grumble. However, some foods don't rank quite as highly in appearance. Foods we may not be used to, such as foreign food, may look a little daunting to us. I remember being in an Asian restaurant with some friends, the majority of whom were Chinese, with a large variety of traditional Chinese foods placed in front of me. They found it rather entertaining watching me try to figure out what these foods were, and could tell I was a little (if not, alot) wary of trying the different sorts of foods. After trying a few dishes, I discovered they actually were delicious and tried to look past the strange appearance of them.
Feel, or texture in the context of cooking, may not be a big thing for some people, but it is huge for me. There are some things that I just cannot, and will not, eat due to the texture. It is mainly meat that I am fussy about here. I don't like meat that is too chewy, therefore I need to chop any scrap of fat, or rind, off my meat before I eat it (which then occasionally gets passed down to my food-loving dog, who is always grateful for a wee feast). I remember eating jellyfish when I was visiting Japan which I had  not previously tried before. I remember it tasting quite nice, but the unusual texture, which was slightly crunchy as well as slimy, meant that I could not bring myself to eat more, despite it having a pleasant taste.
Hearing is not such a huge aspect when it comes to cooking, however it still has it's place. Hearing food sizzling in a pan, or boiling in a pot can make you start thinking about the final product that you will have when the food is cooked. Hearing does however, seem to be a huge aspect of food when I think of my animals. They can be sound asleep in the next room, not a care in the world, but as soon as they hear someone rustling wrappers, or opening the fridge / pantry in the kitchen, they are immediately at your feet, hoping to get just the smallest crumb or treat they can find.
The final sense, and the one I consider most important with food, is taste. If the food doesn't taste good, then no matter how good it smells or looks, you are probably not going to eat it. It amazes me how much taste differs from person to person. I may eat something that I find absolutely amazing but then my friend sitting next to me feels nauseous just looking at it. In the movie Julie and Julia (2009), Julie Powell feels very strongly about the taste of butter. "Is there anything better than butter? Think it over, any time you taste something that's delicious beyond imagining and you say 'what's in this?' the answer is always going to be butter. The day there is a meteorite rushing toward Earth and we have thirty days to live, I am going to spend it eating butter. Here is my final word on the subject, you can never have too much butter."

Ephron, N. (2009). Julie and Julia. USA: Columbia Pictures.
Harris, D. (2009). Engineering psychology and cognitive ergonomics. New York: Springer.
Pearsall, J. (1999). Concise oxford dictionary. Tenth edition. New York: Oxford University Press.