Chocolate Tastes Better With Jazz: Pandora Is Now Doing Food And Music Pairings

We've heard of food and wine pairings, but food and music pairings? Pandora, the music streaming service, has partnered with Plated to pair music with food.That's right, Plated, the meal delivery service, has created a multi-genre station on Pandora designed to make your food taste better.

It may sound far-fetched, but science says that the connection between music and flavor is a real phenomenon: background sound inherently affects your taste perception during a meal. For example, desserts taste sweeter when you hear higher pitches, and listening to music in other languages can enhance the authentic experience of an international meal, according to a recent study from the University of Oxford.

If you stream the Plated Pandora station when you're cooking up paella, you may hear the sounds of a Latino big band, and if you're eating freshly baked cookies, you might hear the warbles of the Decemberists. After all, according to a survey by Plated, nearly half of millennials stream music when they're eating dinner.