Today's feature story on rhubarb got me thinking how an intense taste sometimes enhances our enjoyment of food.

Rhubarb, the earliest spring fruit (well, technically a vegetable) harvested around here, is a seasonal pleasure to some of us. Others might need hefty added doses of sugar — and strawberries — to make it palatable.

As a kid, I failed to understand my parents' fondness for a dish of stewed, sweetened rhubarb, topped with cream that had risen to the top of the bottle of Gulf Hill milk. Just on looks alone, I knew I wouldn't like it.

But with a stalk of rhubarb and the sugar bowl, I was happy. I would dip the cut end into the sugar, take a crunchy bite, and savor the collision of sweet and powerfully sour. The same technique applied equally to a wedge of lemon. It was like lemonade without the trouble of juicing the fruit and adding water.

The same pleasure-pain effect comes into play with spicy foods. My friends Dan and Diane used to talk about getting a rush from mixing a lot of wasabi into the soy sauce for dipping their sushi. That heady whoosh of pungent heat to the sinuses gave them a pleasurable sensation. I never could share the experience to understand what they meant, not being a fan of sushi. And purists might take them to task for masking the taste of the fish, but to each their own, I say.

When visiting family in Jacksonville years ago, my husband Loring and I went to a pub called The Dockside where nachos that they called "barnacles" came in a spectrum of spiciness. The pinnacle was "Killer Barnacles," so hot that he warned I'd better have a beer in the other hand when I took a bite of one. (By the way, beer doesn't cool the heat; milk, ice cream or yogurt does.)

There's a scientific explanation of why hot food makes you feel good. As summed up by everydayhealth.com, it's "a compound called capsaicin, which when eaten produces that characteristic burning sensation, often accompanied by sweating, a runny nose, and watery eyes. The pain is then swiftly followed by a rush of endorphins, chemicals released by the brain that not only block the heat but can also cause a type of euphoria — which is what chili addicts find so irresistible."

Maybe there's a similar effect from the pucker power of sour foods. I'll ponder that further over my slice of homemade strawberry-rhubarb pie.
