system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:How do we perceive so many different tastes while we only have a few taste receptors?

For example, why do different kinds of cheese or different brands of soda taste completely different when they mostly contain the same ingredients?
gpt
You're right that we only have a few different types of taste receptors.  However, we can differentiate between a lot of different smells.  Like millions upon millions.  Taste and smell combine together to give us the experience of what we think of as the flavour of food and drinks.  This is why if you have a cold, so you can't smell well, food tastes rather bland.  It's also why hot food seems more flavourful than cold food.  Hot food means more evaporation of what is in the food so more smell.