Science and technology
- Surface texture
- Texture road surface characteristics with waves shorter than road roughness
- Texture (cosmology), theoretical topological defect in the structure of space/time
- Texture (crystalline), material’s individual crystallites sharing some degree of orientation
- Texture (geology), physical appearance or character of a rock
- Texture mapping, bitmap image applied to a surface in computer graphics
- Soil texture, relative proportion of grain sizes of a soil
Arts
- Texture (painting), feel of the canvas based on the paint used and method of application
- Texture (visual arts), element of design and its application in art
Music
- Texture (music), overall sound created by the interaction of aspects of a piece of music
- Textures (album), 1989 album by Brian Eno
- Textures (band), a metal band from the Netherlands
Well, that is what Wikipedia has to say about texture, but it doesn’t mention texture in relation to food; part of what is enjoyable – or horrible about food is its texture, and different people find different textures delightful or disgusting. Mushrooms, love the flavour but can’t stand to eat them! Liver – don’t mind it in paté but fried -yuk – or in my case stewed! I like liver very much, I like it fried so it’s crispy on the outside but quite pink inside… cooked in a sauce or gravy it’s texture changes and I find it quite repellent. Somebody’s smooth is another person’s slimy, al dente or tough, under-cooked or perfect, granular or… well… textured! Some people like food with plenty of ‘bite’, crackling for example, others find it annoying or tiresome or uncomfortable to eat.
I was thinking about this, and I came to the conclusion that reading is similar to eating; sometimes what you are eating or reading is perfectly fine but not to your taste, and sometimes it’s the texture of the text (I don’t mean this in the way it is meant in linguistics) sometimes a book is written so smoothly that it becomes tedious or the pages slip past your eyes without being read; sometimes it’s lumpy and uneven and then it can be annoying – especially if it’s the quality of the writing. It’s a well-known phrase ‘to get your teeth into something’, and to say about a book that ‘it’s not to your taste’, or that it’s ‘stodgy in parts’.
I suppose this idea also explains why people like and dislike certain books – at our book club some of us prefer olives to chocolate buttons, peanuts to mini-muffins, chilli bites to Turkish delight… it’snot just the taste, it’s the texture – of our snacks and our books!
Lois Elsden 