Taste, or gustation, is one of the senses used to detect the chemical makeup of ingested food—that is, to establish its palatability and nutritional composition. Flavor is a complex amalgam of taste, olfaction, and other sensations, including those generated by mechanoreceptor and thermoreceptor sensory cells in the oral cavity. Olfactory (smell) sensory cells of the nose are particularly important in the perception of flavor. Taste sensory cells respond principally to the water-soluble chemical stimuli present in food, whereas olfactory sensory cells respond to volatile (airborne) compounds.