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Poking around I see that strictly speaking cats have an abysmal sense of taste. Only about 450-500 taste buds (humans have about 9000). They have all four of the same taste receptors as humans (sweet, sour, bitter, salty) but bitter is overrepresented (like me, cats generally hate bitter food) while sweet is underrepresented.
Apparently smell plays a much larger role in their food preferences than taste.
Dogs are better off than cats with about 1700 taste buds, mostly concentrated around the tip of the tongue. They also have all four types. They too primarily rely on smell for food preferences (200 million odor receptors in the nose compared to 5 million for humans).
When combining taste and smell both cats and dogs are superior to humans but on taste alone we come out ahead.
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