This study, adopting a cognitive semantics approach, examines conceptual metaphors based on the sense of taste in four contemporary novels (two from Persian literature and two translated into Persian). It analyzes how “pain” and “pleasure” are conceptualized through taste mappings. The corpus consists of Captives of Time (Fasih, 1995), The Angels of Torment (Khosravi, 2013), Chocolat (Harris, 1999 / trans. Daghighi, 2003), and The Feast of Roses (Skeel, 1989 / trans. Bayat, 1997), selected for their novelty in Persian cognitive-metaphorical studies and their richness in taste-related metaphors. The research employs a mixed quantitative–qualitative method: in the quantitative section, 238 instances of taste metaphors were extracted and their frequency calculated; in the qualitative section, conceptual mappings and socio-cultural contexts were analyzed. Findings revealed that 67.0% of the examples were devoted to the conceptualization of pain and 33.0% to the conceptualization of pleasure. Bitter taste, with 26.1%, was the most dominant taste in the domain of pain, while sweet taste, with 33.0%, was the only primary taste of pleasure. The presence of two translated works with rich food-related themes increased the frequency of pleasure-oriented mappings compared to the usual pattern of contemporary Persian literature. The results indicate a different mapping pattern in Persian and translated works, which may stem from the role of literary translation in enriching the source domain of pleasure.