It's the same as rods and cones in the eye. You don't just see by magic, there are few specific and finite sensors, which you process into a combined perception.

When you see a chair or a lake, no matter how different those things are, the sensory mechanism is the same and quite limited in a way.

It's also like language, or arabic numerals. You can express any number or any idea, to infinity, but they are all composed out of a tiny alphabet of only 10 digits or 26 letters.

And it's not some desire to reduce or deconstruct anything, because anyone just hates calling a strawberry a strawberry for some reason. It's simply what actually IS. Our perception of the taste of strawberry, and everything else, IS composed of only a few "base tastes". You don't have a whole sensor cell just for strawberries, and an infinite number of others for the infinite number of other things. You have a few senor types which are general purpose, and can compose a perception for strawberry, or anything else, even if strawberries were invented today and none of your evolutionary history never encountered a strawberry before.