Authors: Joanna Blythman
Flavourings also hide the jarring tastes of common processed food ingredients. For instance, the trendy sweetener stevia, artificial sweeteners, whey protein, and the salt substitute potassium chloride, all leave lingering bitter, metallic tastes. Soya protein and added vitamins trail astringency in their wake. The Butter Buds® company, whose quaintly folksy motto is ‘Making the most of Mother Nature’, sells its dairy flavourings to ‘round out harsh notes’, for which read residual taints lingering on from the production process that would offend the olfactory system. Symrise is another company active in the flavour-masking field that offers manufacturers ‘customised masking solutions for tastes you want to hide’. It says that its ‘flavor development expertise, creative problem-solving skills and technological toolbox of masking agents’ can help manufacturers overcome ‘undesirable sensory perceptions, avoid troublesome off-flavors’, and ‘suppress off-notes while simultaneously increasing flavor impact’. As you can see, in food manufacturing, getting rid of unpalatable tastes and reeks is almost as much of a preoccupation as adding in desirable ones.
Flavourings deceive our taste buds and disguise the stink of industrial food manufacture, but they also perform a purely financial function: they are cheap, and so make it possible for manufacturers to use less of something more expensive. As the cost of real food ingredients steadily mounts, manufacturers have a strong financial incentive to bump up their use of flavourings. Less cheese, more cheese flavouring, less lemon juice, more lemon flavouring, less beef, more beef flavouring, and so on. It’s only business sense.
Kalsec®, a company very active in flavouring supply, offers this example of just how profitable dialogue between food industry chemists (‘flavourists’ as they prefer to be known) and manufacturers can be:
A leading manufacturer of private label [branded] foods met our team at an industry trade show. They inquired about cost savings for one of their condiment products. Following up with this customer immediately after the show, Kalsec®’s team went to work. While cost savings was the goal, it was equally important to match the existing flavor profile of this product. The Kalsec® Application Team analysed the product and returned within two weeks with a matching profile for bench scale testing. In collaboration with the Kalsec® team, the private label company made minor tweaks in the formulation and a successful liquid alternative was developed. This condiment was now ready for store shelves at a considerable savings and with a timely turnaround.
‘Considerable saving’ is a term guaranteed to prick up the ears of food manufacturers, and flavourings make it possible to put an appealing ingredient on a product label, but use very little of it. An industry flavour chemist offers the example of the recently fashionable, and very expensive, açai berry:
Instead of adding açai juice to a dairy beverage, a natural açai [flavouring] could be added, which consists of açai extracts and natural aroma materials to mimic açai taste. A flavor is preferred, because the overall taste nuance can be adjusted – fresh versus fruity, versus jammy or cooked. The flavor also allows for an increased shelf life, provides ease of use and decreases cost.
Put it this way, flavourings may be small in bulk, but they are mighty and multi-tasking in effect. Simulation, modification, masking, that’s the very essence of flavouring, as one flavour chemist summarises:
Flavors are used to impart or simulate a taste characteristic of choice, to modify a flavor that is already present, to maintain the flavor character after processing or to mask some undesirable flavor to increase consumer acceptance.
So much research and development goes into formulating flavourings that it’s hard for food manufacturers to keep up to speed with the technology. The lists, portfolios, catalogues and ‘flavour libraries’ of flavouring companies are lengthy, and couched in terminology that is as slippery as an eel. They include flavour components, flavour emulsions, flavour boosters, recovery flavourings, concentrated and non-concentrated flavourings, replacer flavourings, heat management flavourings, bitterness blockers, fantasy flavourings, flavour precursors, soy suppressors, top-notes, long flavourings, reaction flavourings and sensation flavourings. The latter are evidently designed to thrill the palate. Some companies try helpfully to explain to their customers the function of the various options. The ‘flavour solution’ categories used by Comax, for instance, include ‘acid masking flavours, mouthfeel [mouth filling] flavours, debitterising flavours, sweetness enhancing flavours, fat replacing flavours, fried note flavours, cooling flavours, salt enhancing flavours’, and last but not least, ‘salivation enhancers’. Just reading this classification makes you want to lick your lips.
If food manufacturers need help to keep abreast of the latest innovations in the flavouring field, and make their selection from literally thousands of flavouring products that enable a dizzying number of flavour permutations, what should an industry outsider make of them all?
When you open the door onto food industry flavourings, you walk into a most original and downright ingenious grand bazaar of man-made smells and tastes. To get our bearings, most of us will seek out those we know, old stalwarts like peppermint. But then the eclectic selection spins off like a Catherine wheel in all directions, and the further into this odiferous marketplace we go, the more fantastical, hallucinogenic and positively surreal those flavourings become.
The selection begins with a comprehensive list of fruit flavourings, everything from passion fruit and pitahaya, through to peach and pomegranate, with multiple cultivars represented, so you don’t just get raspberry flavouring, you also get black raspberry flavouring. There is an entire family of grape flavourings alone – Arkadia, Concorde, Isabella, Muscat and more. The foraging section includes sea buckthorn, truffle and rosehip flavourings. In the carvery, there are ‘hamburger spice’, fried chicken, smoked salmon, Serrano ham, Polish ham, bacon, roasted pork, boiled pork, beef, barbecue, chicken bouillon and ‘herb-crusted ham’ flavourings. Various smoke flavourings (mesquite, hickory, beech, oak, applewood) jostle for attention next to roast chicken, pit-roasted pork, Arabian burger flavourings and a ‘deliciously slow roasted prime rib of beef’ variant developed to ‘give your products that special authenticity note’. Not just any old flavouring then, but a special, slow-roasted flavouring from a named butcher’s cut. Bear in mind that many flavourings, such as Parma ham, sourdough bread and quince, are clearly designed for use in up-market products, items for which you’ll pay a premium at the delicatessen.
Fishy flavourings are represented en masse: anchovy, concentrated clam, crab, generic ‘seafood’, scallop and a whole shoal more. The vegetables and herbs section in the flavourings emporium is stacked to the roof with garlic, asparagus, potato, spring onion, marjoram, tomato, celery, onion, shallot, cucumber, and every other vegetable you can think of, in various cooked (char-grilled, roasted, sun-dried) and raw states.
By way of spices and condiments, ketchup, Cajun, pimento, allspice, anise, black pepper, Jamaican jerk, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, Kimchi and gingerbread flavourings are just a drop in an ocean of possibility. There are pistachio, walnut, chestnut, peanut, macadamia, sesame, coconut and coconut water flavourings, pesto and pizza flavourings a go-go. Vanilla offers a whole tribe: Tahitian, Mexican, vanilla ‘cream’. Honey represents another family tree with several branches: clover, acacia, lavender, pine, chestnut, thyme. The dairy department groans with cheesecake, cream, mascarpone, tiramisu, Gorgonzola, feta, ricotta, Emmental, mozzarella, goat’s cheese, buttermilk and yogurt flavourings.
Flavourings also come as custom-made blends tailored to one product. A biscuit manufacturer can source, for instance, a ‘custard cream’ flavouring, an ‘oatmeal cookie enhancer’, or a ‘bun spice’ flavouring. A caterer or ready meals company can turn some pre-sliced frozen potatoes into a plausibly authentic and aspirational tartiflette – the classic Savoyarde dish – by merely adding some powdered tartiflette flavouring ‘prepared from bacon notes, Reblochon and cooked onions with crème fraiche’. A lazy chef can use a carbonara flavouring powder: ‘This 100% natural flavour will give a desired taste of Parmesan, bacon and crème fraiche to food creations’. For the romantic and naive, there are long, lyrical, composite flavourings, such as coconut chocolate almond vanilla, and white chocolate macadamia nut, or Crazy Caprese Mediterranean blend.
From Polynesian plum, pina colada, prickly pear and pumpkin pie to banana, beer, butterscotch and broccoli, no flavour, however notional, appears to be beyond the endeavour of flavour engineers. The sheer scale and ambition of their mission is so uncoupled from the realm of fact that it takes the breath away. Flavour chemists clearly believe that there is no flavour in nature that they cannot capture. Their confidence in their trade is absolute. According to FlavorFacts, an industry body:
Flavorists work in a combined field of art and science, using a ‘flavor palette’ the same way a painter uses color or a sculptor uses texture. There are a range of flavor ingredients that impart tastes (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savory), smells, and physical traits (‘heat’ and ‘cold’), and we experience these flavors and traits at different points while we eat. Flavorists refer to these as ‘notes,’ with the ‘top note’ being the first thing you taste, and the ‘bottom note,’ the last. Flavorists can mix and match from their palette to make a seemingly unlimited number of flavor combinations.
But these chemists who are playing around with our taste buds need a reality check. Whether ‘natural’ or artificial, flavourings never manage to replicate the real thing. A croissant made with butter flavouring and margarine doesn’t taste the same as one made with real butter. Pistachio ice cream made with pistachio flavouring can never be confused with one made with a generous quantity of crushed fresh nuts. A drink concocted with lime flavouring is not at all like one made with zingy fresh lime juice. This much is apparent to anyone who eats real food and therefore has benchmark natural flavours against which to judge the man-made pretenders.
Of course, flavour chemists don’t see taste that way. For them, any natural flavour is nothing more or less than an assembly of volatile chemicals, such as phenols, terpenes and esters, which excite the nose and activate the taste buds. Once the most dominant of these heady compounds has been isolated, and their chemical structure fathomed, they can then be synthesised to produce flavourings that capture their essence. Find them, name them, copy them – what could be simpler?
Currently, there is a grand total of 2,500 ‘approved flavouring substances’ or aromatic chemicals that can be legally used to flavour food in Europe. Four hundred of these are under evaluation for safety, and so could eventually be removed. This process takes years, if not decades. The list features substances such as 1-isopropyl-4-methylbenzene, 2,6-dimethylocta-2,4,6-triene, 2-methyl-1-phenylpropan-2-ol, cyclohexanol, 3-(1-menthoxy)propane-1,2-diol, 9-octadecenal, 1-isopentyloxy-1-propoxyethane, 3,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid, cinnamyl butyrate, 3-[(4-amino-2,2-dioxido-1H-2,1,3-benzothiadiazin-5-yl)oxy]-2,2-dimethyl-N-propylpropanamide, lenthionine, and another 2,490 of that ilk.
The approved list might not whet the appetite, yet it catalogues some of the chemical components of many mouth-watering flavours. Allyl hexanoate, for instance, smells like pineapple, ethyl decadienoate like pears, while benzaldehyde and limonene conjure up bitter almond and orange, respectively. In the flavourist’s jargon, they are ‘tastants’, chemicals that stimulate the sensory cells in our taste buds. Chemicals such as these are the building blocks from which food industry chemists construct the flavourings that end up in our food and drink. A typical strawberry flavouring for a milk shake, for example, is composed of around 50 such chemicals. ‘We can get compounds like hydrogen sulfide and dimethyl sulfide that generate the sulfuric flavor of aged Cheddar, or a mixture of esters – ethyl benzoate, ethyl butyrate, etc. – that give off a fruity flavor like in Parmesan’, one ‘sensory coordinator’ explains. Dimethyl sulfide, 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline and 2-acetyl-2-thiazoline, for example, evoke cooked flavours, whereas strong, nutty flavours might come from 2- and 3-methylbutanal. Amyl acetate flags up banana, benzaldehyde does the same for cherry.
If creating flavourings was only a matter of mix and match, or cut and paste, then flavourists would be redundant in their droves overnight, but aping the flavours of the natural world is hard. Nature’s flavours are intricate, and composed of not one but many of these aromatic chemicals. In a high-grown coffee, for instance, there are hundreds of flavour notes, including berry, citrus and jasmine. In cocoa, more than 600 flavours have so far been identified. To date, some 10,000 flavours have been identified in nature, and it’s a dead cert that there are many more just waiting to be discovered.
Any natural flavour is an elaborate thing, with legions of odoriferous chemicals acting in synergy to create that distinctive taste and fragrance fingerprint. It’s one thing to be able to identify the major chemicals that underpin a certain flavour and aroma, quite another to formulate a flavouring that does justice to the sheer complexity and well-ordered intelligence of the real thing. Flavour engineers can tinker all they like with the proportions and combinations of chemicals to come up with more convincingly real flavours, but they can only get so close.
A further stumbling block in flavour construction, or ‘taste modulation’ as the trade likes to call it, is that the flavours in natural food come all wrapped up in natural macro- and micronutrients – proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals – that taste good. Natural foods are holistically conceived packages, with every element supporting several more and contributing to the common good. But in industrial food manufacture, many of the bulk ingredients in the recipe are already so corrupted and traduced by excessive processing – industrially refined vegetable oil, lifeless, nutritionally denuded bulk starches and fillers, for instance – that they bring precious little to the table in taste terms, or worse, make everything taste bad.