LESSON 4.7
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What is Flavor?
Is the sensory impression of a food or other substance, and is determined mainly by the chemical senses of taste and smell.
The flavor is a combination of the tastes, aromas, and other sensations caused by the presence of a substance in the mouth. • Neurons in the brain become excited and we learn to recognize patterns of taste, aroma, mouthfeel, and flavor as being associated with a particular food.
Mouthfeel
Mouthfeel is the texture of food and part of the flavor experience. (creamy, crunchy, smooth, crumbly, etc.
Taste
Tastes are the sensations we detect when a substance comes in contact with the taste buds on the tongue, such as sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami.
Aroma
Aromas are the smells that enter the nose or float up through the back of the mouth to activate smell receptors in the nose.
Palate
The palate is the combination of flavors and the ability to organize them.
Taste Categories
Sweet • Sweetness comes from naturally occurring sugars and artificial sweeteners. • The fewer sweet items we eat, the less we can recognize sweetness. • Sweetness can be enhanced by adding a small amount of sour, bitter, or salty taste, but adding too much can lessen our perception of sweetness.
Sour • Sour is the opposite of sweet and is found in acidic foods, including green grapes and sour cream. • Some sour foods contain a slight sweetness as well. • Sour taste can be improved by adding a little sweetness.
Salty • Some foods are naturally salty, like oysters and seaweed. • Usually, salty tastes in food are often the result of a cook adding sodium chloride (salt), or other salty ingredients, such as soy sauce. • Salt helps finish a dish by enhancing flavors. Dishes that lack salt often taste flat.
Bitter • At times, bitter tastes can be appreciated, such as when tasting coffee or chocolate. • However, a bitter-flavored ingredient unbalanced by something sour or salty is generally disliked. • As a survival mechanism, our reaction to bitter tastes is believed to serve as a warning of inedibility or unhealthfulness.
Umami • Recently, researchers have begun to recognize a fifth taste, umami, which means delicious in Japanese. • Umami refers to a food’s savory characteristic, meatiness, richness, and fullness of a dish’s overall taste.
• Taste buds recognize umami in the presence of several things, such as the amino acid glutamate. • Cheeses, meats, rich stocks, soy sauce, shellfish, fatty fish, mushrooms, tomatoes, and wine are all high in glutamate and produce the taste sensation of umami.
Foods at warm temperatures offer the strongest tastes.
Heating foods releases volatile flavor compounds, which intensifies a person's perception of odors.
This is why things like fancy cheeses are served at room temperature.
Two items with the same taste and smell but that differ in texture will have different taste intensities.
For instance, sweetened heavy cream has a more intense flavor than whipped cream because the whipped cream has more volume.
Sweet and sour are considered opposites and can be used to enhance the flavor of foods dominated by one another.
For example, sprinkling a grapefruit with sugar will reduce its sourness, and adding a little lemon to peaches reduces the sweetness.
Also, something sweet, sour, or salty added to a bitter dish reduces the bitterness.
Many of the chemical compounds that create tastes and aromas are dissolved in fats in foods.
As these chemical compounds are released by evaporation or saliva, they provide a long-lasting taste sensation.
If there is too little fat, the flavor compounds may not be released properly, resulting in a dish with little flavor.
A food’s color affects how a person perceives the food’s flavor before it is tasted.
When foods or drinks lack their ordinary color, they are less readily identified correctly (green lemon pie versus yellow)
As color levels increase to match normal expectations, our perception of taste and flavor intensity increases (ripe red strawberry versus underripe white strawberry)
Flavor Items
Of the three chemical senses, the smell is the main determinant of a food item's flavor. While the taste of food is limited to sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and other basic tastes, the smells of a food are potentially limitless. A food's flavor, therefore, can be easily altered by changing its smell while keeping its taste similar. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in artificially flavored jellies, soft drinks and candies, which, while made of bases with a similar taste, have dramatically different flavors due to the use of different scents or fragrances.
Although the terms "flavoring" or "flavorant" in common language denote the combined chemical sensations of taste and smell, the same terms are usually used in the fragrance and flavors industry to refer to edible chemicals and extracts that alter the flavor of food and food products through the sense of smell. Due to the high cost or unavailability of natural flavor extracts, most commercial flavorants are nature-identical, which means that they are the chemical equivalent of natural flavors but chemically synthesized rather than being extracted from the source materials.
Flavorants
Flavorants
Flavorants are focused on altering or enhancing the flavors of natural food products such as meats and vegetables, or creating flavor for food products that do not have the desired flavors such as candies and other snacks. Most types of flavorants are focused on scent and taste. Few commercial products exist to stimulate the trigeminal senses, since these are sharp, astringent, and typically unpleasant flavors.
The precise definition of a flavorant is difficult since its literal definition includes anything that contributes flavor to food. A legal definition by the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, a natural flavorant is:
"The essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or any other edible portions of a plant, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose primary function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional."
Artificial flavorants are chemically synthesized compounds that are used to flavor food items but do not meet the specifications listed above. Artificial flavorants are often formulated with the same chemical compounds found in natural flavorants.
Smell
Smell
Smell flavorants, or simply, flavorants, are engineered and composed in similar ways as with industrial fragrances and fine perfumes. To produce natural flavors, the flavorant must first be extracted from the source substance. The methods of extraction can involve solvent extraction, distillation, or using force to squeeze it out. The extracts are then usually further purified and subsequently added to food products to flavor them.
Most artificial flavors are specific and often complex mixtures of singular naturally occurring flavor compounds combined together to either imitate or enhance a natural flavor. These mixtures are formulated by flavorist to give a food product a unique flavor and to maintain flavor consistency between different product batches or after recipe changes.
Taste
Taste
While salt and sugar can technically be considered flavorants that enhance salty and sweet tastes, usually only compounds that enhance umami, as well as other secondary flavors are considered taste flavorants. Artificial sweeteners are also technically flavorants.
Umami or "savory" flavorants, more commonly called "taste enhancers" are largely based on Amino acids and Nucleotides. These are manufactured as sodium or calcium salts. Umami flavorants recognized and approved by the European Union include:
Glutamic acid salts: This amino acid's sodium salt, monosodium glutamate (MSG) is one of the most commonly used flavor enhancers in food processing. Mono and diglutamate salts are also commonly used.
Glycine salts: A simple amino acid that is usually used in conjunction with glutamic acid as a flavor enhancer.
Guanylic acid salts: Nucleotide salts that is usually used in conjunction with glutamic acid as a flavor enhancer.
Inosinic acid salts: Nucleotide salts created from the breakdown of AMP. Due to high costs of production, it is usually used in conjunction with glutamic acid as a flavor enhancer.
5'-ribonucleotides salts:
Certain organic acids can be used to enhance sour tastes, but like salt and sugar these are usually not considered and regulated as flavorants under law. Each acid imparts a slightly different sour or tart taste that alters the flavor of a food.
Acetic acid: gives vinegar its sour taste and distinctive smell
Citric acid: found in citrus fruits and gives them their sour taste
Lactic acid: found in various milk products and give them a rich tartness
Malic acid: found in apples and gives them their sour/tart taste
Tartaric acid: found in grapes and wines and gives them a tart taste
Flavor creation
Flavor creation
Most food and beverage companies do not create their own flavors but instead employ the services of a flavor company. Food and beverage companies may require flavors for new products, product line extensions (e.g., low-fat versions of existing products) or due to changes in formula or processing for existing products.
The flavor creation is done by a specially trained scientist called a "flavorist." The flavorist's job combines extensive scientific knowledge of the chemical palette with artistic creativity to develop new and distinctive flavors. The flavor creation begins when the flavorist receives a brief from the client. In the brief the client will attempt to communicate exactly what type of flavor they seek, in what application it will be used, and any special requirements (e.g., must be all natural). The communication barrier can be quite difficult to overcome since most people aren't experienced at describing flavors. The flavorist will use his or her knowledge of the available chemical ingredients to create a formula and compound it on an electronic balance. The flavor will then be submitted to the client for testing.
Video Materials
Learning Activity 15
In a document answer the following.
Submit your document at the Google Drive Link given below
Your output's file name must follow this suggested format: (Monteverde.Dave_OLM_LA1)
Activity 1. Classifying the Taste!
Direction: Classify the foods in what taste categories they belong to. Make a table with six rows, the first row is labeled as the list of the foods. The second to the sixth row is the sweet taste, sour taste, bitter taste, salty taste, and umami taste.
Candy 6. Gooseberry 11. Cranberries 16. Bitter guord 21. Citrus Fruit
Mixed nuts 7. Lunch Meats 12. Tomatoes 17. Cake 22. Ajinomoto
Pretzels 8. Rhubarb 13. Soy Sauce 18. Tamarind 23. Shellfish
Yeast 9. Honey 14. Broccoli 19. Cocoa 24. Black Pepper
Cheeses 10. Strawberries 15. Dark Chocolate 20. Kimchi 25. Pasta Sauce
Activity 2. Reflect!
What is the important of flavor in cooking and baking?
What are the factors that affects flavors? Explain in your own words.
References
Learning Materials
[1]https://www.scienceofcooking.com/what_is_flavor.htm
[2]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flavor
[3]https://www.slideserve.com/zonta/the-science-of-flavor
Video Materials
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SneTFJc7u7Y
[2]https://youtube.com/watch?v=0HxAB54wlig
[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wDDWssJ_jw
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