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Caramel is one of the richest, most satisfying flavors out there. There are endless variations and many ways to serve it – from silky smooth to crispy hard. Some of our favorite treats of all time are made using variations of caramel: candy apples, crème brûlée, toffee, flan, and even peanut caramel brittle. It’s amazingly versatile in both taste and texture. If that isn’t enough to entice you, just pause and think about the fantastic chemistry of caramel.

The subtle nuances in caramel flavors are thanks to the chemical reactions as the temperature rises during cooking. Caramelization and the bonding of sugar molecules (similar to the Maillard Reaction) play a role in final formation, color, and aroma. Here’s a step-by-step journey behind the sweet chemistry of caramel!

Sweet Sweet Sugar

Any great caramel recipe begins with the basics – sugar, of course! Granulated white sugar is commonly used to make caramel, and it’s a great place to start. If you’ve never attempted a caramel sauce before, it’s likely best to master the basics of using granulated sugar before branching out.

If you have previous culinary experience, perhaps you’re ready for a challenge. Did you know that each type of sugar will produce its magical caramel chemistry? Here are some other types of sugar you can use to make variations of delightful caramel good enough to eat!

• Brown sugar will add a hint of dark molasses flavor
• Coconut sugar brings out subtle tropical flavors
• Honey creates a softer, creamier style
• Maple syrup can be used for a seasonal twist
• Demerara or raw sugar will produce a crunchy, textured caramel

Each of these sugars will still undergo the primary chemical reaction and the Maillard Reaction at some point to produce that fantastic taste!

Bring On the Heat!

Caramel chemistry is a delicate art, and creating the perfect sauce or filling for baking involves timing, correct temperature, and good culinary equipment. As you prepare your workspace, choose a saucepan with a heavy bottom that can handle the heat. Step one is heating the sugar.

• Place your cup of sugar with about a quarter cup of water in the saucepan and heat it in a medium setting.
• Once you see the sugar begin to dissolve into the water evenly, stir gently and let it come to a boil
• Continue cooking until the mixture reaches a lovely golden brown color – at this stage, continue swirling the saucepan to avoid burning or sticking to the bottom.

Once the color of your sugar changes, beware! Caramel chemistry reactions happen quickly, and overcooking can occur in seconds.

The Maillard Reaction

If you have a background in chemistry or cuisine, you’ve likely heard of the Maillard Reaction. In short, it describes a chemical reaction between amino acids and is responsible for the browning of your food when you cook it. It’s the reason for the crustiness of your pie crust, the crispiness of your steak, and the crunch of your breaded chicken.

When it comes to making caramel, a similar process is responsible for the browning of sugar. It’s called caramelization. Like the Maillard Reaction, caramelization is just part of the caramel chemistry puzzle. Let’s take a deeper look into the chemical process of caramelization and how it occurs.

Caramelization

Caramelization happens when the sugar molecules in a solution break apart and recombine. This process occurs when the heat in the saucepan reaches approximately 160-182 degrees Celsius (or 320-360 degrees Fahrenheit). To achieve the perfect caramelization, it’s a matter of science:

• Avoid setting your heat too high – medium heat is ideal.
• Watch the color of your caramel constantly – once you see a glimpse of your desired color, remove the caramel from the heat source as soon as possible.
• Pay attention to the aroma, which should be sweet and nutty – not burnt!

Caramel chemistry is a delicate balancing act. Even a few seconds more of direct heat can make a big difference. Like the Maillard Reaction, there’s a fine line between perfection and burnt-to-a-crisp.

Cream and Butter Please!

The final touch in creating the perfect caramel is finding the ideal balance of sweet and smooth. As caramelization occurs, you’ll want to add the butter or cream desired to obtain the best texture for your caramel dish. For this stage, less is more. You’ll want to slowly add these final ingredients and keep your concoction in constant motion. Remember, you can always add more, but it’s hard to remove – it’s a matter of science!

The Final Touch

The last addition to your caramel chemistry creation is the finishing touch. When the right caramel texture has been achieved, you can experiment by adding vanilla extract, a bit of salt, a hint of orange zest, or a dash of cardamom to finish it off. Do a taste test and enjoy the moment – making a flawless caramel sauce is no easy feat!

Finally, celebrate the final product by drizzling, dipping, or savoring it with all your senses. Bon appetit!

True vanilla flavor hits your palate like sweet nectar – and if you are lucky enough to have enjoyed its authentic taste, you know there’s a difference between natural vanilla and a substitute. What can also distinguish natural vanilla as we know it is the extraction process itself. Although the differences in flavor can be subtle, the outcome and quality of your vanilla extract are closely tied to how it was created.

Modern vanilla extraction methods have expedited the traditional maceration method of soaking the vanilla beans in alcohol for several weeks or months. We’ll look at this conventional method and see how it differs from how vanilla is extracted in a more modern context.

Traditional Method: Maceration

Maceration is historically used to draw out the best flavors and aromas from carefully selected beans. Once the beans are selected, the flavor is extracted by soaking them in pure alcohol or an alcohol and water solvent. Look at one of the oldest vanilla extraction methods step-by-step and see how vanilla is extracted using precise selection and timing.

• The process begins by selecting only the very best-quality beans. They should be dark and rich in color and have an initial vanilla aroma when you smell them.
• Maceration requires releasing the compounds inside the bean to produce their ultimate burst of flavor. This can be done by splitting the beans down the middle to expose the seeds or by simply crushing the beans.
• Next, you need to prepare the solvent for soaking. Common alcohols for vanilla maceration include vodka, rum, or bourbon. Sometimes, the alcohol is combined with water to maintain an additional balance.

Modern extraction methods produce similar results but take less time and know-how. Vanilla is extracted using the traditional method as the flavor is released into the solvent over time, making the desired strength of vanilla flavor. It’s possible to differentiate the flavor potency by soaking the beans for different lengths. This can range from a few weeks to several months for the strongest, most premium flavor outcome. The traditional extraction method requires patience, good timing, and years of knowledge.

Other Modern Vanilla Extraction Methods

Vanilla production has become more industrialized, and there’s no doubt that demand for the extract has grown over the past century. As more consumers seek that perfect vanilla flavor, the need for faster modes of production has grown. Learning how vanilla is extracted in the industrial context is complex. Here are five more modern forms of production you may encounter in the vanilla extraction process.

1. Percolation

Percolation involves passing a solvent through tightly packed vanilla beans to obtain the desired scent and taste we all love and know. It works like a simple coffee press – here’s how. Vanilla is extracted using repetition as the solvent runs through the beans, extracting a bit more of the flavor each time. Percolation is a bit faster than maceration but produces similar outcomes, and this natural process can be automated and timed to get ideal results.

2. Carbon Dioxide Extraction

Compared to maceration and percolation, carbon dioxide extraction is one of the more modern methods involving placing carefully selected vanilla beans in a controlled extraction vessel and allowing liquid carbon dioxide to pass through them. The result is a clean, crisp vanilla flavor that compares to more traditional methods of how vanilla is extracted. Carbon dioxide extraction is a quick and safe extraction method.

3. Microwave-Assisted Extraction

When efficiency matters, microwave-assisted extraction has a special place in the manufacturing of vanilla extract. Microwave technology can heat the vanilla beans uniformly and release compounds quickly to produce a high-quality extract. Modern vanilla extraction methods require control over temperature and timing; microwave-assisted extraction is no exception. It requires controlled monitoring of power and energy to regulate how the vanilla is extracted – overprocessing can be a risk if the timing is not carefully managed.

4. Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction

This technology uses high-frequency sound waves to disrupt the cell walls of the vanilla bean and allow the vanilla flavor to drop into the solvent in a matter of minutes. The beans are placed in a vessel or beaker as the sound waves are applied. Continuous monitoring is essential as over-extraction can lead to undesirable flavors – however, when correctly timed, the result is of high quality.

5. Pulsed Electric Field Extraction:

A pulsed electric field system uses electrodes in a special chamber to extract compounds from vanilla. How it is extracted must be carefully monitored and controlled. It sounds more like a science experiment than an extraction method, but the result is high-quality and produces a great flavor under ideal conditions. Controlling the electric field strength is vital – electroporation is a quick way to produce industrial vanilla extract.

Traditional vs. Modern Techniques

When you find yourself shopping for a bottle of vanilla extract, be mindful that modern vanilla extraction methods produce similar results to the traditional maceration techniques used throughout history. If you prefer knowing how your vanilla is extracted, you should research on your own and delve a bit deeper into the world of vanilla production. You may prefer vanilla made naturally over a long period or opt for a similar version at a lower price point.

The ultimate choice is in the hands of the consumer, and demand for this sought-after extract isn’t likely to disappear soon.

Toasty, sweet, and luscious in texture, caramel is often a welcome addition to any cheese plate or dessert. It is an incredibly complex tasting ingredient, requiring the perfect temperature and cooking process to achieve the bold flavor and silky texture caramel is often known for. As it is a profoundly complex and endlessly customizable ingredient, caramel is an excellent candidate for pairing with wine — The question is, what wine should you choose? From heady reds to crisp whites and even a couple of bubbly options, plenty of wines to serve alongside your next caramel confection are sure to match anyone’s palate.

How is Caramel Made?

One of the most popular flavors to add to a dessert, caramel is an excellent ingredient most commonly prepared as a sauce or hard candy. Although the process can be intense and vigorous, the steps to making caramel are simple.

Put simply, caramel is sugar that has been caramelized, the process by which sugar darkens, melts, and develops its well-celebrated caramel flavor. Either by dissolving in a small amount of water (A “wet” caramel) or by melting down dry sugar (a “dry” caramel), table sugar can be melted into a clear syrup that will darken and gain an amber color over time. Without adding any extra ingredients, a pure sugar caramel is ideal for desserts like French croquembouche or Korean tanghulu, highlighting the hard, shattery texture of a sugar caramel.

Otherwise, confectioners may add dairy to a caramel in the form of butter, milk, or cream. These dairy products add richness, buttery-ness, and thickness to the caramel, turning it from a shattering hard candy to a soft and silky sauce or malleable candy, depending on how long it is cooked down. Further, caramel makers may add salt, flavor extracts, and a variety of other additions to make their caramel uniquely flavored and specially designed for the dessert it will be served with.

What Wines to Pair with the Flavor Notes in Caramel

Like all other foods and desserts, the tastes and flavors present in caramel are referred to as “flavor notes.” Identifying and highlighting these flavor notes are great ways to understand what you are tasting, enabling you to decide what wine to pair with caramel.

Sweet – Tawny Port

The sweetness in caramel is thick, syrupy, and heavy, leaving a rich taste on your palate. This sweetness is different from the sweetness of fruit or candy, with its well-developed darkness and unctuousness. A Tawny Port can be a great pairing to support this robust and bold sweetness. A bit more subtle than its Vintage Port counterpart, Tawny Ports features a sharpness and fruitiness that will cut through the lingering richness of a caramel dessert but still highlight caramel’s deep, syrupy sweetness with notes of dried fruit and chocolate.

Toasty – Malbec

Caramel is more than just a sweet addition to desserts. The dark toastiness of a well-developed caramel can often evoke flavors of crème brûlée and toasted marshmallow, leaving a sharp and delightfully pungent note that pairs well with Malbec wines. Notable for its deep toastiness, Malbec wines tend to have notes of dried fruit and wood smoke, highlighting the heavy, darker flavors in your caramel and offering a sharpness and dryness that will counteract any lingering pungency.

Nutty – Riesling

An often overlooked note of dessert caramels, caramel usually has a fatty, earthy, and creamy quality similar to nuts on the palate. Riesling wine can be an excellent option to complement caramel’s creamy and fatty notes. A bright, sharp, and juicy white wine, Rieslings will cut through caramel’s fatty and thick texture with its acidic and fruity flavor, offering a refreshing contrast to the bold and developed caramel flavors.

Buttery – Nebbiolo

The dairy and creamy qualities of caramel can’t be overlooked, especially when caramel is added to a dairy dessert like ice cream, caramel pot de crème, or a caramel pecan pie. For red wine lovers, a Nebbiolo wine is an excellent selection for this quality, as it is rich, tannic, and has a fair bit of acidity. Nebbiolo wines will fare well against the buttery, concentrated flavor of caramel, offering a sharp and acidic flavor that balances the punchiness of caramel and finishes with a dry, clean palate that is ready to pair again.

Salty – Brut

Salted caramel is a regular favorite of many dessert lovers, offering small bursts of salt that shine against the bold sweetness of caramel. Brut wines can be a solid pairing for salted caramel in particular, encompassing a variety of dry, bubbly wines like Champagne, Cava, and other similar wines. Bruts work particularly well with caramel, as the wine’s dry bubbliness and light sweetness offer a refreshing, clean note that effortlessly balances any heavy caramel flavors, imparting a slight fruitiness that highlights the sweet and nutty notes natural to the caramel.

Many Ways to Enjoy Caramel

The flavor of a food isn’t all about how it tastes — it’s also about the texture and pairing of other flavors in the dish. Consider how you are serving your wine, whether alongside a meal or a grazing board and choose the caramel form to best serve alongside it! Caramel sauces are ideal for cheese and fruit boards, as they can be easily drizzled or dipped without getting your hands dirty. Caramel candies can be an easy addition to a grazing tray and are slightly sweeter than other caramels. Regardless of which form of caramel you choose, your next dessert dish will indeed be elevated by the specialty wine you’ve selected to serve alongside it.

From home-cooked meals to mass-produced confections, flavors occur naturally in all foods. Many people know the seven basic tastes — Sweet, salty, sour, spicy, bitter, umami, and fatty. These basic tastes are just representations of the thousands upon thousands of flavor compounds found in any food. These flavor compounds — with names like vanillin, benzaldehyde, and ethyl acetate — may sound like chemicals in a science experiment, but are the pure chemicals that cause “flavor” on your tongue. Humans have studied flavors for centuries, leading to a database and organization for the many flavors we encounter regularly. While it is a complicated and dense field of study, understanding what makes food flavorful can be pretty straightforward.

What is in a Flavor?

If flavors occur naturally in all food, what are they made of, and how are they created? What makes a natural flavor unique vs. an artificial flavor, or an organic flavor? 

According to the Flavor Extract Manufacturers Association (FEMA), flavors are considered the “entire range of sensations we perceive when we eat a food or drink a beverage,” leaving flavor as a rather broad category. With this definition, the flavor can include the taste, texture, perceived temperature (as with chili’s heat or mint’s cooling sensation), or even dryness (as with tannins in wine and coffee). The flavor contains a broad spectrum of effects, so flavorists and chemists have derived categories or organized and quantified specific flavor compounds and the impact they can impart to a food product.

Natural vs. Artificial Flavors

“Natural” and “Artificial” flavors are terms derived by food chemists to specify the design and creation process of a particular flavor compound. While all flavors in food can be distilled from their natural source to a specific chemical or set of compounds, not all flavors have to be derived from the natural ingredient.

According to FEMA, natural flavors are “ingredients that come from natural sources,” typically a fruit, vegetable, plant, or animal product. While different countries may have varying definitions of what is considered a “natural flavor,” it is required to meet the FEMA and FDA requirements to be labeled as a natural flavor in the United States. For example, vanillin — the compound behind vanilla flavor — can be processed as a natural flavor derived from real vanilla bean pods. Conversely, acetanisol — a vanillin alternative — is derived from beaver products but can still be considered a natural flavor.

Artificial flavors, on the other hand, are any flavoring that doesn’t meet the guidelines to be an artificial flavor. While the flavor compound’s structure may be identical to its natural flavor counterpart and may taste the same in food, artificial flavors are designated as such because the source of the flavors is not a plant or animal product. For example, vanillin can be derived naturally from vanilla beans. Still, the same chemical of vanillin can be artificially produced in a lab or made even more vanilla-y as with ethyl vanillin. Since neither artificial vanillin nor ethyl vanillin is derived from a natural source, they must be labeled as “artificial flavors.”

Natural vs Organic Flavors

When defining a flavor in food as “natural” or “organic,” things become a little more complicated. Other countries may have varying guidelines or governing bodies to manage their organic foods, but in the United States, these guidelines are overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). For a flavor to be labeled “organic,” it must meet the FDA definition of a natural flavor. It must not use synthetic solvents, carrier systems (the substance the flavor contains, like alcohol), or artificial preservatives. This information, as outlined in the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP), provides clear and accessible guidelines for designing and distributing organic flavors. In addition to the requirements for production, the NOP also designates several “incidental additives” that typically show up when producing natural flavors that cannot be in an organic flavor, such as propylene glycol, mono/diglycerides, polysorbate 80, and more.

All in all, organic flavors are not very different from the natural flavors you typically find in food ingredient lists, but they do require a more careful and specific production process to meet the proper guidelines and exclude unwanted compounds.

Use Cases for Natural, Artificial, and Organic Flavors

Now that the different kinds of flavors in food are established, why would you choose natural or artificial flavors over organic flavors?

For one, there is a cost consideration. Due to the extensive process of producing natural or organic flavors, they often cost more than their artificial counterparts. This can be an essential consideration for manufacturers who make food at scale and typically seek to produce the most food for the lowest cost. The increased cost of using natural or organic flavors in food can take its toll, mainly when making thousands of units daily.

Using derived flavors also enables food manufacturers to design their food products deeply. The journey of taste can be altered by having a punchy burst of flavor initially or allowing the flavor to linger slightly, encouraging the consumer to savor the product for longer. Flavors can also assist with making a product taste as it should after it has been treated in other ways, such as the pasteurization process, which can lower the intensity and volatility of the naturally occurring flavors on a product.

Whatever flavoring you use can be instrumental in designing the perfect product. From covering up health additives to highlighting sweetness or acidity in a product or simply adding a little “oomph” to the flavor mix, natural, artificial, and organic flavors alike can make all the difference when included in a food recipe.

One of the most popular flavors in the world, Vanilla is a taste and aroma found worldwide in confections, dairy products, perfumes, and even candles. In addition to its rich, sweet, buttery qualities, the gamut of body and mental health benefits that occur naturally in vanilla have also long been celebrated. Though it is typically used as an extract or flavor additive, these beneficial compounds are retained in the product, resulting in excellent-tasting vanilla products that are still healthy for you.

Where is Vanilla Produced?

Vanilla flavor is typically extracted from the vanilla bean, which grows as long green pods on the vanilla orchid, also called Vanilla planifolia. This plant was initially discovered by the Totonac Indians in Mexico, cultivated primarily for its flavor and medicinal uses. Thanks to the Melipona bee, local orchids could be pollinated, resulting in vanilla pods that could be grown for health benefits and consumption.

The pollination of the Melipona bee would be a stopgap to the spread of vanilla for several centuries. Though Spanish explorers attempted to spread the vanilla orchid throughout the world, the lack of a suitable pollinator resulted in beautiful-looking flowers but no vanilla pods. This changed when hand-pollination methods were developed in Réunion, Madagascar, allowing farmers to produce vanilla pods on a scale never seen before, using specialized techniques to promote more robust, healthy, and flavorful vanilla pods. These methods, including various curing processes, are still used today to grow and cultivate your recipes’ most healthy and delicious vanilla.

How is Vanilla Prepared?

There are several preparation methods to extract the many health benefits present in vanilla, ranging from separating seeds to alcohol extraction. Before any processing, however, vanilla pods must be aged and dried in a controlled environment, developing the satisfying, concentrated flavor and dark color we typically associate with vanilla. After this aging process, vanilla beans can be processed in several ways:

Seeds

Hundreds to thousands of tiny black seeds are contained within each vanilla bean. A significant amount of vanilla flavor is held within these seeds, which can be separated from the husk and sieved to achieve a uniform flavoring agent that performs well in dry baked goods, flavoring sugar, or syrups. These seeds are also typically used for vanilla paste.

Specks

After the seeds are separated from the husk, the exhausted pods are dried, sterilized, and ground into a powder to mimic the appearance of vanilla seeds at a lower cost. Specks are slightly less concentrated in flavor but full of vanilla aromas and health benefits.

Ground Beans

Ground beans are of the highest quality and select vanilla beans. These select beans are ground into a thick paste traditionally used for chocolate manufacturing, such as chocolate bars, truffles, or dessert cakes.

Extracts

The most common type of vanilla flavoring, whole vanilla pods or exhausted husks, are soaked in an alcohol solution, extracting the volatile aromatic compounds from the vanilla bean and infusing it into the alcohol. Over time, the vanilla will lose more and more of its flavor compounds, making for a more complex and developed vanilla flavor. Vanilla extracts can be distilled in several ways, including wooden casks, unique alcohols like bourbon or rum, and even specialized vanilla bean pods. Regardless of the extraction ingredients used, however, the health benefits vanilla is coveted for are retained.

How Is Vanilla Healthy for You?

The effects of vanilla have been well understood for centuries, with some of the first civilizations using vanilla in medicines, foods, and tinctures. However, the compounds that make vanilla effective have only been understood recently.

The secret behind vanilla’s health benefits lies in vanillin, the aromatic plant compound that occurs naturally in vanilla plants. While it is present in high concentrations in vanilla beans, it can also be extracted in smaller amounts from foods like rice bran or clove and produced synthetically in lab environments. Regardless of its production method, vanillin has many positive effects on the body, ranging from digestive to circulatory and mental health benefits.

Digestive Benefits of Vanilla

Vanillin provides several positive effects on the digestive system, primarily through its impact on acid production. Vanilla can help regulate gastric acid production and reduce bloating or stomach pain when consumed.

Circulatory Benefits of Vanilla

Like coffee and tea, Vanilla is relatively high in antioxidants, aiding circulatory health and soothing minor heart symptoms. Primarily, antioxidants are effective at regulating the concentration of free radicals in the body, which can contribute to heart diseases and cancer.

Mental Health Benefits of Vanilla

Vanillin is effective for promoting mental health, both as aromatherapy and when ingested. The taste and smell of vanillin have been proven to encourage serotonin production in the brain, reduce heart rates, and soothe symptoms of anxiety, all of which make vanilla great for your mental health — even treating symptoms that arise from anxiety or depression.

Make the Most of Your Vanilla

Metarom USA is a world-class flavor manufacturer and distributor with excellent and healthy vanilla options for your recipes. Select from liquid extracts, seeds, and various other suspensions, making it simple to add our natural and rich vanilla flavor to any baked good, beverage, confection, or other product! Contact us today to get access to our best-in-class flavorists and flavor chemists, who have decades of combined experience to assist with your flavor needs.

When keeping a healthy diet, flavor shouldn’t be a secondary consideration. Protein bars, low-calorie snacks, and workout supplements tend to put function over flavor, leaving you with bland, uninteresting, or unappetizing food products. For functional foods that promote a particular lifestyle, flavor modulation can be an excellent way to manipulate the flavor of a product to be more appealing, flavorful, and healthy.

From blocking bitter receptors to enhancing sweetness receptors and even including unique and custom-designed flavor extracts, there are many tools to enable recipe producers to create the exact product they are looking for.

What is Flavor Modulation?

All food and drink has a flavor — some good, some bad, but all incredibly complex. Flavors are typically composed of various aromatic and tasteful “flavor compounds,” chemicals in many different foods and drinks that make food items taste a particular way. Vanillin, for example, carries the flavor of vanilla but is also present in many other food ingredients, providing a slight vanilla note and aroma. Benzaldehyde, conversely, offers a less specific woody and rich note and is frequently used for almond, cherry, and apricot flavorings.

With flavor modulation, distinct flavors can be derived from their real-world counterparts to get a clarified and faithful representation of the organic product, enabling flavor chemists to take complete control over the flavors they design. Combined with health foods, these flavors can help create the perfect product that tastes great without compromising functionality.

What is Functional Food?

Functional foods are food and drinks primarily designed to serve a particular dietary purpose. Rather than empty calories and low-nutrition food options, functional food items are formulated to provide the body with additional nourishment, nutrients, or other crucial needs. Sometimes, these health-focused additives can affect the flavor of the food product, adding extra bitterness and diluting sweetness. In other cases, healthy additives cannot be added to the product due to compromising the recipe by changing ingredient ratios or cooking processes. These hurdles can be overcome through flavor modulation, which enables a wide variety of flavors to be incorporated into a product where they otherwise may require altering the recipe.

There are several options to incorporate flavor modulation into functional food recipes, each solving a unique issue in the production cycle:

Masking Agents

Masking agents enable flavor chemists to cover up and mask off-tasting flavors that provide nutritional benefits, such as vegan proteins, vitamins, oils, and acids. This masking is done either by modulating/altering the flavor sensation of an ingredient or suppressing the flavor of an ingredient, enabling the stronger and better-tasting sensations to shine through.

Bitter Blockers

Bitter blockers are specialized flavor modulation compounds built to block and minimize bitter flavors that can often be associated with common drink additives. This can include ingredients like caffeine and L-theanine, altered sugars like Stevia or aspartame, and even more natural supplements like amino acids. Bitter blockers work by directly neutralizing the bitter taste receptors on your tongue, preventing the bitter flavor compounds from activating the flavor response. This effect doesn’t alter flavor receptors in any way. It simply blocks out the bitter compounds present in the flavor mix of the product, enabling the more robust, more appetizing flavors to shine through.

Sweetness Enhancers

When making confections, beverages, or other recipes, sugar ratios can often be an important consideration — especially when seeking to create nutritious food or qualify for particular dietary guidelines. Sugar alternatives like aspartame or sucrose are options, but they come with specific flavors, among other health concerns for consumers.

Sweetness enhancers are an excellent way to pump up a recipe’s sweetness without adding extra sugar or relying on a sugar substitute. When used for flavor modulation, sweetness enhancers combine several complex flavor compounds to highlight the natural sweetness of ingredients in the product mix and add an extra punch of vibrant flavor to highlight the best parts of the recipe. These commonly sweet flavor extracts, from vanilla to caramel to fruity mixes, can shine without the nutritional burden.

Fat Replacers

Excess fat can be a health concern in many diets, and the ratio of fat to other ingredients in a recipe can be crucial to the flavor, texture, and look of a food product. Fat replacers eliminate these health or recipe concerns by offering a carbohydrate-based, protein-based, or alternative fat option to fit any dietary need.

Fat replacers are an advantageous method of flavor modulation, enabling recipe designers to maintain the mouthfeel and flavor of a product without compromising its healthiness or composition. Combined with the custom-designed flavors from Metarom, recipe producers are armed with many excellent tools to make the perfect product.

Functional Nutritional Supplements

While flavor modulation is typically about altering the taste and perception of functional foods, it is also concerned with the nutrition of these foods. Many nutritional supplements can be included in recipe mixes to make them healthier or to boost deficiencies that consumers might have, such as low vitamin or mineral counts. Many natural ingredients, such as ginger and echinacea, provide health benefits in various forms, which can also fall under the purview of flavor modulation.

Design Your Perfect Flavor

Metarom USA combines decades of food chemistry and nutrition experience to help recipe producers find the ingredients for their next dish worldwide. Offering flavor extracts in liquid and powdered forms, custom-designed caramels, and diet substitutions for any replacement needs, Metarom USA has just the flavor to make your next recipe pop. Speak with a flavorist to learn how Metarom will dedicate its skills to your product.

Food and drink development are about many things — health, calories, texture, and shelf life all play a critical role in the design of food products. Above all, however, flavor reigns supreme. Like other aspects of food, flavor can be curated and designed, a job typically performed by food and flavor chemists, also known as flavorists. While the design and production of flavor extracts and additives can be a seemingly dense subject, it isn’t challenging to understand the broad guidelines of what goes into everyday flavor chemistry.

What is Flavor Chemistry?

This school of science is a subset of organic chemistry, primarily concerned with the chemical components of flavors and smells in everyday food and drink. Flavor and food chemists, also known as flavorists, use various tools and processes to detect and define the chemicals that make up the tastes of foods and drinks we regularly enjoy, such as those in produce, beverages, and prepackaged goods. Flavorists are concerned with more than just flavor compounds, though — they are also integral to understanding how temperature, oxygen exposure, and different packaging styles can affect flavor and product quality over time. With nearly 90% of American grocery store products containing ingredients produced by flavorists, the science behind how your food tastes is a topic that is taken very seriously.

How is Flavor Chemistry Used?

The processes flavorists use are integral to refining and altering certain foods’ flavors. Typically, these alterations are made to turn bland or distasteful foods into something palatable or to balance out intense flavors in food and drinks. Health foods, for example, tend to be a common use-case for flavor alterations due to their typically low sugar and fat content. Chemists can add sweetness and richness substitutes to chemically balance and improve the flavor of various health foods that would otherwise be unpalatable or uninteresting.

Flavor chemistry is also vital in beverages such as soda, coffee, and juices. Different additives like bitter blockers, sweetness enhancers, and even supplement mixes can provide a variety of flavors and nutritional additives to create the perfect nutrient and flavor balance. This process would be much more challenging to do without flavor extracts.

Natural vs Artificial Flavorings

In flavor chemistry, taste is just a mixture of smell components and flavor molecules— even those in non-processed foods like fruit, vegetables, and other produce. Food and flavor chemists organize and declare the different chemicals in various foods and which additives are considered safe to consume. The Flavor Extract Manufacturer Association (FEMA) records these various flavor chemicals on the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) List, which is then reported to the Federal Drug Administration. In addition to being registered as safe, these flavor components are organized into “Natural” and “Artificial” flavors.

Natural Flavors

Natural flavors are compounds isolated from plant material or animal products, such as fruit, roots, herbs, meat, or dairy. These flavors are typically distilled with alcohol, extracted as an essential oil, or prepared in several other processes.

Artificial Flavors

Artificial flavors are an umbrella term for any flavor not designated as natural, typically a lab-made flavor extract made by a food chemist. Even though these flavor compounds may be chemically identical to the compounds found in a natural flavor extract, their synthetic nature requires that they be organized differently for food safety.

Common Flavor Chemicals

Many unique and nuanced flavor compounds have been discovered and organized into the GRAS list with modern flavor chemistry techniques. Here are some you are probably already familiar with:

Vanillin

Vanilla flavor comes from the chemical vanillin and is commonly derived from alcohol-distilling vanilla bean pods. Since the complex flavors in vanilla are highly volatile, and vanilla can grow in minimal places, the supply of genuine vanilla extract can only sometimes meet the demand. Flavor chemistry brings a solution by producing highly authentic substitutes for the flavor — with many synthetic substitutes being chemically identical to naturally occurring vanilla.

Diacetyl and Acetoin

Diacetyl and acetoin are responsible for butter and dairy’s savory and slightly acidic flavor. Common in flavorings for popcorn, oil sprays, and other dairy-flavored products, diacetyl and acetoin typically develop as byproducts of the sugar fermentation process, such as in yogurt or buttermilk. In synthetic applications, these chemicals are produced through a process similar to a flavor-optimized dairy culture, though the flavoring must be listed as “artificial butter flavoring.”

Limonene

Limonene is the chemical behind the tart and sweet flavor of many citrus fruits, primarily lemon, oranges, limes, and grapefruit. Food and flavor chemists typically extract limonene as an essential oil through steam distillation. While flavor chemistry primarily ties limonene to citrus fruit, it is also found naturally in many plants, such as sumac, cedar trees, juniper bushes, and hemlock plants.

How to Use Flavor Extracts

Lacking a flavor chemistry degree shouldn’t stop you from experimenting with flavor extracts! From standard extracts like vanilla to more purpose-built extracts like citric acid, these flavor compounds and distillates can bring a special and unique layer to the flavor of any food item. These extracts can come in many suspensions, making them a perfect addition to any food or drink. From baking cakes to preparing beverage syrups and even confections, using flavor extracts in your recipe will surely provide a distinctive and nuanced flavor.

In all aspects of food development, taste, and health are the two hallmarks of great food. Although these two details may only sometimes meet, many recipe testers, food manufacturers, and chefs aim to find the perfect meeting place between flavor and nutrition. Low-fat products are one of the most common ways this is achieved in food manufacturing, and there are a large variety of solutions to make commonly fatty foods low-fat, whether for health or flavor balance purposes.

What is Fat?

Dietary fat is present in nearly all foods and is one of the primary macronutrients that the body needs to function, next to carbohydrates and proteins. Fats are much more calorically dense than carbohydrates but slow to digest due to their complex molecular structure. As such, eating large amounts of fat can lead to excess calories in the system that aren’t being used, potentially leading to weight gain. Fats aren’t so simple, however, and making a low-fat product means understanding just what dietary fats do for the product in the first place.

How Different Fats Affect Taste and Health

All in all, food has four major categories of dietary fat: Saturated fats, trans fats, Monounsaturated fats, and polyunsaturated fats. These fats represent a unique chemical structure, leading to unique physical properties.

Saturated Fats

Saturated fats come from animal products, such as beef, pork, full-fat dairy, and eggs. Saturated fats can also be found in tropical oils like coconut or palm oil! Saturated fats are typically solid at room temperature, commonly called “solid fats.” Saturated fats are frequently connected to high cholesterol levels, and unmonitored or excessive consumption of saturated fats can lead to heart conditions.

Trans Fats

Trans fats are naturally occurring and artificial, with most trans fats found in processed hydrogenated oils. Due to their inexpensive and straightforward-to-produce qualities, trans fats are frequently added into processed foods as a flavorful and affordable fat, though often they can end up being little more than filler. Trans fats are commonly connected to high cholesterol levels and risk for type 2 diabetes, so consumption of them should be minimal. No low-fat product should contain trans fats or saturated fats.

Monounsaturated Fats

Monounsaturated fats are one of the healthier fats, named for their single unsaturated carbon bond at the molecular level. These fats and oils are typically liquid at room temperature and turn solid when chilled, much like olive oil, canola oil, or peanut oil. Unlike saturated and trans fats, monounsaturated fats are both tasty and healthy, helping to reduce harmful cholesterol levels and being high in Vitamin E, essential for clearing the body of toxins.

Polyunsaturated Fats

Polyunsaturated fats are much like their counterpart but with more than one unsaturated carbon bond at the molecular level. Oils in the polyunsaturated fat category include soybean oil, fish oil, and corn oil, and are commonly celebrated for their cholesterol-lowering qualities and high levels of omega fatty acids.

Regarding culinary applications, each of these different fats brings a unique effect to the ingredient list. For low-fat food products, it is best to minimize unhealthy fats like saturated and trans fats, focusing instead on the equally tasty and healthful Mono- and polyunsaturated fats.

What is “Considered a Low-Fat Food Product”?

While there is no universal definition for low-fat food, the general guideline suggests that a diet qualifies as low-fat when 30% or fewer calories come from fat. More specifically, for every 100 calories consumed from food, less than 3 grams should come from fat. Luckily, many produce options already qualify as low-fat: Vegetables, fruit, beans, even skinless meat, and egg whites are considered low-fat food options. Regarding commercial food products or food consumed more for its flavor than its nutrition, low-fat food can be a unique debacle requiring a unique solution.

Different Kinds of Fat Replacers

A replacement must be found to lower the quantity of various fats in food, which bring unique combinations of flavor, texture, structure, and moisture to the ingredient list. Food chemists have found a collection of alternatives to replace fat in recipes, allowing recipe testers to find a way to make their products low-fat.

Carbohydrate-based

Carbohydrate-based fat replacers are typically derived from corn, cereal, wheat, and other starchy grains. Carbohydrate-based fat replacers, such as cellulose, gelatins, gums, and dietary fibers, are often on grocery store shelves.

Protein-based

Protein-based fat replacers are derived by modifying food proteins, primarily used to lower caloric content in a fatty product. Proteins such as egg white or milk whey create easily digestible, low-calorie fat replacements high in amino acids.

Fat-based

Fat-based fat replacers seem counterintuitive but serve to lower the caloric content of a fatty product by introducing a lower-calorie fat. Fat-based replacers are derived by replacing triglycerides in vegetable oils, which alters their molecular complexity and caloric content in various ways.

Each of these different fat replacers brings benefits and obstacles to developing a low-fat product, but they effectively reduce the fat content in prepared foods.

The Perfect Flavors for Any Recipe

Your low-fat health product doesn’t have to come at the expense of taste. Using high-quality flavor chemistry and decades of experience in ingredient development, Metarom USA has all the functional flavors and fat replacers you will need to develop the perfect health product. Metarom’s flavor experts will work directly alongside recipe developers to find precisely what ingredients will work and the form factor they need to shine. Contact Metarom USA to find the secret ingredient to any profile, from flavored oils to vanilla pastes and even flavored fat replacers.

Nothing fits the holidays quite like toasty walnuts, candied pecans, or roasted almonds — From cookies to pies and even coffee flavorings, nuts are a popular and delicious flavor for various culinary applications. Using decades of experience and industry-leading food science, Metarom USA offers numerous excellent flavors to add richness, depth, and aromatic nuance to your dishes and recipes, helping culinary artists find the perfect flavor profile for their final product.

Whether mixed into a caramel sauce for coffee or filling an almond croissant, Metarom has the right flavoring agent. Choose from water-based, oil-based, and even powdered flavors to find the perfect format for your recipe! Metarom USA is dedicated to working with customers to develop the ideal flavor ingredient, even adding nutritional additives and flavor masks to perfect the blend for unique culinary products. Develop the best recipe for your workflow and production process, and ensure you have an authentic, true-to-life flavor.

Nut Flavors for Baking

Baked goods are an essential treat for the holiday season; from almond cookies to pistachio sweet bread, nuts provide a roasted, creamy, slightly sweet flavor to baked goods that other ingredients can’t replicate. Whether mixing it into a caramel filling or adding a flavor powder to your dough, Metarom USA has authentic, true-to-life nut extracts that will provide the perfect depth and complexity to your baked goods. Whether you’re developing pre-packaged goods for distributed sale or homemade treats for friends and family, you can find an affordable and consistent flavor ingredient for your recipe — an essential quality for any baker.

Nut Flavors for Coffee

Flavored coffee is ubiquitous, with many coffee drinkers bringing the specialty experience home for the holidays. As espresso machines and pour-overs are unwrapped, many search for the perfect ingredients for their next latte. Metarom USA offers a variety of nutty additives that can be mixed into caramels, mocha sauces, or syrup to provide the perfect mix of flavors for a morning brew. Nuts are an ideal complement to the cherry, chocolate, and spiced notes of coffee, and Metarom’s true-to-source, nuanced flavors will be sure to perform.

Nut Flavors for Dessert

Not all desserts are baked around the holidays, but nuts can be used just the same! The slightly sweet, savory, woody nuts aroma will benefit Italian chocolate salami, chocolate bark, and elegant enrobed confections. Metarom USA offers pistachio, almond, and other nut flavors to help confectioners and chocolatiers find the ideal dessert profile. Add flavor agents to enrobed truffles, delicate gateaux, or chilled cheesecakes to create a genuinely exceptional holiday dish.

Nut Flavors for Function

Cuisine is about more than taste — Metarom USA’s flavors are also available as functional additives, adding nutrition and balance to any flavor mix. Add bitter blockers, masking agents, fat replacements, and other additives to add a nutty and nutritious boost to health drinks, protein bars, and supplements. Metarom USA uses our dedicated team of flavor engineers and tasters to provide you with the perfect balance of flavor and nutrition without compromising the complexity and taste of the original product.

Flavor Formats for Any Recipe

Metarom USA offers our pistachio, almond, pecan, and other nut flavors in a variety of form factors to suit any ingredient list:

Water-Based

Water-based flavors dissolve effortlessly into liquid solutions, perfect for pound cakes, pie fillings, and custards. These differ from alcohol extracts and can accommodate particular diets or recipes where acids can split the mixture.

Oil-Based

Oil-based flavors mix well into fat or fat-heavy mixtures, ideal for butter, caramels, and brownies. Use oil-based agents to make the perfect compound kinds of butter or bring another layer of depth and nuance to fat-based desserts like white chocolate ganache, cheesecakes, and more.

Powder-Based

Powder-based nut flavors disperse into dry mixes perfectly, ideal for doughs, pie crusts, or cooking. The dry nature of powder also enables a longer shelf life, perfect for production processes.

Extract

Extracts are a classic flavoring agent, using alcohol to extract flavor from the source. Add them to baked goods, beverages, or anything that uses a traditional flavor extract.

Spray-Dried

Spray-dried flavors are an emulsified, then-dried flavoring agent, making for a phenomenal shelf-life and authenticity of flavor. Like powder-based offerings, spray-dried flavors are perfect for large or long production processes.

Order Flavors Online Today

Perfect your recipe and get access to Metarom USA’s wide selection of authentic, true-to-life flavors today! Metarom’s team of food engineers and decades of experience have supplied culinary inventors with nuanced, rich, and varied flavors with precision and quality at the forefront of the design process. Find the perfect flavor to add to your mixture from Metarom’s online store today!

Founded in France in the 1950s, Metarom USA carries a wide assortment of the most unique fruit flavors available to the world of gastronomy, perfect for a wide variety of dietary, culinary, and mixology products. No matter if you need a true-to-life flavoring for mixed drinks or a stabilizing additive for pastries, Metarom USA has decades of experience and quality dedicated to providing you with authentic and delicious fruit flavorings that are certain to impress with their nuance, depth, and boldness of flavor. Available as water-based, oil-based, and powdered flavors, Metarom can help you find the perfect authentic flavoring for your next culinary project, whether it’s a fan favorite fruit or a niche liquor.

For Baking

From classic fruits like Strawberry and Cherry to more unique fruit flavors like Guava or Cointreau, Metarom USA has a selection of excellent offerings to create the perfect profile in your baked goods. These oil-based and powdered flavorings are perfect for mixing into fats or doughs, providing a valuable alternative to water- and alcohol-based flavoring extracts. From berry compotes to rich fruit caramels, Metarom USA’s wide selection of flavors will help you develop a nuanced, balanced, and well-flavored pastry that won’t split ingredients or alter the baking process.

Bakers and pastry chefs may also be interested in Metarom’s selection of fat replacers, built to help replace gelatins, kinds of butter, egg whites, and many other natural fats commonly found in pastry recipes. Whatever your recipe, Metarom USA will work with you to find the perfect ingredient for your product.

For Drinks

From Cafe Lattes to Campari Spritzes, sometimes a beverage needs a little boost! Metarom USA is happy to provide exquisite fruit flavorings and caramels for a variety of mixology applications, from flavored caramels for coffee to fruit extracts for cocktails; Metarom’s authentic, true-to-life flavors provide beverages with a florality and herbal quality that is commonly missing in other fruit flavorings, granting a nuanced and complex profile to any drink it is added to.

Mixologists will also benefit from Metarom USA’s many functional flavorings, providing bitter blockers, sweetness enhancers, and other masking agents to bring the perfect balance and flavor to your beverage. Mask caffeine flavors and brighten beverages’ fruity sweetness with Metarom’s many flavor offerings.

For Nutrition

Food is more than just flavor — It also has to be nutritious! Metarom USA offers fruit flavors to provide unique profiles and nutrient blends for various nutritional applications, such as protein shakes, ready-to-drink meals, performance drinks, and protein bars. Combined with their functional flavorings, producers can create a perfectly balanced product that does not taste chemicals, additives, or artificial flavoring, ideal for sports and energy drinks. Metarom USA can also work with product-makers to add nutritional and flavorful caramels to make healthy and delicious recipes for food and beverages. No matter what the application, Metarom USA will use its decades of experience and technical experts to find the perfect ingredient for your mix.

For Confections

Chocolatiers and candy-makers can access the most unique and bold fruit flavors through Metarom USA, granting your bespoke confections a flavor and nuance unattainable by other standards. From unique liquor flavors for chocolate truffles to colored fruit additives for hard candies, the flavor extracts from Metarom will provide flavors in a format that will easily mix into your production workflow.

Confectioners will also benefit from Metarom’s confectionery caramel, which can be mixed with many other flavorings as a sauce, powder, or liquid extract, sure to bring an extra level of complexity to any sweet confection. Metarom has been producing caramels since the beginning of their business, and can use their decades of expertise to develop the perfect ingredient for any dessert.

How Metarom Develops Flavors

Metarom originally began business as a caramel manufacturer in 1953, growing into vanilla and fruit flavoring as the business grew. With many decades of experience and a scientific approach to the flavor manufacturing process, Metarom can provide customers with SQF and Kosher certified, organic products that are packed with bold flavor and consistent across production batches. Never be concerned with alterations to your workflow or process — Metarom USA works alongside customers to create the ideal flavor and nutritional mix to meet any need. Whether you are a large manufacturer or a small business, Metarom has the ingredients and knowledge to rise to any challenge.

Order Fruit Flavors Online

From performance energy drinks to baked goods and packaged confections, Metarom USA has the knowledge and tools to help you create the perfect flavor profile. Using our wide selection of true-to-life flavorings, we can provide a variety of ingredient formats, including water-based, oil-based, and powdered form factors. We can also offer nutritional supplements with our flavoring mixes, creating the ideal flavor compound for your product. Contact a representative at Metarom or order from our online store — You’ll surely find what you need.