CAN ONE MAN’S POISON
STILL BE MADE TO TASTE
LIKE MEAT?
The Application of flavours to Savoury Foods
John Bedford, Denley & Bedford Ltd.
Todays Ingredients
• Introduction
• Background
• Traditional ways
• Requirements of the food industry and retailers
• Needs of the consumer
• Strategies to win battles
• Alternative strategies
Applications- That’s a job for a junior
technologist….
• Started flavour life in the early 70s within Unilever at
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Colworth House under the wings of Tony Blake
In those days R&D projects were ongoing, rarely reaching
a conclusion.
Found myself working on a myriad of savoury foods,
particularly applying flavours to make them taste better.
Became a savoury flavourist in time and moved on to FIL,
the forerunner of Quest, then Lucas, Dalgety and Kerry.
Mostly involved in trying to make savoury bases taste like
real food.
An assumption- Todays Audience?
• Product developers working on the flavour of Savoury
foods
• Involved in food manufacture
• Involved in a flavour house
• Involved in retail formulation and specification.
• Or just interested in getting the best flavour out of your cooking.
Shall I order
a takeout ?
In the beginning…….
• Savoury food tasted savoury because it was cooked and
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eaten fresh that day.
Then processing took over for all the right reasons, it gave
convenience and freed our time.
Savoury taste was maintained by liberal addition of MSG,
Salt, HVP and Deep-fat frying in animal fats.
Addition of Butter, Lard, and
Tallow.
Tasty Sulphites in Burgers and
Sausages.
I cut my teeth ….
• Applying flavours in “The Age of Technological food”
• Recent TV programme Back In Time for Dinner, the 70s
and 80s era.
• Reformed meats, Analogue alternatives all tasted of
cardboard, and chewed like rubber bands.
• Fish protein concentrates
• Protein filaments from soya, pea
and fungi
And more teeth on……
• Alginate gels, way
before trendy chefs were
let loose with them.
• Fabricated snacks potato squares and
disks.
• Using HVP Maillard
reactions to flavour
packet soups.
• Canned cooking sauces
and Flavoured……
...Accessories for Chicken
Using the Traditional Application
Techniques:
• The Trial and Error approach
• The Flavour Library
• The Taste it, Throw it away and Learn technique
• Tasting flavours out of context
• Adding complete flavours in Hope
• Tasting by committee, tasting by scientists….
• Luckily Consumers did not know what they liked in those
days…
• A strategy that developed successful products, but was
neither effective nor efficient
• Lots of Frustration, not very Smart
Flavouring in Traditional ways
• Strategies were formed- some flavour materials worked
under all conditions, reaction flavours, HVPs,
• some were transient like aromatic topnotes,
• but some pervasive- Garlic oil, Asafoetida, Cumin. Skatol
• Ingredients that might fight back
Since those early daysThe Period of Taste Reduction
• Lower Fat, no saturates
• Lower and lower Salt
• Sugar Reduction
• Removal of Enhancers
• Hydrolysed Protein concerns
• Cost Reduction
• Natural v non-natural
• Legislation restrictions
• Industrial Cooking processes
Vs. TASTE
Driving us into the….
Dubbing down of Taste
• Governmental, Industrial, Retail and consumer pressures.
• “We are not frying any more- oven baking offers health
benefits and saves us money.
• “We want an all natural version regardless of taste”.
• “We use 10 meat flavours already, surely that’s enough”
…………But what about the flavour?
Nothing new in savoury foods?
• Walk around a store today and you will not see a lot of truly new
savoury innovation.
• So the application of flavours to make the most of the
opportunity is even more important, the strategy is critical.
So Savoury foods need to taste good
• All foods need to taste good
• Consumers now expect a balance between health, quality,
price and safety BUT flavour without compromise.
• “Taste rules over nutrition in UK food choices”
• Consumers only repeat purchase when food tastes good.
• Most new savoury products are cousins of existing ones
with consumer preconceptions.
Strategies to win Battles
• Successful approaches build up the flavour during the whole
product development process.
• Too often products are developed to meet the briefs spending 90% of
project time on process changes, texture development, health aspects,
ingredient clean up
• Only in the final stages appropriate flavour is considered
• Thinking needs to change
Successful strategies
• Modelling
• Building blocks
• Flavour triangles
• Onion layers
• Flavour wheels, whatever helps to explain what you are doing.
Strategic Preparation
• Work with the client or the supplier.
• Understand the consumers use and perception of the
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product.
Understand the food product and processes it goes
through and likely flavour changes.
Marry perceptions with requirements.
Enter battle armed with the right tools
Eat the whole thing
Major on the weaknesses and negatives
Application Strategies
• Work with food models that represent the final application
• Extrapolate effects.
• Be Smart with your time.
• Undercook, overcook, reheat many times.
• If it’s a snack dusting- overdose, a sure way of
highlighting the negatives.
• Eat three portions and see if it still tastes good
Practice notes 1: Snacks
• Dry Dustings for Snacks
• Instant Gratification, Impact, Expectation, Authenticity and
Performance
Snack Flavour Design
• Design is the key activity
• For that you need
Imagination
• Curiosity & Adventure
Interpretation
• What they say they want may not be what they really mean
Tool kit
Enough building blocks to cover the scope of the job
Critical Taste ability
• When I taste I know what each ingredient contributes
Performance ability
• I know my flavour will flow and stick.
Building Best Possible Taste in Snacks
TASTE IMPACT
“Fight against Blandness”
Umami
Sweet
Acid
TIME
Salt
In the Mouth
Swallow
Building total Snack Flavouring
Areas to work on
Creamy
80
70
60
Mustard
50
Mouth lingering
40
30
20
trial A
trial B
Market sample
10
0
Sourness
green onion
Areas to work on
Milktaste
Savoury
Practice notes 2: Savoury Sauces
• Wet Sauces
• Flavouring sauces- pie sauces, but could be pizza, cook
in sauce, ready meal gravy.
• Complementary flavour, enhancing the Food components,
Expectation, Authenticity and Performance.
Wet Sauces check list
• Sauces do not work in isolation they are a component of the
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food.
So- Taste the whole product, identify the negatives
Break down the issues
Apply your building blocks to overcome.
Model the tasting base to copy real life processing and storage.
Build up the profile
Build up what ifs- ideal profiles to check
against.
Extrapolate the effects of your flavour
blocks
and ingredients.
Store and taste again
The Sauce Challenge
• Delivering good flavour in a modern fat and salt “dubbed
down” Sauce
• The Issues
• Saturated fats bring flavour,
mouthfeel and deliciousness
• Fats lubricate.
• Fats generate flavour during
cooking
• Salt enhances all the aqueous
flavours and gives impact
• Authenticity without overdoing it
Building a Sauce Strategy
• BIG HONEST FLAVOUR- the Greg Wallace effect
• “Lubrocity”
• “Deliciousness”
• Use your toolbox to deliver the textural mouthfeel effects
as well as the flavour.
• More effort into the textural effects than the flavour.
Avoid fighting loosing battles……
• “Make this cooked food taste fresh”.
• Avoid the Elephants in the room
• Don’t Flavour the over-flavoured
• Don’t be ambushed by unnecessary complexity
• Watch for Ego interference.
Can one mans poison still taste like meat?
• The Application opportunities are still out there
• New foods may not be coming to a shelf near you but
upgrading is. Obesity and Aspiration.
• Todays poison may be tomorrows meat
• Look at Butter and Fat, the comeback ingredients.
• Application of savoury flavours without Ego
• Be confident, a good listener, a good taster and know when
you are right.
• Fight complexity in formulation.
• Challenge the boundaries.
• Cheese with Beef, Fish with Chicken.
• Don’t get stuck in the “Trial and Error” strategy
• Be Curious and Adventurous in all you do.
END