A Golden Age of Flavor?
The opportunities for flavorists today are vastly greater than
ever before.
John Wright; johnwrightflavorist@gmail.com
If we look back on our childhoods, we rarely highlight the rainy days. Instead, we prefer to remember the
sunny warm days in an idyllic setting of
lakes, mountains, forests and streams (at
least I do). As a society, we also often hark
back to a Golden Age that is set firmly in
a past that probably existed rather more
in imagination than in reality. Given
this retrospectively optimistic aspect of
human nature, it is tempting to dismiss
the Golden Age reminiscences of some
of the more mature flavorists among us
as just more of the same.
One question that has often been
addressed to me in this context is the
wisdom, or otherwise, of advising new
graduates to train as flavorists. Responses
from established flavorists to this question
normally fall into one of two very distinct
camps. One camp views the second half of
the 20th century as a sparkling Golden Age
for the flavor industry, sees every current
trend heading in a negative direction and
would advise against joining a profession in
which the best days seem to lie decisively
in the past. The other camp stresses the
eternal nature of creativity and would see
the role of a flavorist remaining attractive
and satisfying for the foreseeable future.
Which camp exhibits the better judgment? Is the creative cup half full or half
empty? Clearly the majority of flavorists
would join the first camp, suspecting that
our profession has started to slide slowly
backwards. I do not agree. I am firmly in
the second camp. I certainly enjoy being
a contrarian, but how can I possibly actually defend my opinion?
Technological Advances:
Pros and Cons
I was unquestionably fortunate to start
my career as a flavorist at a time when
modern analytical techniques were just
beginning to prove invaluable. Within a
few short years, the palette of ingredients
seemed to expand almost exponentially.
Not only were there many more chemicals to play with, but many of them were
vastly superior to their predecessors.
Many highly successful new creations
were underpinned simply by an exaggerated level of a single new ingredient: a
“silver bullet.” Perhaps this was actually
a Golden Age.
to diminish the value of creativity and
threaten to make flavors little more than
a commodity. I will first try to answer
these two very real arguments. Firstly,
take raw materials. The useful palette
of chemicals available to flavorists has
certainly expanded vastly, driven by the
analysis of nature, but that is not the only
way to conduct research into new flavor
ingredients. As we gain a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in
odor perception, especially of primary
odors, we should be able to apply the
type of techniques that have worked in
the pharmaceutical industry to aroma
chemicals. Instead of merely trying to
look to nature for inspiration, we should
eventually be able to surpass nature.
These techniques are beginning to yield
results in the admittedly less complicated
area of taste chemicals. Research is not
about to reach a dead end, it will probably simply change direction.
The second argument is easier to
negate. Analytical techniques alone,
even now, will rarely suffice to produce
a credible match. They are simply a part
of a creative process, providing input, but
not a ready-made solution. In any case,
if one looks on supermarket shelves, one
will see very few consumer food products
containing flavors that have been replaced
by matches. Not surprisingly, the push in
any successful food company is directed
to ward increasing consumer acceptability.
A Case for the Golden Age
Having at least diminished the arguments
of the first camp, I should now try to present my own case. The first argument looks
at the creative palette. In the days before
modern analytical techniques, there was
a fairly restricted number of ingredients
that could be used by a flavorist in any
Instead of merely trying to
look to nature for inspiration,
we should eventually be able
to surpass nature.
Almost every natural food appears to
contain an inexhaustible profusion of flavor chemicals. As analytical techniques
improve and new levels of details are
investigated, more and more new components emerge. The problem is that, as
levels of detection delve progressively
lower, the proportion of flavor chemicals
that make any contribution at all to the
overall character of the food decreases
quite steeply. We have certainly not
reached the end of useful analytical
research into natural foods, but we are
probably not really seeing good financial
returns from this research and will certainly find very few new silver bullets.
This argument would seem to support
the position of the first camp, that we are
reaching the sad end of a Golden Age of
flavor creation.
Analytical techniques also feature in
the next powerful argument from the
first camp. They, entirely reasonably,
claim that the ability to use analysis to
match competitive flavors would seem
