When a food manufacturer is striving to replicate the key aspects of a savory gold-standard recipe in a scaled-up formula, it’s essential to have a team of product developers, research chefs and others with expertise in all aspects of savory flavor involved with the process. Gilroy Foods & Flavors, part of ConAgra Foods, relies on integrated teams of savory experts to help manufacturers carefully develop every aspect of a product—from label requirements to functionality and, of course, flavor.
Gilroy Foods & Flavors specializes in savory meat and poultry applications, including whole-muscle entrées and carving meats, ground meats like meatballs and sausage, and deli-style meats, as well as value-added meat ingredients, such as rubs, glazes, marinades, brines, dips, sauces and gravies, and processing methods—from grilled to flame-broiled and smoked, or combi-oven-baked. The company can help manufacturers design comprehensive details into each stage of a target product—from development of the gold standard through manufacturing.
“When a customer asks for a ‘home-cooked’ roasted-pork flavor, for example, we begin by digging into the details of what would meet their expectations,” says Lori Evans, director of quality. “The ideal exercise is to walk through the scratch-cooking process they would use to create the gold-standard pork roast, for example seasoning, oven-roasting and basting for hours.”
The company’s meat scientists and flavor chemists use the gold standard to create a customized base flavor using in-house reaction flavor technology, effectively developing a “flavor fingerprint” as a central building block for the product. “To recreate the gold-standard roasted-pork flavor, we would work from the ground up, starting with cuts of pork and reacting them with the other savory components to provide proper balance of lean, fatty and browned flavor notes,” says Evans, “Tasting our reaction flavor alongside the gold standard, scientists and culinary professionals then fine-tune the complementary flavor attributes, such as sweet, spicy and caramelized.” They can then help replace impractical culinary steps used in the gold-standard recipe with custom-flavoring technology suited to the scaled-up, plant-ready formula—all without losing any of the important flavor notes of the original concept.
Regional flavor profiles, marinades, colorful vegetable purées, seasoning blends and/or distinct top-note flavors complete the picture. “In the end, whether a single ingredient or a multi-part system best fits the customer’s process, our goal is to bring that food memory to life on a commercial scale,” says Evans. Depending on the target application, the company’s savory experts can optimize the product’s performance during shelf-stable, refrigerated or frozen transit and storage, as well as the end-user’s requirements, for example heating in a microwave, oven or steam table, or under a heat lamp.
