Flavors

Flavor modulation sounds like an esoteric principal, but truth be told, we all have a touch of the flavor chemist in us. Even my mother betrayed an unwitting knack for the flavorist’s art in her scheme for making my siblings and me eat our vegetables: Just douse them with ketchup. As a flavor-masking technique, her “ketchup offensive” was a bit ...
04/28/2008

Culinary herbs and spices are at a rare and heady juncture in the food industry; they’re right smack in the middle of several hot consumer trends. Herbs and spices can answer to today’s hottest demands—bold flavor, ethnic flair, functional attributes, fresh and local, natural, and healthy—all in one package. And the food industry is blending them into a number of ...
04/23/2008

Salt has been in general use before history was even recorded. According to the Salt Institute, Alexandria, VA, about 4,700 years ago, the "Peng-Tzao-Kan-Mu" was published in China, and is regarded as the earliest known treatise on pharmacology emphasizing a discussion of more than 40 kinds of salt. Today, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of varieties of salt, with ...
03/26/2008

What could compel a former marketing executive to pen an entire book on a sensory phenomenon that, at the time, was little acknowledged by the general public outside Asia? The power of umami, that’s what. Nearing his third decade in the advertising biz, David Kasabian figured it was time to move on. In 2001, he enrolled at the Culinary Institute ...
01/23/2008

As Asian foods have taken an increasing share of the ethnic-food spotlight, product developers want ingredients to add flair to finished products. When formulating traditional Asian and Asian-inspired foods, TABASCO® Industrial Ingredients/McIlhenny Company recommends its fermented chile-derived ingredients to add complex flavor, as well as various levels of heat. Fermented foods are often created through controlled use of microbial ...
12/21/2007