Basic knowledge of food flavors

1. The concept of food flavor:

1. Flavors for food are a kind of added products specially used for flavor and taste in food production and processing.

2. Flavors for food can improve and enhance the quality of food and increase people's interest in eating.

3. Food flavors usually do not have (sugar, protein, fat, etc.) nutritional effects.

2. Composition of food essence:

Flavors for food: It is composed of edible flavoring substances (or food flavors) and solvents or carriers or other food additives.

Flavor base: Generally, it is a mixture with a certain fragrance type composed of several or dozens of natural and synthetic food fragrance substances.

Diluents and carriers: The purpose of using diluents such as solvents or carriers in food flavors is to make the flavors a uniform product; and to achieve a concentration suitable for consumption.

3. The effect of food flavor on food:

Auxiliary function: Some products that already have a good fragrance, such as natural fruit juice, etc., due to the lack of aroma strength, it is necessary to choose a fragrance corresponding to its fragrance and fragrance to assist its fragrance.

Stabilization: The aroma of natural products often changes due to the influence of geography, soil, climate, seasons, sunshine, cultivation, harvesting and processing, while the essence is blended according to the same fixed formula. The aroma can basically reach the stability of each batch. After adding aroma, it can play a certain role in stabilizing the aroma of natural products. Supplementary function: Jam, preserved fruit, fruit, canned vegetables, etc. often lose most of their original aroma during processing, which requires flavoring with flavors corresponding to their aroma and flavor characteristics to make the product a treasure library The aroma plays a certain stabilizing effect.

Flavoring effect: Hard candy, soft drinks, popsicles, cakes, melon seeds, etc. have no fragrance in themselves, and the product has a certain type of aroma and fragrance by adding a specific flavor.

Tasting Effects: Certain foods have an unacceptable odor. (such as the fishy smell of fish products), by choosing a suitable flavor, the smell can be corrected, so that people are willing to accept it.

Substitution effect: When it is difficult to directly use natural products as the source of fragrance (such as insufficient supply of goods, or high cost price, or difficulties in the production process, etc.), corresponding flavors can be used instead to overcome the difficulties.

4. Classified by performance:

Water-bath essence: usually also called water essence, which is formed by dissolving the essence base in water-soluble solvents such as ethanol, distilled water, glycerin or propylene glycol, and can be extracted by ethanol and distilled water, from natural flavors (such as sweet orange oil) , lemon oil, etc.) This kind of essence can be completely dissolved in water under a certain ratio, and the solution is clear and transparent.

Oil bath essence: usually also called oily essence or heat-resistant essence, which is made by dissolving essence base in refined edible animal and vegetable oil, essential oil or propanol. This type of essence is characterized by relatively strong aroma, calm and long-lasting fragrance, and it is less volatile. Emulsified flavor: The appearance is milky, and sometimes it also contains food coloring. It is a kind of fragrance that can integrate multiple functions (fragrance, turbidity, and coloring). Emulsified fragrance is an oil-in-water (O/W) type emulsion.

Powder flavor adsorption type powder flavor: It is a kind of fragrance-like product that uniformly adsorbs the fragrance base on the surface of the carrier (sugar, salt, glutamic acid, etc.) by a simple mixing method.

Encapsulated powder flavor: also known as microcapsule flavor or spray-dried flavor, it is made from flavor base and colloidal solution through emulsification, homogenization and spray drying. Thermally processed flavor is: refers to the use of amino acids and sugars contained in human food , a heating reaction within a specified temperature range (called non-enzymatic browning reaction or Maillard reaction), or a class of products with aroma generated by the degradation reaction of amino acids (Strecker Degradation) Concentrated essence: in order to adapt to certain uses In order to reduce the transportation volume and cost in long-distance transportation, etc., the solvent in the essence is reduced to a certain extent without affecting the uniformity of the essence body, so as to increase the concentration of the original essence.