In the food & beverages industry, the recipe is king. The race for the best recipe is never-ending. Recipes are always carefully studied and crafted to deliver the best palatal delight. But in order to obtain this delight, you need the best ingredients and keynote flavours that best suits the consumers’ taste. Your recipe should connect with your audiences and that can’t be achieved until you know the best formula, the best cooking or baking techniques and the differences between flavourings, extracts, and essences.
Flavourings:
Flavourings are any ingredients that are added to foods in a very small quantity to enhance taste and aroma that may have got lost during food processing. Flavourings are produced from essential oils or extracting aromatic compounds from food. Water is added and sometimes certified food colour as well.
Essence:
A substance acquired from the plant, drug, or by distillation, etc. containing its qualities in concentrated form. Essence can also be termed as imitation extract or a pure extract (highly concentrated form). Pure extracts are fundamentally very strong extracts, 2-4 times stronger than normal extracts. Natural essences can be obtained by extracting essential oil from fruits, blossoms, roots, etc. of the parts of the plant or the whole plant.
The main methods to produce essences are:
- Expression
- Absorption
- Maceration
- Distillation
Extract:
An extract is made by placing raw material in alcohol & water. A substance separated from a mixture by distillation, pressure or treatment with solvents. Combining oil from the ingredient with alcohol of proper strength can create a long-lasting flavouring agent. Non Alcoholic extracts are prepared by using glycerol/propylene glycol or both to bring the essential oil into solution, with water and sometimes food colour. In fact, water-soluble and oil-soluble based suspensions are more superior carriers than alcohol.
The most commonly available extracts & essences are:
- Nuts
- Spices
- Fruits
- Herbs
- Flowers
Oil: Even though referred to as oil, they do not include any vegetable oil. They are obtained from the peels of fruits, flowers, plant leaves, etc. As they do not contain any alcohol or water and are highly heat tolerant, they are best suited for candies & chocolate. They are a bit expensive but are very intense, very few drops impart more flavour when compared to extracts.
Emulsions:
These typically contain essential oils, water, stabilizers and emulsifiers. These are mostly water-based and are typically used instead of extracts as a substitution and are bake-proof (flavour stays the same when baked).
Powders:
Powders are also used in baking as primary or sometimes secondary flavouring agents. The common powdered flavourings are nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, etc. They need to be mixed with dry ingredients so that they spread evenly in the batter.
Today’s customer is well informed about their needs. They perceive the clean labelled product and its freshness as a healthier option without compromising on the taste. So, the flavour manufacturers need to focus on making true and accurate flavours to enhance the taste & aroma of foods & beverages.
