Complexity of Flavour

Complexity of Flavour
Flavour formulations vary radically in complexity. The simplest flavour can be based on just one component, many flavors, just like nature, contain hundreds of ingredients.

Very simple flavours have been popular since the earliest days of the flavour industry. Vanillin, isoamyl acetate and benzaldehyde have been the most popular single component examples.

Very simple flavours may represent an attractive caricature but they never taste look the real food.

At the extreme, very complex flavors often lack impact and can taste flat and characterless.

Complex flavours can be deliberate (the result of slavishly following every detail of an analysis) or accidental (the result of lazy blending of flavours and intermediates).

If a natural character is desired, then the optimum level of complexity is often the minimum number of components required to prevent the taster from perceiving the individual characters.

This level of complexity can vary from perhaps as few as 15 components in simple fruit flavors to up to 100 in the most complex flavour of cooked food.

There are however some important exceptions to this rule.

The key problem with complex flavours is that a mixture of two chemicals usually smell weaker than the sum of its parts. The perceived intensity of flavour chemicals has a logarithmic rather than a linear relationship with concentrations.

At low concentrations, near the threshold, the logarithmic relationship does not hold because the chemical is not perceived at all until it reaches the threshold level.

At high concentrations the relationship also does not hold because the nose fatigues to the stimulus. The lower extremes of the concentration scale explain synergistic effects which otherwise appear to contradict the rule that a mixture smells weaker that the of it parts.

Traces of components that tasted individually would be well below their threshold level can this have significant positive effects in mixtures At the other extreme, it is unwise to use so much of any single ingredient that the taster would quickly become fatigued.

A mixture of two or more chemicals with complimentary odors can often give better results.
Complexity of Flavour