History of Flavor Industry Development

Flavorings are a major category of ingredients intentionally added to food. It is a sensation evoked with a range of technical terms in Greek and Latin.

Their history began when people discovered that components characteristics of the aroma of natural products could be enriched by simple methods.

The known utilization of spices and herbs extends over some 5000 years, starting with the ancient Egyptian. One of spices and herbs functions according to the historical period was the enhancing of food flavour.

The flavour industry has developed only after the past 160 years from small beginnings in companies specializing in the processing and marketing of natural botanicals such as the herbs and spices, vanilla beans, vegetables drugs and the distillation of essential oils and aromatic essences, the isolation of aromatic chemicals from these products and drug extraction.

Systematic development began in the 13th century, when pharmacies started to prepare so-called remedy oils and later recorded the properties and physiological effects of these oils in pharmacopeias.

Many essential oils currently used by perfumes and flavorists were originally prepared by distillation in pharmacies in the 16th and 17th centuries.

It was not until the latter half of the 19th century that chemicals began to realize the flavouring possibilities of synthetic aromatic chemicals.

In 1858, vanilla was first crystallized from an alcoholic extract of vanilla beans by Gobley.

Methyl salicylates followed in 1859 as ‘artificial wintergreen oil’ and benzaldehyde in 1870 as ‘artificial butter almond oil’ were synthesized by chemical industry for fruity odor.

It was 1872 before Charles established its empirical formula and two years later before Tieman and Haarman reported its structure and later Reimer confirmed it by synthesizing vanillin from guaianol.

Tieman and Haarman later founded a company, Haarman and Reimer and started the first industrial production of vanillin.

At about the same time organic chemists were preparing a wide range of highly odorous aromatic chemicals which were later to be of great value to the flavour industry.

The flavor industry emerged in the mid nineteenth century processed foods began to be manufactured on large scale.

In the early part of the twentieth century, Germany’s powerful chemical industry assumed the technological lead in flavour production.

A solution of esters for use as artificial fruit essences were exhibited in a trade fair in London and shortly after were in use in the United States.

In 1869, the first book of artificial flavouring formulations was published anonymously in Philadelphia.

In 1916, Walters manual for the essence industry was released. Its named ‘Manual for the Essence Industry.’ The intermediate period between the late 1950s and the early 1960s, produce major breakthrough in raspberry and strawberry flavors.

Today the industry is dominated by several very large multinational flavour and fragrance companies mainly prime in natural products and/or synthetic chemicals which are used in the compounding of an almost limitless range of flavorings and fragrance products.
History of Flavor Industry Development