• Flavours

Flavour is the key to any good food, of course desserts are no exception. Understanding different types of flavours and the chemistry behind it would therefore greatly elevate your baking skills.

Flavour molecules predominantly dissolve in fat and and are slowly released to our sensory receptors as we eat. This is why low fat food often lack lasting flavour. To enhance the taste of low fat food, we could incorporate ingredients rich in middle and base notes. The 3 types of flavours are listed below:

  • Volatile flavours (top notes): Volatile flavours evaporate easily due to their small and light molecules. They are perceived immediately but are easily lost during cooking or when the food is cut. Examples include strawberries and lemon.
  • Middle notes: Middle notes evaporate more slowly due to their larger and heavier molecules, providing lasting flavours to dishes. Examples include caramelised or cooked fruits, coconut, roasted nuts, cocoa and coffee — often developed through the Maillard reactions during roasting. Fermented and aged food products such as buttermilk and aged cheese also fall into this category.
  • Base/Background notes: base notes evaporate very slowly or not at all due to their large and heavy molecules. These include spices like cinnamon and cumin, with deep, lasting flavours.

There are several ingredients primarily added to foods for their flavours, some are discussed below.

Spices and Herbs

Spices and herbs are dried plant products used for seasoning, they come from different parts of plants:

  • Bark: cinnamon
  • Dried fruits: star anise
  • Seeds: nutmegs, sesame
  • Flower buds: clove, rose
  • Roots: ginger
  • Green leaves/herbs: mint, oregano, parsley
  • Other sources: citrus peel, coffee beans, vanilla beans

These ingredients tend to be rich in volatile oil and essential oil, providing strong and pleasant top notes. The quality of spices is directly related to the amount of volatile oil it contains.

Processed Flavourings

Processed flavourings include extracts, liqueurs, compounds, oils, emulsions and powders. They can be natural or artificial and are more consistent in flavour, quality and strength than unprocessed flavourings. However, they can sometimes be less true or rich than the original spice.

Extracts contain alcohol that dilutes and dissolves the flavour ingredients, preserving them by preventing microbial growth. Alcohol solutions can also be used to extract flavour from plant products. For example, vanilla extract is made when vanilla beans are infused by an alcohol solution which gently percolated through mashed vanilla beans for several weeks before starting to age. Vanillin — the key flavour molecule — is naturally present in pure vanilla.

Making homemade vanilla extract:

  1. Slice vanilla beans lengthwise, exposing the seeds.
  2. Scrape the seeds with a knife and finely chop the beans into smaller pieces.
  3. Place the scraped seeds and chopped beans in a jar with 30mL of 80 proof vodka per vanilla bean. (each vanilla bean weigh about 3g)
  4. Shake occasionally and allow the mixture to sit for 2 or more weeks.

This homemade vanilla extract may be less intense than commercial ones due to less efficient extraction methods.

Reference
  • Figoni, P.L. (2010) How Baking Works: Exploring the Fundamentals of Baking Science. 3rd ed. Providence, Rhode Island: Wiley.