Sourness, flavor factor

Many flavor workers have long been interested in unraveling some of the mysteries encountered during their studies of highly blended flavors. Knowing how complicated is the chemistry of food flavor, one can conclude that any number of taste and flavor factors must be submerged within the flavor blend. Therefore, it should be possible to formulate mixtures that have no readily identifiable taste or odor characteristics. Such mixtures could be referred to as essentially white flavor or white taste. As an example of this idea, so-called white taste mixture has been formulated which was designed to contain sweet, salty, sour, and bitter characteristics at threshold or near threshold values ... 

Table 5 shows the sensory evaluation by Schieberle et al. (30) of the different kinds of butter, namely, Irish sour cream (ISC), cultured butter (CB), sour cream (SC), sweet cream (SwC), and farmer sour cream (ESC). It revealed ISC butter and ESC butter with the highest overall odor intensities. Table 5 shows that 19 odor-active compounds were detected by aroma extract dilution analysis (AEDA) in a distillate of the ISC butter. The highest flavor dilution (ED) factors have been found for 5-decalactone, skatole, i-6-dodeceno-y-lactone, and diacetyl followed by trany-2-nonenal, cw,c -3,6-nonadienal, c/i-2-nonenal, and l-octen-3-one. 

Recognized subjectively for sourness, cranberries have this flavor profile because of their richness in a variety of polyphenols (phenolic acids), which increase the acidity of the fruit. This characteristic is also the most probable health factor in cranberries, as phenolic acids may be... 

Although the total flavor of a food comes from the complex combination of taste, smell, touch, texture or consistency, and temperature sensations, taste is a major factor. Three of the four fundamental tastes are directly linked to acids and bases. Your tongue has four different types of taste buds— sweet, salty, bitter, and sour—that are located at different places on your tongue. Only certain molecules and ions can react with these specific buds to produce a signal that is sent to a certain region of your brain. When these signals are received, your brain processes them, and you sense taste. 

Salt, butter, and pepper not only added some of their own character, thereby increasing amplitude of flavor, but also accomplished a blending of such factors as sulfide, bitter, sour, and green vegetable. When sugar was also included, the overall flavor was further improved, as the sweetness and the typical graininess of corn were elevated. 

Confusion of the taste perception mechanism by the competition of sweet, salty, sour, and bitter factors may seem to be hopelessly complicated. In the author experience this is merely a part of the normal phenomenon of flavor blending. A better understanding will be reached when more studies such as those of Fabian and Blum (5) are carried out in actual food and beverage media. 

Sweeteners can be classified into bulk and intense sweeteners (—>2.16). Bulk sweeteners need to be used in relatively large amounts to achieve the desired sweetness in contrast to intense sweeteners that are much sweeter and needed only in tiny amounts. The sweetness of individual bulk sweeteners is compared in Table 2.5. Sweetness is subjective. It is usually measured by preparing a 10% solution of the compound in water followed by a request to a panel of people to taste it. It is then diluted and tasted again, diluted and tasted again, and so on until the panel declares that the solution is no longer sweet. The perception of the sweet taste in food also depends on concentration, acidity, temperature, and the presence or absence of additives. But just as sweetness is affected by other factors, so it is that sweetness influences the perception of fruit flavors, sourness and bitterness as well. 

---