Taste properties

This proposal went some way towards unravelling the tangle of information that had for many years faced chemists interested in structure-sweetness relationships, that is, why seemingly unrelated compounds having such diverse chemical structure should possess this taste property. 

Taste Properties of Reducing Monosaccharides and Their Glycosides ... 

The taste properties of various other ketoses, including 2-pentuloses, 2-hexuloses, and 2-octuloses, have also been studied (see Table XV) to determine the significance of the 2-hydroxyl-2-hydroxymethyl arrangement of 2-ketopyranoses. Some of these, for example, a-D-tagatose (25), -d-g/uco-2-heptulose (26), a-D-mnMno-2-heptulose (27), a-D-fa/o-2-heptulose (28), a-D-a/tro-2-heptulose (29), and D-g/ycero-a-D-g/ co-2-octulose (30),... 

The taste properties of the di-O-methylhexopyranosyl derivatives, like those of the corresponding deoxy sugars, are never sweet, and always bitter. As with the deoxy sugars, this is possibly the result of increased lipophilicity of the molecule. In sucrose, however, the presence of two methyl groups on the D-glucopyranosyl or the D-fructofuranosyl group does not seem to cause any marked bitterness (see Table XVIII). 

It is known that the naturally occurring dihydrochalcone glycosides phloridzin (75) and glycyphillin (76), which are 2-yl glycosides, possess little or no sweetness, whereas phyllodulcin (77), which is not a glycoside, has the same taste properties as the dihydrochalcones it is 400 times sweeter than sucrose. ... 

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