How Can A Flavor House Help Me?

So you’ve created the perfect baked good to push your bakery to the next level. Maybe there is something missing and you can’t quite figure out what flavor is missing from your new recipe. Or, maybe your recipe requires something an ingredient that is not available in abundance or is overpriced, like pure vanilla from Madagascar. 

If you are having trouble with getting your recipe just right, a flavor house may be able to help you create the perfect flavor to complete it. Their flavor chemists work to perfect flavors like this every day. 

Continue reading to learn everything you need to know about utilizing a flavor house to perfect your food or beverage. You will also learn how flavorist come up with the perfect composition for every flavor that they create.

What Are Flavor Houses?

Flavor houses exist to manufacture flavors for the food and beverage industries. Flavor chemists, or simply flavorist, work hard to come up with the right chemical combinations to flavor food even if you don’t have that specific ingredient right in front of you. Flavorists are a lot like perfumers who use chemicals to create fragrances for perfumes.

Some flavor houses have the ability to develop custom flavors to the specific needs of their clients. These custom flavors can be designed for the application to a specific product whether it be a variety of baked goods, foods, and drinks.

How Does It Work?

An artificial flavor or a natural flavor extract is a mixture of volatile chemicals that mimic a natural flavor. It is meant to improve the flavor of your food product without using the actual food item. The evaporated chemical stimulates the sense of smell and the sense of taste. 

Dominant chemical components, also known as esters, make up a flavor. Adding the esters to your product will (to an extent) make it taste like the natural food that it is mimicking. For example, octyl acetate can mimic an orange or banana flavor. Many of these chemical components get used as flavoring agents that are normally mixed to create a specific known taste. 

The sense of taste is more of a limited sense and can only detect four different tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. These flavors incorporate both a taste and a smell component to activate the senses. 

Selecting the Right Flavor House for You

When you’re looking for that perfect flavor for your products, you need to have the right flavor house (with an expert flavorist) on your side. A few of the things that will help you determine if they are right for your company are the services they have available along with the right inventory to help you perfect your product.

1. Development Services

If you are just starting out, you might need a flavor house that has a full-scale product development along with additional services such as nutrition fact panel creation or flavor certification. It may not make sense for you to work alongside a flavor house that houses a full-scale production if you are just looking for something simple, like a new flavor to complete a recipe.

2. Product-Specific Inventory

Image Source: https://vertosa.com/

When choosing a flavor house, remember that it should have an inventory that lines up with your production goals. When you are working with the right flavor house, they will be able to focus on creating a flavor for your specific product.

Having a basic concept can help you to figure out if the flavor houses are right for you. If you have some idea of how to improve your flavor problem, they will be better able to help you out.

3. Regulations for Flavor

Your ideal flavor house will know what claims can and cannot be made on the nutritional label. They will also be able to provide flavor certificates for each of the flavor selections that you come up with.

4. Flavor Labs

The flavor lab that you choose should have a top-of-the-line lab where their expert flavor chemists can determine or identify the flavors that are present and what may be missing from your product. The flavors that they come up with for you will perfectly complement your product.

5. Flavor Training

Your ideal flavor house will help you learn more about the science between flavors, tasting, and the senses. This allows your and your employees to become top-notch tasted testers. The more you know, the easier it will be for everyone involved to create the perfect flavors to enhance all of your products.

6. Product Information

The right flavor house for you will give you all of the information you need to succeed. Your flavor house will be able to answer any questions that you might have about shelf life, flavor loss, and flavor flashpoints.

7. Flexibility

If you have a smaller business, a flavor house that requires a minimum order quality may be too expensive or force you to take on more product than you can use before it expires. There are flavor houses out there that are better equipped to handle smaller businesses.

You have to be flexible in your schedule for custom orders because the average turn-around times for a custom order are about four weeks. It can take up to 12 weeks to get your product right if you require a full-scale production to get started. You may have to push back the opening of your business because you don’t have your product completely figured out yet.

Engineered Flavors Are Awaiting Your Next Decision

Once you decide on the perfect flavor house selections for your business, you will be on your way to perfecting your recipe. Your business will be booming as soon as you start producing your tasty treats with the right artificial or natural flavors.

If you found this post to be helpful, make sure you check out our other food industry or business-related content.