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Tricking the taste buds: flavour makers rise to meaty challenge

Chef Brunschweiler displays a pea protein-based hamburger at flavour maker Givaudan's innovation centre in Kemptthal
Chef Brunschweiler displays a pea protein-based hamburger at flavour maker Givaudan's innovation centre in Kemptthal
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At flavour maker Givaudan’s innovation centre near Zurich, veteran chef Sam Brunschweiler serves up a lamb shawarma dish that looks and tastes appropriately meaty but is made from pea protein.


The Swiss company and competitors such as International Flavors & Fragrances and Symrise are vying to create the tastiest plant-based meat alternatives in a market that is growing fast on the back of consumer concerns about health, sustainability and animal welfare.


“A pea tastes like a pea. You put it in a burger, it’s not exactly what you would expect,” Givaudan’s head of savoury flavours, Flavio Garofalo, told Reuters.


A vegan rice tartar on toasted bread is seen at flavour maker Givaudan's innovation centre in Kemptthal, Switzerland October 29, 2020. Picture taken October 29, 2020.    REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
A vegan rice tartar on toasted bread is seen at flavour maker Givaudan's innovation centre in Kemptthal, Switzerland October 29, 2020. Picture taken October 29, 2020. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

Givaudan analyses how fat, proteins, sugars and water in meat produce different flavours when heated because “most of the flavour comes from the cooking”, Garofalo said.


Mimicking the conditions in a vessel with non-animal proteins, sugar and fat - and using less water for roasted and more for boiled flavours - allows specialists to re-create a meat taste without meat, he said, just as a strawberry flavour can be created from bananas and apples.


TOO MUCH SALT?


Stacy Pyett, who manages a protein programme at Wageningen University & Research, said flavour houses played a key role in creating tastier plant-based meat analogues.


Improving their nutritional profile, which typically has more salt but fewer vitamins and iron than meat, is also a challenge.


Pyett said research showed salt was easier to taste in a juicy sausage than in a dry one, an indication that enhancing juiciness in meat analogues might allow for reducing added salt.


Garofalo said Givaudan had created flavours that allowed cutting the salt content by 35-40% while keeping the taste.


The company has also developed a ‘fat encapsulation’ technology that preserves fat in plant-based burgers during cooking as in real meat. Normally with plant-based products, most of the fats melt and flow into the pan.


“Fat is present in meat in what we call fat cells. When the fat melts, it’s inside a little capsule that only breaks at a certain temperature,” Garofalo said.


The technology, which is awaiting a patent, would keep the fat inside the patty and make it juicier, allowing for a reduction in fat content of up to 75% and of calories by around 35%. — Reuters


 


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