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What role does masking play? Does masking with kitchen-like ingredients offer an ideal solution?
Many plant proteins come with undesired taste notes. Soy often tastes beany. Pea can create a bitter aftertaste. This makes identifying and characterizing these off-notes so important. Tools like ProtiScan™ use innovative molecular analysis, Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry and headspace technology to obtain a detailed profile and help select the most adapted taste solution.
The next step? Masking the off-notes to create a neutral or typified base. This could involve kitchen-like processes or neutral masking blocks like the symlife™ Natural Flavor Masking Range. Given the growing focus on natural ingredients, could masking via kitchen-like ingredients also represent an efficient and taste-effective approach?
Let’s take a closer look at how masking via kitchen-like ingredients works and why it could offer the right option for you – whether you are a large food company or a smaller startup. We have identified five steps:
This new masking technology draws on natural ingredients - like onions, garlic, and other vegetables - to offset unpleasant notes. With a neutral or typified base, you remove off taste and also reduce the amount of additional flavorings needed at a later stage. This simplifies and speeds up the product development process – to reach your market at the right moment - and contributes to optimizing the overall taste.
By creating a neutral or typified base using natural ingredients, you can increase the vegetable content and capitalize on the potency of kitchen-like ingredients. This helps simplify your recipe for a healthier nutritional ingredient list, cleaner and clearer labelling and greater transparency – essential given that many consumers choose plant-protein as a healthier, more sustainable choice to meat.
A wide range of natural taste solutions exists. For example, at Symrise, we use Sapids to increase acidity and sweetness, Alliaceous to enrich the protein with garlic and onion profiles and culinary masking for more complex, vegetable taste blocks. A prior masking would enable you to apply the full palette of our natural taste solutions. You can use these individually or combined, depending on the application.
Each protein and application works different. With a deep portfolio of masking solutions, Symrise can help select and combine the most adapted solutions. By adapting the ratio of different ingredients based on the taste profile - established through tastings or using technology like ProtiScan™ – you can find the ideal balance between taste, naturalness and nutrition.
“Creating great taste requires a holistic approach. Masking closely links to typification and enrichment. For this reason, a dedicated Symrise team works on each plant protein from A-Z, drawing on expertise in sourcing the best vegetable varieties and profiles, innovative technology, and product development experience. By approaching great taste from different angles, we achieve a more harmonious result better aligned with consumer insights and Drivers of Liking.”
Delphine Riault, Vegetable Product Manager
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