Omega Ingredients creates Signature flavour range
Other flavours in the range are wild strawberry and ripe banana.
The range now has over twenty flavours all of which can be listed as natural in Europe. Available in both liquid and powder form, they are also heat and light-stable, Omega Ingredients founder and biochemist Steve Pearce said.
The supplier expects most demand to come from manufacturers of beverages and dairy products such as yoghurt and ice cream.
Wild strawberry is already being used in a private label milkshake while a UK beverage manufacturer is using the pea flavour in a non-alcoholic drink marketed to adults.
“Pea is a new and trendy flavour and the manufacture calls the drink Garden. It’s part of their branding and anyone recognises it as garden pea flavour. It has a fresh, green, natural flavour that is very different,” Pearce said.
Omega Ingredients works with a Dutch flavour organisation to analyse the hundreds of flavour components present in food using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS).
“We use this to remind ourselves of key components that are present in strawberry flavour naturally and try to get as close to that as possible with cost effective natural materials.”
Pearce said the firm could meet any supply with demand mostly coming from Europe and, in particular, the US where manufacturers have traditionally tended to use artificial flavours but consumers are becoming more discerning.
"The Signature brand [moves] away from artificial, sweet notes in typical fruit flavourings and apes the taste and smell of the natural produce, so you can sense the fur of a peach or taste the freshness in a rosemary flavour that seems like it has just been cut from the shrub," said the supplier.
