This technique, which uses gas chromatography to build up a database of molecule aroma profiles, isolated cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and clove as key ingredients in creating the gingerbread flavour.
“By mapping the aroma profile, we found that possibly more cinnamon and orange peel could be added to the sugar reduced dough, recipe one, to make the aroma profile more like the original recipe,” the Swedish ingredient firm’s whitepaper outlined.
“On the contrary, more cloves should be added to the sugar reduced recipe two to match the aroma profile.”
By building databases of e-sensory data from a larger number of samples, changes to the texture, sweetness, and matrix effects of the food as a result of sugar reducing measures can be mitigated.
Replacing sugar ‘not easy’
“To replace sugar is not an easy task for the food industry as sugar is not only added to sweeten, but also plays an important role for texture, taste and colour,” said Mathias Lundgren, physical chemistry, Bayn Europe AB.
“The use of e-sensory has been shown to be a valuable tool when developing new recipes of food products to match the aroma profiles to the target recipe.
“Looking at the results from the study I believe that using modern technology, such as e-sensory, can be an excellent and effective tool to reach healthier sugar reduced products.”
Lundgren’s work uses two recipes of gingerbread. One replaced sugar with Eureba Bakery Blend, Bayn’s sweetener blends that include polyols (sugar alcohols) and dietary fibres.
He then used data from ten different gingerbread cookie manufacturers in the Swedish market to compare the sensory data measured from the two recipes.
Lundgren’s findings revealed that adding more cinnamon or orange peel to the sugar-reduced recipe would make the sensory more like the original recipe.
“E-sensory technology is one of the components that will be used on the cloud platform that Bayn Europe is currently building,” said Patrik Edström, CEO of Bayn Europe.
“Looking at the results from the gingerbread study, we can see that e-sensory can successfully be used to help optimize sugar reduced recipes to be more like full sugar recipes.
“We are certain that this technology development can shorten the development time and eliminate the risk of uncertainty for food and beverage producers looking to reduce sugar. We will now continue to conduct research using e-sensory on other types of recipes.”
Sense-led products
In the e-sensory of food and beverages, measurements such as hardness, colour, viscosity and also chemical analyses are carried out, to ensure that low fat, low sugar, high fibre foods match their less healthy counterparts for sensory quality.
So for example, when eating, the human nose senses the volatile molecules released from the food matter when it is heated to body temperature in the mouth.
The aromatic sensation is then recorded and can refer to previous experiences, feelings and memories.
In recent years, a number of product launches have harnessed a sense-led approach in recreating the desirable sweet and salty taste.
Knorr flavour pot gels have been touted as a solution to enhance the salt flavour. In a similar vein there are products available that make use of ingredients to enrich the umami ‘meat’ taste.
In addition, the launch of several frozen fruit and vegetable snacks, have paralleled recent offerings of low calorie, flavoured popcorn snacks such as Manchester-based Yumsh Snacks’ orange- and apple-flavoured popcorns, called Poptang Tango.