Week seven started off a month full of sensory testing. This week was another burger test which was a nice way to start off all the different sensory tests to come since it was a test that I have already helped with. The real excitement for the week though was the flavors class on Friday. The layout of the class was designed to help create a language between industry members and flavorists so that flavors can be created to fit a companies specific needs, but this can be hard to do if a company is asking for one thing but really wanting another that they are having trouble describing. We smelled a lot of key flavor components such as sweet, medicinal, green, spicy, conifer, burnt, etc. It was interesting that when smelling the different flavors there are different things that your senses pick up when you smell them using your orthonasal passage verses your retronasal passage. Within a natural vanilla flavor there are 300 flavor components that can be found which creates a unique aspect of what creates the signature vanilla flavor. Another important aspect to the class was the aspect of nostalgia where the flavorists wanted to know what the flavors made us think of or if it reminded us of some memory because that is an important aspect of food, is the way it makes you feel and a lot of times having things that remind us of our childhood gives a sense of security during times when life seems unpredictable. Many times people chose familiarity over things that are new or unique because food is an area in peoples lives that they feel as if they can control.
