Food flavors and spices

作者：admin  点击次数：137  发布时间：2025-05-26

The aroma and flavor of food can increase people's pleasure and appetite, promote saliva secretion, and enhance the body's digestion and absorption of biological components. Therefore, food flavors and spices can make up for flavor defects, increase the color, aroma and taste of food, greatly improve people's quality of life and taste, and effectively promote the rapid development of the food industry. Spices, also known as fragrant raw materials, refer to substances with aroma or fragrance at a certain concentration, which are used to configure flavors. They are the general term for aroma substances extracted from fragrant substances or obtained by artificial synthesis. Spices are all organic compounds, which can be mixtures or single compounds. In food processing, a small amount of flavors and spices are often added to improve or enhance the aroma and flavor of food. These flavors and spices are called flavoring agents or flavoring agents. Flavors, also known as blending spices, are a mixture of various spices artificially prepared with a certain fragrance and concentration composed of aromatic substances, solvents or carriers and some food additives. The functions of edible flavors are mainly manifested in two aspects: one is to provide fragrance for food. Some new foods, such as beverages, ice cream, jelly, instant noodles, etc., have no fragrance or very little fragrance. Their attractive fragrance is mainly or even completely provided by edible flavors. The second is to supplement and improve the fragrance of food. Due to the limitations of processing technology and formula, some processed foods lack fragrance or have weak fragrance characteristics. Adding flavors can supplement and improve their fragrance, such as meat products, imitation meat plant protein products, puffed foods and baked foods.
(I) Classification of spices
According to different sources, spices can be divided into three categories: natural spices, natural equivalent spices and artificial synthetic spices. Natural spices have complex ingredients and are composed of multiple compounds. There are more than 3,000 known natural spices. The so-called natural spices refer to the aroma substances extracted from the flowers, fruits, leaves, stems, root barks or secretions of various natural plants or animals. There are more than 7,000 synthetic spices, and new varieties are constantly emerging. Natural spices are divided into animal spices and plant spices. The spices used in food are mainly plant spices. Natural fragrances come in various forms depending on the method of preparation. For example, synthetic fragrances are divided into fully synthetic fragrances and semi-synthetic fragrances. Vanillin synthesized from the industrial raw material guaiacol is a fully synthetic fragrance, while vanillin synthesized from lignin is a semi-synthetic fragrance. In addition, monomer fragrances artificially separated from natural fragrances are called isolated fragrances, such as citral separated from lemongrass oil by distillation.
1. Natural fragrances
(1) Animal fragrances There are four common animal fragrances in natural fragrances, namely musk, civet and ambergris, which are indispensable for the preparation of high-end fragrances. Animal fragrances are mainly used in the manufacture of perfumes. (2) Plant fragrances There are two main methods for extracting plant fragrances in natural fragrances: distillation and extraction. According to the form in which they are prepared, they can be roughly divided into three categories, namely essential oils, extracts, and incense. (3) Isolated fragrances Natural fragrances are generally a mixture of multiple aromatic substances. By using methods such as fractionation, freezing separation and chemical methods, components with particularly high practical value can be separated, namely isolated spices, such as citric acid aldehyde in lemongrass oil and eugenol in clove oil. Isolated spices can be used directly or as intermediates for synthetic spices.
2. Synthetic spices
Synthetic spices are used to make up for the shortage of natural spices. The basis of their synthesis method is organic synthesis technology and modern analysis technology.
Synthetic spices can be divided into three categories according to the preparation method: the first category is isolated spices, which belong to the broad sense of synthetic spices; the second category is artificially imitated by analyzing the structure of aromatic components in natural spices, such as aromatics and vanillin; the third category is that which does not exist in nature but has a fragrance similar to natural products, such as synthetic incense (Waterlongging xiang). Synthetic spices can be divided into the following seven categories according to the fragrance type:
①Animal fragrance type synthetic spices: synthetic musk and civet (used to make perfume)
②) Hundred flowers type synthetic spices: This is a mixed type of synthetic fragrance, such as ambergris and castor (mainly used to make perfume).
③ Rose-flavored synthetic fragrances: such as rose alcohol, levorotatory vanillin, rose oxide, citronellal, etc.
④) Rape-flavored synthetic fragrances: such as amyl cinnamaldehyde, linalool and iso-linalool, nonyl acetate, etc.
⑤ Lily-of-the-valley-flavored synthetic fragrances: such as citronellol, linalool, lily-of-the-valley aldehyde, etc.
⑥ Wood-flavored synthetic fragrances: such as santalol and its acetate, guaiac acetate, borneol, etc. ⑦ Chemestrone and alcohol: Acetate is the most widely used in perfumery, and it can be used to prepare synthetic fragrances with a wide variety of flavors, such as flowers and fruits.
In addition, spices can be divided into essential oils, extracts, balsams, pressed oils, pure oils, tinctures, isolated spices, ointments, etc. according to their forms.
(II) Classification of flavors
There are many types of edible flavors, and they are constantly developing and changing. The classification of edible flavors mainly includes the following types: 1. Classification by use
Each processed food has a matching edible flavor. Edible flavors can be divided into many types according to their uses. In general, they mainly include food flavors, wine flavors, tobacco flavors, medicinal flavors, dental flavors, etc.
2. Classification by flavor type Edible flavors have rich and diverse flavors, and each food has its own unique flavor. In general, there are fruit flavors, flower flavors, nut flavors, frankincense flavors, meat flavors, spicy flavors, vegetable flavors, wine flavors, tobacco flavors, etc.
3. Classification by source
Edible flavors can be divided into blending flavors, reaction flavors, fermentation flavors, enzymatic flavors, and fat oxidation flavors according to the source of the flavor substances.
4. Classification by dosage form Edible flavors can be divided into water-soluble flavors, oil-soluble flavors, water-oil soluble flavors, paste flavors, emulsified flavors, powdered flavors, and microcapsule flavors are also under research and development, and are rarely seen in the Chinese food market.
(III) Some common spices in food
1. Licorice tincture
Licorice tincture mainly contains glycyrrhizin, glycyrrhetinic acid, glycyrrhizin, isoliquiritigenin, neoliquiritigenin, etc.
(1) Properties Licorice tincture is a yellow to orange-yellow liquid with a slight fragrance and sweet taste.
(2) Performance Licorice tincture has the effects of enhancing fragrance, anti-inflammatory and detoxification.
(3) Application According to my country's "(GB2760-2007) Hygienic Use of Food Additives