What role does masking play? Does masking with kitchen-like ingredients offer an ideal solution?
Plant protein has made it mainstream and will, without doubt, shape our future diets. Growing demand and expectations challenge food producers to make their plant protein as tasty as possible. They will also ask themselves how to add in the signature juiciness and fatty taste into meat alternatives.
Many plant proteins come with undesired taste notes. Soy often tastes beany. Pea can create a bitter aftertaste. This makes identifying and characterising these off-notes so important. Tools like ProtiScan use innovative in – depth analysis, Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry and headspace technology to obtain a detailed profile and help select the most adapted taste solution.
ProtiScan
Symrise’s novel approach enables research-driven product development in alternative protein applications for the food and beverage industry. The market for meat and dairy alternatives is growing rapidly. A wide range of protein sources, raw materials, technical and sensory characteristics have created a very challenging area for good-tasting product developments.
Symrise ProtiScan offers our customers an analytical approach for the understanding and the assessment of alternative protein sources and applications. Linking protein insights sensory and consumer-driven data allows Symrise to develop predictive models, resulting in efficient product development for our customers, through well-suited and well-performing solutions.
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 Flavour Masking Range. Given the growing focus on natural ingredients, could masking via kitchen-like ingredients also represent an efficient and taste-effective approach?
Five ways to benefit from masking for plant protein with kitchen-like ingredients:
1. Masking via kitchen-like ingredients using natural ingredients
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 flavourings 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 optimising the overall taste.
2. Masking via kitchen-like ingredients enables a cleaner and clearer labelling
By creating a neutral or typified base using natural ingredients, you can increase the vegetable content and capitalise 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.
3. Masking via kitchen-like ingredients can help tailor the taste
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.
4. Masking via kitchen-like ingredients solutions needs individual fitting
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.
Masking forms one part of an interconnected process…
“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,” explains Delphine Riault, Symrise, vegetable product manager.
