Explain the seven sub-categories of natural flavors

Edible spices are substances that impart aroma to food or at the same time impart special taste. It can make food produce flavor, increase appetite, facilitate digestion and absorption, increase the variety of food, and improve food quality; restore food flavor and enhance characteristic flavor; eliminate food The unpleasant taste; sterilization, antiseptic.

Food flavors are divided into three categories according to their sources and manufacturing methods: natural flavors, natural equivalent flavors, and artificial flavors. Both natural equivalent fragrances and artificial fragrances belong to the category of synthetic fragrances. Today we will look at the first category-seven sub-categories of natural flavors.

Natural fragrances are substances separated from natural aromatic plants or animal raw materials by purely physical methods. They are generally considered to be highly safe, such as animal-derived musk, castoreum, and muskrat, plant-derived white orchid oil, rose flower oil Wait. There are seven sub-categories of natural flavors:

1. Spice (Spice)

2. Essential Oil (Essential Oil)

3. Tincture (Tincture)

4. Concrete

5. Resinoid

6. Absolute

7. Oleoresin

Spices: All kinds of plants, leaves, roots, stems, bark, fruits or seeds with special aroma, fragrance and taste, such as cinnamon, fennel and pepper, etc., to enhance the flavor of food. Because most of them are used in cooking, they are also called "seasoning spices". Many spices have been eaten for thousands of years. There is no toxicity problem within the normal use range.

According to the American Spices Association (American Spices Association) definition: "Any plant that is mainly used for food flavoring can be called a spice."

Essential oils: take the tissues of different parts of aromatic plants (such as flower buds, fruits, seeds, roots, stems, leaves, skins, etc.) or secretions as raw materials, and extract them by pressing, cold grinding, extraction, steam distillation, adsorption and other methods The mixture of terpenes, cycloaliphatic, aliphatic, etc. is called essential oil.

Such as: amyl alcohol, hexanol-flower bud

Ethanol, propanol-phenolic compounds

Toluene-essential oil containing aromatic compounds

Chlorine-containing solvents-amine compounds

There are more than 3,000 kinds of essential oils in the world, of which about hundreds have commercial value, and more than 100 kinds are suitable for food. Among various essential oils, cinnamon oil produced in China occupies an important position in the world market.

Tincture: Use a certain concentration of ethanol to extract natural animal secretions or plant fruits, seeds, rhizomes, etc. at room temperature. The products obtained after cooling, clarification, and filtration are called tinctures, such as vanilla tincture and benzoin tincture .

Extract: Use volatile solvents (such as petroleum ether) to extract the soluble substances of spice plant tissues, and finally degrease and concentrate the paste-like substances called extracts, such as jasmine extract, osmanthus extract, tuberose extract, Lily of the valley extract, ink red extract.

Fragrance resin: The resin-like secretions with fragrance components exuded from the fragrance plants are extracted with organic solvents, and the products that are finally removed by removing the solvent and moisture are called fragrance resins.

Pure oil: high-purity product obtained by plant extract (or extract of balsam, aromatic resin, and distilled water containing aroma obtained after the essential oil is prepared by steam distillation), re-extracted with ethanol and then removed the solvent. Some are frozen, filtered to remove all substances such as wax, fat and terpenoids that are insoluble in ethanol, and then evaporated to remove the ethanol under reduced pressure and low temperature. It is a highly concentrated and completely alcohol-soluble liquid fragrance. It is absolute oil, such as rose absolute.

Oleoresin: A type of natural fragrance obtained by leaching the spice with an organic solvent and removing the solvent. It is a viscous liquid. The main ingredients are essential oils, spicy ingredients, pigments and resins, and sometimes non-volatile oils and some sugars. Oleoresin is a concentrated liquid of the active ingredients of natural spices, and its concentration is about 10 times that of the raw spices. Such as black pepper oleoresin, capsicum oleoresin, pepper oleoresin, garlic oleoresin, ginger oleoresin, etc. Oleoresin belongs to the category of extracts.