An article today warned of extinction of the banana. Which made me think if it did become extinct the flavour would still be popular and sold in products. Kids in the future far future would not know a banana was a thing but still enjoy banana flavoured icecream. Forgetting that there is no bananas in icecream even now, are there any flavours that are totally made up, not derived or inspired from something natural?

I can only think of musk lollies but not even sure about them.

musk comes from the musk glands of deers, I’ve always thought…

> are there any flavours that are totally made up, not derived or inspired from something natural?

Good question. I’ll think about it.

Arts said:

musk comes from the musk glands of deers, I’ve always thought…

Muskcovites I thought.

cola?

there is a kola nut… who knew? I thought cola was a mix of shit.

I didn’t know.

> are there any flavours that are totally made up, not derived or inspired from something natural?

There are three ways to make flavours, by extracting it from some living organism or existing mineral is often the cheapest. Synthesising it to match something familiar is a good way to generate sales.

Then there’s the “suck it and see” method of making a chemical and trying it out to smell what the flavour is.

MSG would be the most familiar completely synthetic flavour, but even that was first a natural product, found in sea kelp in 1908.

Artificial sweeteners are artificial flavours, but are still made in imitation of natural flavours. Completely artificial sweeteners include aspartame, saccharin and sucralose, and many others.

Wikipedia gives a list of aroma compounds (not to be confused with “aromatic”), keeping in mind that most of taste is actually aroma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroma_compound
These are:
1 Aroma-compounds classified by structure
1.1 Esters
1.2 Linear-terpenes
1.3 Cyclic-terpenes
1.4 Aromatic
1.5 Amines
2 Other aroma-compounds
2.1 Alcohols
2.2 Aldehydes
2.3 Esters
2.4 Ketones
2.5 Lactones
2.6 Thiols
2.7 Miscellaneous-compounds

Almost all the aroma compounds either occur naturally or roughly imitate a natural flavour. Or as used as “foul taste” agents.

Methyl formate is an aroma compound that does not imitate a natural flavour and does not occur naturally. Its aroma is described as “Ethereal”. A similar is Acetaldehyde.

I wonder if you could create a paint that absorbs a wide range of sunlight and wire you entire roof as one giant solar panel

mollwollfumble said:

> are there any flavours that are totally made up, not derived or inspired from something natural?

There are three ways to make flavours, by extracting it from some living organism or existing mineral is often the cheapest. Synthesising it to match something familiar is a good way to generate sales.

Then there’s the “suck it and see” method of making a chemical and trying it out to smell what the flavour is.

MSG would be the most familiar completely synthetic flavour, but even that was first a natural product, found in sea kelp in 1908.

Artificial sweeteners are artificial flavours, but are still made in imitation of natural flavours. Completely artificial sweeteners include aspartame, saccharin and sucralose, and many others.

Wikipedia gives a list of aroma compounds (not to be confused with “aromatic”), keeping in mind that most of taste is actually aroma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroma_compound
These are:
1 Aroma-compounds classified by structure
1.1 Esters
1.2 Linear-terpenes
1.3 Cyclic-terpenes
1.4 Aromatic
1.5 Amines
2 Other aroma-compounds
2.1 Alcohols
2.2 Aldehydes
2.3 Esters
2.4 Ketones
2.5 Lactones
2.6 Thiols
2.7 Miscellaneous-compounds

Almost all the aroma compounds either occur naturally or roughly imitate a natural flavour. Or as used as “foul taste” agents.

Methyl formate is an aroma compound that does not imitate a natural flavour and does not occur naturally. Its aroma is described as “Ethereal”. A similar is Acetaldehyde.

I was watching a program about industrial food chemists and how they recreated from basically what was coal, the flavour components of things like orange and cherry. Many foods now are flavoured with these compounds, and I think, prepared to be corrected, many of them are molecularly identical to the one that is grown naturally as compared to distilled.

AwesomeO said:

An article today warned of extinction of the banana. Which made me think if it did become extinct the flavour would still be popular and sold in products. Kids in the future far future would not know a banana was a thing but still enjoy banana flavoured icecream. Forgetting that there is no bananas in icecream even now, are there any flavours that are totally made up, not derived or inspired from something natural?

I can only think of musk lollies but not even sure about them.

Blue Heaven milkshake.

AwesomeO said:

are there any flavours that are totally made up, not derived or inspired from something natural?

My initial thought was bubble-gum flavour. But on further consideration, I realised that the question itself is somewhat flawed. Natural flavours generally contain many different chemical compounds, whereas single pure compounds generally smell like artificial flavours, even though those compounds are contained within the mixture of compounds that are the natural flavours.

fsm said:

AwesomeO said:

An article today warned of extinction of the banana. Which made me think if it did become extinct the flavour would still be popular and sold in products. Kids in the future far future would not know a banana was a thing but still enjoy banana flavoured icecream. Forgetting that there is no bananas in icecream even now, are there any flavours that are totally made up, not derived or inspired from something natural?

I can only think of musk lollies but not even sure about them.

Blue Heaven milkshake.

I thought this was an excellent answer, until I looked it up.
Blue Heaven flavour is made from vanilla plus raspberry, both natural flavours.

Blue Heaven flavour is a combination of artificial vanilla combined with artificial raspberry (neither of which actually taste like vanilla or raspberry). The result is a made-up flavour.

KJW said:

bubble-gum flavour

Based on odour, pentyl acetate.

KJW said:

KJW said:

bubble-gum flavour

Based on odour, pentyl acetate.

I remember in high school, we made the compound that gave banana lollies their flavour

stumpy_seahorse said:

I remember in high school, we made the compound that gave banana lollies their flavour

Simple esters are renowned for their fruity flavours. There are quite a lot of options, based on varying the carboxylic acids and/or alcohols.

Other types of flavours are based on terpenes, for example menthol. And yet others are aromatic compounds, such as vanillin. While the term “aromatic” has a different meaning in organic chemistry, the term was chosen because many such compounds are aromatic in the usual sense.