Flavor Chemistry and Technology

This book combines the essentials of both flavor chemistry and flavor technology. Flavor chemistry is a relatively new area of study which became significant in the 1960s with the availability of gas chromatog- raphy and mass spectrometry. Prior to this instrumentation, flavor chemistry focused on only the most abundant chemical constituents. It is a well-documented fact that often the trace constituents of flavors are the most important components. Flavor chemistry flourished in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since money was readily available for flavor research great strides were made in understanding the biosynthetic pathways of flavor formation and the chemical constituents that are important to flavor. But the 1970s and early 1980s have not been good years for flavor research, especially in the United States. Since funding agencies have chosen to support re- search in nutrition and toxicology, many of the research leaders in the flavor area have had to change their research emphasis in order to obtain funding. Today, European researchers turn out the majority of pub- lished work in flavor chemistry. While all of the flavor houses conduct some basic flavor research, it is confidential and seldom becomes pub- lished. Therefore, the reader will note that a lot of the references are from the late 1960s and early 1970s; and also that European authors dominate the flavor literature in recent years. Flavor technology is an ancient area of study. Man has searched for a means of making food more pleasurable or palatable since time began.