New Yorker on Flavors

The Taste Makers

Growing up, Michelle Hagen lived near a factory in Cincinnati that produced what she and her sisters called The Smell. The aroma wasn’t consistent: it was dynamic and unpredictable. Many of the odors triggered specific associations—birthday cake, popcorn, chicken-noodle soup. She never imagined that she would end up working in the factory that made The Smell, but that is what happened. The factory belongs to a Swiss company called Givaudan. After graduating, Hagen got a job there. After three years of grueling apprenticeship, she became a flavorist, a job that entered her into a kind of secret society. There are fewer than five hundred flavorists in the United States and they almost never speak about their work outside their laboratories. If you like neon-colored sports drinks, or something with açaí or pomegranate or huckleberry on its label, you may well have tasted one of Hagen’s creations. Naming the products that contain her flavors, however, would undermine the confidentiality agreements that Givaudan keeps with its clients, and elicit a severe reprimand. Such secrecy helps shape the story of our food. It encourages consumers to think of processed foods as fully formed objects, rather than as assemblages of disparate components. It treats a brand as sacrosanct. Writer accompanies Hagen and other Givaudan staff on a Taste Trek to the citrus orchards in Riverside, California. Citrus flavors are among the most popular in the world and Givaudan was searching for botanical inspiration which would lead to the creation of nutritionally vacant additives that could be deployed in all manner of processed food, from soft drinks to ice cream. Tells about previous Taste Treks, including one to Gabon. Describes Hagen and others on the Trek sampling fruits, such as the Jamaican Ugli fruit and a Tahitian pomelo, and analyzing their tastes. Writer discusses how smell and taste combine to determine the way we experience flavor. Gives a brief history of flavorings in food, from ancient Rome to the present. Flavor creation did not take its current form until the development of organic chemistry in the early nineteenth century. Tells about the founding of Givaudan in 1895. Considers how the work of flavorists can affect health. In the case of junk food, flavor additives mask an absence, making cheap, nutritionally negligible ingredients seem delicious (or, at least, edible). But in many other cases, flavor additives mask a reduction in sugar or salt or trans fats —things that, in excess, are harmful. Writer visits Hagen in her office and watches as she refines one of the flavors she developed based on the fruit sampled in Riverside.

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