Plant-based substitutes like tempeh and bean burgers offer protein-packed choices for individuals looking to cut down on meat. However, mimicking the taste and smell of meat is difficult, and many companies use artificial additives for this purpose. A recent study in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry has revealed a promising solution: onions, chives, and leeks can generate natural compounds similar to meat’s savory flavors when fermented with typical fungi.
Innovative Approaches to Natural Meat Flavoring
When food producers want to make plant-based meat alternatives taste meatier, they often add precursor ingredients found in meats that transform into flavor agents during cooking. Or, the flavoring is prepared first by heating flavor precursors, or by other chemical manipulations, and then added to products.
Because these flavorings are made through synthetic processes, many countries won’t allow food makers to label them as “natural.” Accessing a plant-based, “natural” meat flavoring would require the flavoring chemicals to be physically extracted from plants or generated biochemically with enzymes, bacteria or fungi. So, YanYan Zhang and colleagues wanted to see if fungi known to produce meaty flavors and odors from synthetic sources could be used to create the same chemicals from vegetables or spices.
Alliums Unlock Meaty Aromas
The team fermented various fungal DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.2c01688
The authors acknowledge funding from the Adalbert-Raps-Stiftung.