Flavor Physiology

"Here, at the Jelly Belly candy factory, memories are reincarnated as jelly beans," writes Veronique Greenwood in The Atlantic (8/10). That is, unless the memory is grandma’s pumpkin pie, because "nobody’s grandma makes pumpkin pie in exactly the same way." That’s why pumpkin pie is "back in development" at Jelly Belly. Four-cheese pizza was another problem — the "noxious smell" was overwhelming. But the Jelly Belly team tweaked it and released it as "barf," which Lisa Brasher, "a fifth generation member of the founding family," says sells "like hotcakes."

Getting at those flavors starts with a memory — one of Lisa’s is pomegranate, because she grew up eating them on her family’s farm. To try to capture such a flavor, Jelly Belly’s scientists "work backward from a sample … which they run through a gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer, a pair of instruments that heat up the fluid and vaporize the juice’s molecules one by one. The temperature at which the molecules break down helps the scientists determine what kinds of compounds are in the juice and guides them in constructing a faithful flavor."

This didn’t work out for pomegranate Jelly Bellies, which Lisa sent "back to the kitchen because they lacked the distinctive tartness." Sometimes flavors are fixed via simple intuition — the buttered toast flavor wasn’t working until Ambrose Lee, head of R&D added a little caramel. Flavors typically are tested by a team of "food scientists, marketers and executives" who judge based on fidelity. They have "tasting parties, with the bean in one hand and the real deal in the other." The challenge is getting past unintended memories: "When we were developing pumpkin spice flavor and added cloves, that rang the dentist office bell for me," says Ambrose. "I hate that flavor."