Inside the Food Labs

By Jeffrey Kluger

There are a lot of different factors Micheale Kester has to juggle when she invents your next scoop of ice cream. Right now she's not as concerned about flavor or texture--although those are important--as she is about architecture. Kester, a food technologist in the Burbank, Calif., labs of ice cream giant Baskin-Robbins, has been fooling around with an idea for a flavor she calls Cinnamon Bun, but first she has to make sure the stuff will hold together. If you're not careful with the size and number of your chips, nuts or bun bits--what the ice cream techies call inclusions--even the densest scoop of the richest brand can fall apart. "Any inclusion larger than three-quarters of an inch may be too big," says Kester, scooping up a handful of cake pieces and tossing them into a bowl of white ice cream base. "Sometimes it's guesswork."

But Kester doesn't really have the luxury of guessing. Baskin-Robbins' trademark list of 31 flavors has expanded to almost 1,000 since the company was founded nearly 60 years ago. To keep that number growing, eight food technologists in the Burbank facility each come up with about 20 new flavor brainstorms a year; of all those, perhaps three or four make it to the big leagues. The shelves of canisters filled with Oreos, M&M's and other colorful inclusions that line the laboratory walls certainly keep the ideas flowing. So too does the dream of being the person who develops the next Pralines 'n Cream--perhaps the most celebrated member of the company's flavor roster. "It's a fun job," says Kester. "I get to play with food every day."

Of course, play, as Kester is the first to admit, is only part of it. The food trade is a $500 billion industry in which uncounted new products jostle for space on overstocked shelves. Fully 25% of all meals are now consumed in restaurants, and of those eaten at home, two-thirds are either prepared entrees or restaurant takeout. With all that, Big Food has had to become Big Science. Companies that want to stay in the game can't afford to drift along with the same product line year after year until someone in R. and D. dreams up another Pop-Tarts or Pringles. Nor can they afford to have a good idea and then let it die from poor execution--simply that the corn in the corn puff was the wrong texture or the cavity in the cupcake crowded the filling.

As a result, the food industry has become a place where product design is micromanaged as never before--where flavors are built literally by the molecule, salt crystals are measured by the micron, manufacturers agonize over which side of a chip is the best place for the flavoring, and any new product under development must be focus-grouped and taste-tested down to its last scrap of fiber and last drop of corn syrup.

"The eating experience has so many different factors--smell, texture, taste and different combinations of all of those," says Nicole Ifcher, a marketing manager at Nestle. "If the idea doesn't resonate with consumers, they won't buy it."

Complicating things further is the speed with which American food fashions change. No sooner do manufacturers devise the perfect product for the perfect niche than new categories open up. What's a U.S. food company to do when Latino consumers--13% of the U.S. population and growing--begin clamoring for the aguas frescas and spicy tamarinds they grew up with? Where do foodmakers turn when kids--who never met a food they wouldn't prefer sweeter, saltier, chewier or bluer--create a whole new demand for so-called extreme flavors? And what do they do when all those new choices begin contributing to an exploding American obesity epidemic and the same people who have done all the consuming suddenly demand the foods they love in lower-fat formulations?

"I always look at what's missing in our portfolio," says Vida Leong, a food developer at Nestle's 3,400-sq.-ft. test kitchen in Glendale, Calif. "You have to ask, What are the hot buttons? And do we have a product that will fill that need?"

THE RIDDLE OF THE McGRIDDLE

Over the years, there is perhaps no company that has done a better job of pushing hot buttons than McDonald's--nor any company that has been better at transforming vaguely defined culinary arts into sharply defined food science. Witness the tale of the McGriddle.

For all the power and ubiquity of the McDonald's brand, the company always had a weak spot when it came to breakfast. The Egg McMuffin has been successfully wooing the breakfast crowd since 1973, but salty, savory foods touch only part of the morning palate. "We found that there was a real demand for sweeter breakfast foods," says Gerald Tomlinson, the company's executive chef.

Tomlinson's answer? An egg, sausage or bacon sandwich with pancakes instead of a bun. For a company that lives and dies by the one-handed-eat-behind-the-wheel-and-don't-drip-on-your-clothes meal, however, that presented problems. Tomlinson tackled the pancake puzzle in 1999 and first considered a muffin-shaped product with sausage bits stirred into the batter. But would consumers recognize a pancake with so unfamiliar a figure? And how do you add the syrup, the source of that all-important sweetness?

Tomlinson next considered two flatter pancakes sandwiching sausage, with syrup poured on top. That at least looked like a stack of pancakes, but it was an impossible mess to eat. That's when the McDonald's brain trust called in an even larger brain trust and invited the outfits that supply the condiments, bread and other basic foods to a sort of flapjack summit.

As it happened, one of the company's suppliers had just patented a technology that allowed it to crystallize sugar-based concoctions like syrup. Stir crystals into the batter, and when the mix is heated, the syrup should seep through the entire pancake matrix. "You want that maple flavor in every bite," says Wendy Cook, head of R. and D.

Getting that to happen even with the new technology turned out to be a challenge. The crystal size had to be calibrated precisely so it would melt uniformly and provide a smooth texture, or as the industry calls it, mouth feel. The weight of the syrup had to be determined so when it melted it wouldn't sink to one side of the pancake. Even the grilling time had to be fixed so the pancakes wouldn't look pasty and underdone or charred and overdone. "There are very tight specs on the color of the cakes," says Cook.

In June, when all those parameters had been set, the McGriddle was triumphantly introduced. "This is a product that motivates you to go out and have breakfast," Cook says. "We're actually growing the category instead of simply engaging in a share war."

That is the dream of any food manufacturer: invent a product so imaginative and irresistible that you don't have to hijack your competitors' customers or cannibalize your own to get them to buy it. Rather, you serve them something they weren't even aware they wanted until you introduced it to them.

HOW TO SING THE PRINGLES JINGLE

Need proof that it works? Look at Pringles. In the closed community of snackmakers, few things inspire more awe than Pringles. Close enough kin to the potato chip that consumers have always been willing to try them, they nonetheless endure as a completely distinct species of snack. Few people know exactly what to call a Pringle--the company prefers "potato crisp"--and almost nobody can tell you how they're made. That's exactly how Procter & Gamble (P&G), the Pringles parent, wants things.

The Miami Valley laboratory where Pringles varieties are developed, outside Cincinnati, Ohio, is not an easy place to find, located along a twisting two-lane road, beyond a landfill and behind a sign. People in the lab are not about to give any product secrets away, but they are willing to share a few potato-crisp basics. Pringles are made from potatoes that are processed into flakes, pressed into sheets and cut into precise shapes. They're placed in their signature molds, fried in an oil blend and then salted and seasoned in two steps--which brings out a stronger flavor than performing both stages together. To prevent that flavor from becoming overwhelming, each Pringle is seasoned on only one side.

Where the true Pringles magic lies is in the composition of that seasoning. In general, there are a few rules anyone has to follow to create a flavor, and Pringles has mastered them. First, learn to distinguish your top notes from your back notes. For the company's massively popular sour-cream-and-onion taste, it's the sour cream that does the heavy lifting, with the onion riding lightly aboard. "The onion is a top note," says Yen Hsieh, the lead technician of the lab.

Just as important, you've got to research your market. There is a reason there's hardly a corner of the planet where you can't find a can of Pringles, and that's because P&G has taken the time to learn what people in those corners like to eat. Got a hankering for squid-flavored Pringles? No, and you're not likely to develop one. But the company is considering just such a product for the Asian market, where squid is big in snacks. Curry-flavored Pringles are popular in Britain, paprika is a hit in Germany, and a perfectly ghastly sounding ketchup Pringles is a smash in Canada.

Another challenge is knowing how to manage your flavors once you've got them. Onion, for example, is a very volatile taste, which means it tends to evaporate as the chip ages. One answer is bigger onion flakes, but they fall off the chip. P&G thus had to determine the precise micron measurement of each bit of onion flavor and make sure it never varies. It's also critical to listen to how consumers react to the flavor, even if they're not making much sense. P&G routinely tests products with focus groups and has learned to translate their feedback.

"We'll have someone say, 'It's too spicy,'" Hsieh says. "And you're thinking, It's sour cream and onion. What are you talking about? You have to interpret because they're not flavor experts."

THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT

Finally, as every food manufacturer knows, it's important to admit when you're licked. Sometimes a flavor simply defies duplication. At that point, it's time to call in the big guns from the big flavor houses. For a foodmaker looking for flavor help, the place to go is New Jersey. Commercial sailing vessels returning from the Far East used to unload their cargoes at the New York docks, and the spices and essential oils were sent to storage facilities in New Jersey. When technology made manufacture of synthetic flavors possible, the spice houses were in the best position to capitalize on the new science. Among the biggest of the flavor bigs is International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), which has one of its global labs in Dayton, N.J.

IFF's plain headquarters, housed in an unremarkable industrial building in an unremarkable industrial park, belies the extraordinary things the company can do. Specialists here can duplicate almost any imaginable flavor, using technologies like gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. The principle behind the science is deceptively simple.

A sample of a food item--a strawberry, for instance--is burned at high speed and high temperature in a gas chromatograph, reducing it to its constituent elements. The resulting vapor is then channeled to a spectrometer, through which the strawberry molecules stream in order of weight and size. Because the scientists know the measure of the molecules they ought to see in food, they can interpret peaks and valleys on a readout and identify all the components as well as their concentrations. Eliminate the ones that have nothing to do with flavor, and you're left with a perfect schematic of the stuff that makes the strawberry taste the way it does. Using the same chemicals, you can then rebuild that flavor in the lab. "It may take a month to do it right," says IFF senior flavorist Kevin Miller.

Just how you choose which foods you burn in your chromatograph can make a difference too. A small strawberry may taste different from a plump strawberry; a just-ripe one will taste different from one that has gone pulpier and sweeter. For subtler flavorings, technologists may not want to touch the fruit at all, instead simply sampling the volatile gases it gives off. IFF scientists sometimes place a glass shroud around a carefully cultivated plant in a field or greenhouse, draw off the sweet, rich air with a syringe and use that as their flavor template. "It gives you a completely different flavor from what you'd get if you cut into the fruit," says Miller.

Once IFF's analysis labs are done taking the measure of a food and rebuilding its flavor, those flavors are sent out to other labs in the building to determine how they hold up in food products. In the dairy department, flavors are tested in ice creams, puddings and--most challengingly--yogurt. "Yogurt is a very dynamic system," says food technologist Dan O'Brien. "You start off one flavor at the beginning of the product's shelf life and get a very different one at the end." In the bakery department, the scientists fret over how flavors hold up when food is placed in an oven. "The flavor may be great in the lab," says O'Brien's colleague Brian Kelly, "but when we throw a little heat on it, adjustments may have to be made."

SWEETER! HOTTER!

It's in the world of candy, however, that the challenges and rewards are potentially greatest--if the manufacturer can come up with something that appeals to the biggest flavor consumers of all: kids. "Children, on average, prefer 60% more flavor in foods than adults do," says O'Brien. This is no surprise to their parents, who once loved consuming now-classic candies like Red Hots and Atomic Fireballs. But what's on the market today is not your daddy's candy.

Nestle does an especially good job of marketing to kids, particularly those from 8 to 12--the so-called tween group. Tweens enjoy such venerable tongue busters as SweeTarts and Laffy Taffy as well as such newer offerings as the Wonka candy line or the souped-up SweeTarts Shockers. The Shockers are ultrasour SweeTarts in a chewy fruit base that may be unpalatable to parents but are catnip to their kids. Young consumers also like it if candies have what manufacturers call play value. SweeTarts Gummy Bugs offer all the flavor punch of ordinary SweeTarts, with the added value of coming in insect shapes. "First you see all the colors running together on the candy, and that's a lot of fun," Nestle's Nicole Ifcher says. "Then you decide how you're going to eat it. Do you bite the head off? Then you put it in your mouth, and the sugar sanding signals something sour, but you have the chewy texture underneath."

Another food category in which high-octane flavors can be everything is Latino cuisine. Americans raised on the pasty fare of gentrified Mexican restaurants may know little about the fine and fiery food available south of the Rio Grande, but flavorists do--particularly when it comes to chile peppers. The spiciness in food is measured in Scoville units. A typical fast-food taco may reach 150 on the Scoville scale. IFF flavorists have developed chile essences that climb to 1 million. One drop, the scientists boast, can heat a giant pot--perfect when you're marketing to an audience unafraid of taste.

Sweet drinks are also big with Latino consumers, and Nestle is planning to hit that market hard, beginning with its Kerns line of aguas frescas--fruity or milky drinks often made from scratch in Hispanic homes. There are dozens of varieties of aguas frescas, and before Nestle technicians could begin to select three or four to sell ready made, they knew they had to understand their audience better. Company representatives began touring tacquerias around Los Angeles, sampling everything from basic beans and slaw to more complicated carnitas and carnes asadas. More important, they made it a point to drink whatever beverages the customers were ordering.

Ultimately, Nestle settled on three aguas frescas: a simple strawberry, a more complicated tamarind drink (made from a tart, vanilla-bean-like pod) and an exceedingly complex horchata, made from rice, cinnamon and other spices. "Everyone has their own family recipe for horchata," says food developer Vida Leong. "We mixed and blended for weeks until we matched what we considered the gold standard." So far, their efforts are paying off. The three aguas frescas have been doing well in California and Arizona and will roll out around the country in the months to come.

FLAVOR WITHOUT THE FAT

The problem with all these new food choices is that sometimes enough can be way, way too much. The obesity problem in the U.S. has reached epidemic proportions, with 65% of the population considered overweight or obese. The pressure is increasing on restaurants and manufacturers to get at least some of the fat out of food. The difficulty, of course, is that fat is often where flavor lives.

Researchers at IFF and other flavor companies have ways to get around that. A critical element in fatty foods is mouth feel--the creamy, palate-coating character of, say, thick pudding or cheesy lasagna. Scientists can mimic that feel with substances such as starches, polysaccharides or lactones (a natural product of fermentation). These lower-cal alternatives can give food a higher-cal feel. "When you create the impression of fat," says Miller, "you also enhance flavor."

Other tricks are simpler. Stouffer's, for example, has found that crushed tomatoes in its Lean Cuisine line go a long way toward enlivening foods stripped of their fattier ingredients. "The tomatoes have more body and a riper taste," says Kathy Klingensmith, who works in R. and D.

Also important is avoiding dryness. Fatty food is usually moist, and for consumers accustomed to gooey cookies and premium ice cream, something that's both dry and fat-free might as well be tree bark. Developers thus fortify foods with substances known as humectants--glycerin, sucrose or similar ingredients that hold moisture.

Certainly not everybody needs or wants to know about the humectants in snacks. Scientific reductionism is fine in astronomy or physics, but it's another thing entirely when your dinner is involved. There are few things more intimate than the preparation of food--an ancient, imprecise craft built on pinches and dashes and tasting things at the stove. What are old-style cooks to do when this quiet craft is elbowed aside by an industry in which flavor concentrations are measured in parts per billion and companies like IFF can sell, without irony, a product called Fleximint, "a tool kit for mint work"?

Traditionalists may abhor all this, but the food scientists are only doing what we ask them to do: respond to the needs of 280 million people all trying to eat at once and do so in the most enjoyable, affordable and nutritious way possible. It's the industry's job to fill the national plate; it's our job to decide which parts of that vast meal we want to eat. --With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles and Maggie Sieger/Chicago

With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles and Maggie Sieger/Chicago