In the spotlight

Sheryl Barringer (Ohio State) shows food off-odours can be reduced simply: apple phenolics neutralise garlic breath, and two-stage fermentation with Lactobacillus plantarum dramatically cuts unpleasant volatiles in plant-protein yogurt. Slowing the early pH drop keeps deodorising bacteria active longer, producing a neutral base that can later be flavoured. Patented and being scaled with a food company, the approach could improve plant-based dairy, meat analogues and beyond.

A primer on beer's aroma chemistry by chemical family: esters (fruity), terpenes (citrusy, from hops), organic acids (cheesy/goaty), aldehydes (grassy to cardboard), volatile phenols (weissbier, oak), Maillard heterocyclics (toasty, roasty) and sulfur compounds (DMS, thiols). Molecular size and water-solubility shape character and pleasantness. Learning these families gives brewers and tasters a shared, precise vocabulary for diagnosing and designing beer flavour.

Mondelēz's 2026 State of Snacking report (with Mintel and Black Swan Data) argues taste is no longer the sole driver of purchase. Consumers discover food visually on social media, value texture (crunch, contrast), and choose snacks for comfort, reward, nostalgia and connection. Dubai chocolate's success owed as much to texture, theatre and shareability as flavour. Consumers increasingly reject traditional trade-offs—expecting indulgence, wellness, novelty and emotion simultaneously.

Enzymes are quietly reshaping beverages. IFF's Diazyme Nolo converts fermentable sugars into unfermentable carbohydrates before yeast is added, giving alcohol-free beer the body of regular beer without additives or stabilisers. Kerry's Acrylerase enzyme—having received a positive EFSA opinion—breaks down acrylamide after it forms in coffee, without harming taste or yield. Lactase and carbohydrase enzymes similarly support sugar reduction, clarity and yield across dairy and plant-based drinks.

A double-blind, crossover, randomised study reports that sweelin®, a novel sweet protein, does not affect blood glucose or insulin levels in participants, supporting its potential as a non-glycaemic sweetener for reduced-sugar food and beverage applications.

Quanta explores how smell shapes emotion and memory. Humans were wrongly labelled poor smellers after Broca's 19th-century work, a myth that persisted. New datasets (Bierling's 1,200-person study; Monell/Google's AI model; the Pyrfume database) map how molecular structure relates to perceived scent, revealing perception varies wildly between people. Meanwhile, single-neuron recordings show the piriform cortex encodes odour identity and even abstract concepts, underlining how subjective and experience-driven smell really is.

The Guardian charts 'fricy'—fruity plus spicy—as summer 2026's flavour trend, joining 'swicy' and 'swavoury'. South American-inspired treats like chamoyada slushies and Tajín-dusted fruit are driving sales: Sous Chef's Tajín sales rose 19% year on year and Waitrose's mango amba sauce 30%. Chefs note that fruit with chilli, acid and salt is nothing new in Thai, Vietnamese and Mexican cooking; social media has simply given the combination a catchy, shareable name.

UK start-up Apoha has emerged from stealth with $36 million in funding, claiming a new kind of Raman spectroscopy that lets machines 'feel, taste and smell'. It describes the technology as a 'missing layer' of structured data on the behaviour of matter, formulations and materials. Founded in 2021 by former Oxford postdoc Shamit Shrivastava and ex-Goldman Sachs executive Anshika Srivastava, the company now has around 25 staff.

An overview of how advanced mass spectrometry methods are helping researchers unravel the relationship between food composition and flavour, and of the analytical toolkit now used in modern food and flavour analysis.

SCENT (Spectrum-to-Chemical Embedding alignmeNT) is a multi-modal contrastive learning framework that aligns electron ionisation mass spectra with pretrained chemical structure embeddings, letting models predict odour descriptors from mass spectra alone—no explicit molecular structure needed at inference. It significantly beats MS-only baselines and matches structure-based models, while better approximating continuous human perceptual ratings and generalising to real lab spectra.

An Andy Brunning infographic explaining the chemistry behind smoked foods' classic flavours—how wood-smoke components and reactions deposit and generate the aroma and taste compounds prized in barbecue and smoked products.

Roasted Japanese green tea hojicha is emerging as a flavour trend. Mellow, nutty and low in caffeine with little bitterness, it suits drinks, lattes, desserts, chocolate and even savoury applications. The global market is valued at $2.1 billion, projected to reach $3.9 billion by 2034, with supply expanding partly due to matcha shortages. For industry, hojicha signals a shift toward flavour-led, mainstream-friendly innovation.

Flavour houses are moving beyond amplifying sweetness or savouriness toward engineered sensory experiences using AI, biotechnology and sensory science. Examples include Amano's enzymes that cut bitterness and boost umami, dsm-firmenich's receptor-based off-note masking, Sensient's BioSymphony harmonisers, and Symrise's Symvision AI sensory panels. Driven by demand for healthier, clean-label indulgence, especially in plant-based products, the goal is 'precision indulgence'—craveable flavour that is also sustainable and personalised.

Researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo used four pre-trained LLMs to generate pairwise similarity scores for odour descriptors and names, comparing them with the Dravnieks sensory dataset via Mantel tests. Correlations were significant and rose with model size. Applied to 75 essential oils, the approach produced a two-dimensional odour map where floral, citrus and woody oils clustered correctly—showing LLMs can infer odour similarity and support automated scent creation.

UC Davis scientists introduced genetic variation into peppermint, cloned unchanged for over 200 years. Gamma-radiating the Black Mitcham clone produced 261 plants with 250-plus distinct variants and 1,406 large mutations; two clones made far less menthol (about 4% vs 42%). Sparked by Mars Inc., the low-cost, non-GMO method could help breed mint resistant to Verticillium wilt, and offers a roadmap for improving clonal crops more broadly (PNAS).

University of Toyama researchers explained why some stevia tastes cleaner than others. Using a new reference genome, single-nucleus RNA sequencing and imaging mass spectrometry, they linked sweetness to UGT76G glycosyltransferase genes that attach glucose to steviol glycosides, and found UGT91D4 active only in specific leaf cells. Haplotypes also shape gene behaviour. The findings could let breeders create cleaner-tasting, less bitter stevia for low-sugar products (New Phytologist).

Despite being a key sense, the molecular mechanisms of smell remain poorly understood. This Chemistry World feature examines the competing scientific theories of what happens in our noses—and how researchers are exploring a sense far richer, and stranger, than expected, from virtual-reality scent devices to unresolved debates over odour detection.

Flavorist Dolf DeRovira argues AI cannot replace human flavourists. The nose's ~400 receptor types and millions of neurons, plus individual variation, masking and synergy, create complexity no sensor matches. AI generates starting formulations but cannot judge matrix compatibility, processing stability or regulatory compliance. Its real value lies in six areas—supply chain, personalised nutrition, food safety, precision agriculture, formulation screening and regulatory intelligence. The right framing is amplification, not replacement; sensory and creative work stays human.

EPFL researchers developed Synthegy, which uses large language models as reasoning guides for chemistry. Chemists describe goals in plain language; Synthegy scores and ranks retrosynthesis pathways against those instructions and evaluates reaction mechanisms by breaking reactions into electron movements. In a double-blind study, 36 chemists' assessments matched the system 71.2% of the time. The approach speeds synthesis planning and drug discovery while keeping humans in control.

Nanjing Agricultural University scientists boosted a housekeeping gene, FveIPT2, in woodland strawberries, raising anthocyanins, flavonoids and terpenoids—deepening colour, strengthening aroma and increasing health compounds like linalool—with no change to growth, fruit size or sugar levels. Targeting this tRNA-related gene rather than hormone regulators avoids the usual growth penalties of metabolic engineering and offers a gentle route to better fruit quality in strawberries and other crops.

Treating the coffee puck like porous rock, geologist Fabian Wadsworth and colleagues modelled espresso flow with percolation theory. Grind size dominates: too fine, water channels unevenly and the shot turns bitter; too coarse, it flows too fast and tastes sour. X-ray scans of 22 samples showed roughness and shape govern permeability. For a ~30-second shot, grains of roughly 145–275 micrometres work best (Royal Society Open Science).

A review examining the molecular and computational foundations of taste perception, charting progress toward a 'digital language of taste'—computational frameworks that could describe, model and predict taste in ways analogous to how odour has been mapped.

A comparative analysis mapping the flavourings used across tobacco and related products, characterising the flavour landscape of these categories and how their flavour components compare (Nicotine & Tobacco Research).

Harvard Medical School researchers report creating the first-ever 'smell map', a framework mapping how odours relate to one another and to the brain's olfactory system—an advance toward understanding and even digitising the sense of smell.

Analysing Pilsner beer by GC-O, only nine of 76 quantified odorants exceeded sensory thresholds, and a 25-odorant model failed to reproduce malty/estery notes. Reconstitution with all 76 showed many trace and sub-threshold compounds act synergistically to define beer aroma. Sensory tests found a metallic note when beer met dried squid—traced to (Z)-1,5-octadien-3-one, formed seven times less in sake—giving component-level evidence for sake's better seafood pairing.

University of Oregon researchers repurposed a potentiostat—normally used for batteries and fuel cells—to send current through coffee, yielding an electrical fingerprint of its flavour. This separates roast colour from strength, giving roasters and baristas a measurable target for consistency beyond refractive index alone. In a blind test it correctly flagged a failed quality-control sample, a step toward understanding why we enjoy coffee at molecular precision (Nature Communications).