A Molecular Thermodynamics Approach to Capture Non-specific Flavour–Macromolecule Interactions

For optimizing flavour components in a complex food, we need to know and understand how flavour molecules interact with other ingredients such as proteins or starches, raising or lowering the amount of flavour molecule above the food. Historical methods have relied on unrealistic assumptions about “binding sites” and therefore create numbers that are not linked to real chains of cause and effect. The method described here provides a method for universalising our understanding of flavour interactions and which links seamlessly with other effects such as those of salts or sugars directly or indirectly influencing the head-space concentration of the flavour molecules. The method is user-friendly (we have provided an app to do the calculations), sound (because the method is assumption free), provides an interpretation at the molecular level, and can even retrospectively re-calculate historical data so we can build our new understanding on the basis of large historical datasets – whether in the literature on within the confidential corporate environment.