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CHIPS AHOY! (p. 2 of 2)
1 | 2 | Nov '04
“Last year, we showed red Thai curry,” flavourist Elizabeth Morris from Baltimore Spice tells me. “It’s a small niche, and I think we were ahead of the curve.” She mentions that all cultural indicators show that the global Asian influence will only continue to grow, so she still thinks curry will catch on. “When peoples’ tastes catch up, we’re ready for them,” she says hopefully. Just read any business magazine to see why flavour industry experts predict that Hispanic, Asian and Mediterranean palates are going to be big.
In addition to watching global trends, Jean Bosenbecker of Kerry Seasonings in Wisconsin (which sells flavours to some of the snack-food giants) says she monitors hipster restaurants for inspiration. “We turn to chefs to see what ingredients they’re using, and we’re always picking their brains about what the new trends are,” she says. “A lot of them start in California, so that’s the main area we tap into for flavour concepts.” They’re currently working on Organic BBQ and Chili Mango Tortilla chips – very L.A.
There is some serious science involved in translating these fresh-food flavours to a mass-produced snack. Food scientists and flavourists engineer synthetic tastes in beakers and test tubes, but it’s not as alienating as it sounds. Instead of calling them “artificial flavourings,” the snack industry leans toward the term “nature identical” (like the Puerto Rican Sofrito, New York Rye and Adobo Seasoning blends that Elizabeth Morris helped create at Baltimore Spice). It means that although created by a chemical process, the flavour has the identical molecular composition of its natural soulmate. So identical, in fact, that you forget you’re eating stuff like ethyl decanoate, Hexenal2trans and butanol. Instead, you just think, “Yummy guacamole chips!”
For a solid hour, I munch through a maze of banquet tables covered with snack-filled paper plates: Parmesan and garlic chips (pretty good); blueberry “crazy puffs” (a navy blue extruded snack; crazy); and my personal favourite, Louisiana hot sauce chips (sweet, vinegary and spicy). John Gilgen, director of technical sales and business development for McClancy Seasoning Co. of South Carolina, says that, right now, spicy flavours are sizzling in the States, both regionally and nationally. “But they’re almost getting too hot,” he admits. “We’re getting away from the smoky-hot and leaning toward habanero-hot instead, which really stays with you.”
On average, Gilgen says, it takes only a couple of weeks to develop a new flavour, but it can take up to two years to market, launch and get it into your kitchen cupboards. Philadelphia Cheese Steak and Carolina Low Country are some of McClancy’s soon-to-be-regionally-popular new snack seasonings. “A woman from the Netherlands just stopped by and noticed our new dill pickle flavour,” says Gilgen. “She said, ‘Oh, we’ve had that for years.’” He admits if his company knows there’s a regional population pocket of Scandinavians, for instance, they’ll go after them – dill pickle-style – with a flavour that has specific cultural appeal.
Multinational conglomerates won’t risk their bottom line on a major snack flavour failure. So how do unproven tastes catch on? That’s where niche retailers like independent chip maker Jim Vadevoulis step in to pick up the snack slack. (You know an industry has truly reached cultural maturity – like publishing, music and fashion – when it spawns an indie scene.) Vadevoulis owns Jiminy Chips, a line of chip wagons that fry up homemade potato chips while you watch. Because he makes fresh product in front of his customers, Vadevoulis has the luxury of receiving immediate feedback. His native Chicagoans are cheese heads who love sharp cheddar; further south, they like spicier flavours. “I know that ketchup has been in Canada for years,” he says. “But you won’t see it in Chicago. Not anytime soon.”
Another niche chip seller is the Chippery, a Canadian-born company of small, fresh potato chip cookers, operating in Canada and the U.S. and heading into Europe and Southeast Asia. Although, at any given time, they have about a dozen flavours (from chili to Caribbean banana), Chippery co-founder Christopher Smith finds a standard handful are the mainstays. “Even the big companies try other things, but they really come back to the core products,” he says of common palate ticklers like salty, sour and spicy. Flavours are universal but tastes are local, Smith notes. With their Asian expansion plans, the Chippery has had to abandon the North American standbys in favour of experimentation. “They have all these odd flavours like lemon, cumin, curry and coriander,” says Smith. “We’ve tried a lot of that here, and they really were not popular.”
As cultures continue to merge and regions blend, perhaps we’ll tear down these backyard flavour fences and start building tasty bridges. “Flavours are cultural; they’re what you grew up with, and you take them with you through life,” says Frito Lay’s Hooper. “As we become more culturally diverse and people move, you’ll see less of a skew of one flavour in an area.” And in the future, perhaps we’ll let regional Tastes of Whatever fall by the wayside and learn to embrace each other’s taste differences – one curry potato chip at a time. []
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1 | 2 | Nov '04
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