Plant Food Flavours (An Old and Rare Book)

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Plant Food Flavours is a monographic publication focussing on natural flavours obtained from plant sources specifically for enhancing the taste and odour of food-stuffs. The editors of Wealth of India felt the necessity of publishing specialized information packaged as ready reckoners, way back in the 1980s. To build-up specialised databases aimed at specific user communities, it was decided to launch an end-use monograph series. About a dozen titles, including Gums & Resins, Spices & Flavours, Dyes & Tans, Beverages, Fibres, etc. were selected and lists of plants contributing to these end products were prepared using the Wealth of India as a backbone. Plant Food Flavours was planned as an introductory number of the end-product monograph series. Detailed information on each plant source identified was collected from primary and secondary literature sources, collated and packaged. Plant Food Flavours gives detailed write-up on nearly 75 plants as major sources of food flavours with another 70-odd plants dealt-with briefly in tabular form, being minor sources of food flavouring substances.

The Monograph will serve as a reference guide to students of nutrition and hotel management courses, researchers and to entrepreneurs of small-scale industries and manufacturing units connected with the processed food industry.

Mrs Santosh Mehtani is a senior Scientist with the National Institute of Science Communication, New Delhi, working for The Wealth of India, a world-renowned encyclopaedic publication. She did her graduation and masters in plant science from the Manasa Gangotri, University of Mysore, followed by about three years of research on tissue culture of pines and allied conifers at the Dept of Botany, Delhi University. She has a diploma in French language and has taken a certificate course in computer education. She took a short training course in data processing for CD-ROM. She is currently engaged in scientific information dissemination through updating monographic articles for The Wealth of India Supplement Series, generating and processing data for the CD ROM Wealth Asia, writing scientific articles for journals and seminars, contributing popular science articles in scientific magazines, and giving radio talks on scientific topics.

Dr. P.K. Ingle (b.1960) is a scientist with the National Institute of Science Communication (NISCOM), CSIR, a pioneering Institute in science communication and dissemination of science. He did his Masters (1984) in Physical chemistry and Ph.D. (1988) in Bio-inorganic Chemistry from Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad. He began his career as a Lecturer (Analytical Chemistry) in Saraswati Bhuvan Education Society's College of Science Aurangabad and later moved to Oil & Natural Gas Corporation as Executive Chemist. He was also associated with the Ministry of Home Affairs for a short period. Since his joining NISCOM (January 1991) he has been a member of the Editorial team of the Wealth of India Raw Material (Revised) Series, an Encyclopaedia of international acclaim on Indian raw materials. He is currently involved in the Wealth of India updates, a part of 'Wealth Asia Series', Disc 2 of Asian Health, Environmental and Allied Databases (AHEAD) and The Wealth of India Supplement Series. He has contributed more than 100 articles to 'Wealth Asia'.

In the course of literature survey for The Wealth of India, it was observed that there was a paucity of books dealing with flavouring materials, particularly in the Indian context. Also, many information-seekers from the food and flavour Industry, hotel management institutions, etc. needed to know Indian or English names or sometimes the correct botanical names of some flavour substances to be able to interact with their counterpersonnel abroad. The information could be provided after extensive search through the Wealth of India, the regional floras, books on culinary herbs, and such related information sources. Therefore, the necessity to consolidate such and related information was acutely felt and this monograph on Plant Food Flavours was conceptualized in an attempt to bridge the gap between the users and the producers of plant food flavours as also the generators of information on the subject.

Plant Food Flavours deals briefly with the definition, classification, and occurrence of natural flavours, improvement studies on their botanical sources, and the trends in the marketing of plant derived food flavours. The major part of the monograph gives brief accounts of some seventy-five plants that more or less dominate the natural aroma industry as sources of food flavours. Herein, each account includes the botanical name, the common English name/s, the names in vernacular, an outline description of the plant, its distribution, salient agronomic features, the volatile oil content, the predominant aroma constituents, and the utilization of the plant/product in flavouring specific foods/food types. Other lesser known yet exploitable plants as sources of food flavours are covered in a quickly scrutinizable tabular mode. A chapter on the well-known aroma compounds listed alphabetically gives their sources and percentage concentration. Data on the trade of important flavouring raw materials and products are appended to the text. The important reference sources consulted for the compilation of the mono-graph are listed at the end and an index on the synonyms of plants dealt with in the monograph, and the vernacular and English names is provided to facilitate easy consultation. A few illustrations are interspersed in the text to familiarize the reader with the flavour yielding plants.

The authors believe, this monographic information source will serve as a ready reckoner to all those involved in the discipline of flavours and food.

Plant Food Flavours, a monographic publication describing briefly all aspects of flavour-producing plants, is the answer to the queries of entrepreneurs, small-scale industrialists, and students carrying out research on natural food flavours. The presentation of text is in a very user-friendly format, viz. alphabetical sequence of the major plants producing flavours, the tabular mode for the minor plants, the index on synonyms and vernacular names, etc. are all tailor-made for quick retrieval of specific information. Besides, a chapter on aroma compounds, which is the current form of flavour production, listed alphabetically with their plant sources, increases manifold the utility of the monograph.

'Flavour', as defined by the US Society of Flavour Chemists, is 'the sensation caused by those properties of any substance taken into the mouth, which stimulates one or both of the senses of taste and smell tactile and temperature receptors in the mouth'. 'A flavouring is a substance which may be a single chemical entity or a blend of chemicals of natural or synthetic origin whose primary purpose is to provide all or part of the particular flavour or effect to any food or other product taken into the mouth.'

In general, the flavour of a food substance is the combined sensation of taste and odour as perceived by the consumer as a result of interaction between the food substance and the consumer. The taste component embraces all subtle sensations of warmth, coolness, roughness, smoothness, body taste and after taste while the odour component is made up of basically two vectors, viz. the absolute external odour or fundamental odour of a food substance, and the internal odour produced after the food substance reacts with the saliva. Flavours occur naturally in plants and animals, being characteristic of each source, the source lending its specific aroma to the food it constitutes. These sources or the natural food materials may be classified into three distinct groups:

(a) Low flavour impact foods Staple food items that are highly nutritious but not very flavourful. For example: cereals, root vegetables, raw meat, fish, milk.