The Madness of Taste Tests

As we continue the work on our mystery product, ELF team member Patricia began the flavor journey. Read on to learn the ingredients of a taste test.

About two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting a flavor house. You may wonder, “What is a flavor house?” Well, flavor houses serve as the labs for the spice world’s mad scientists. A little bit of this, and a little bit of that and SHAZAM! You have a mouth-watering, super-fantastic, leave-the-customer-begging-for-more…seasoning.

Well, it’s not exactly that easy. It actually requires a bit of work before you even arrive at the flavor house, and a whole laundry list of descriptions to help the mad scientist head down the right path. We provide a little direction with the following criteria:

1. Creamy taste, but without the dairy ingredients
2. Natural ingredients only. NO artificial!
3. Appeal to kids of the allergy-friendly world, as well as the adults
4. Not too spicy, but not too bland
5. Tastes like you can put the seasoning on bread, even though we won’t use it for bread. NO wheat or gluten!

The next step is taste, taste, taste! It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it! The mad scientist prepares a full array of samples and sits you down at a large table to begin the process. It’s similar to wine tastings (those readers out there who are 21+): talk about the appearance, smell, texture, immediate taste, flavors that occur in the middle and finally the finish taste.

At the end of the day, you rank the flavors you enjoyed, but do not necessarily count out the ones you didn’t like. These flavors get sent back for revisions. Maybe for a little more tomato, or perhaps less salt or maybe it’s just lacking a little big of oompf (yes, that is a technical term…okay, not really). A few days later, you start the process all over again with the revised flavors, then slowly narrow the field down to the best flavors. Now we’ve finally achieved that mouth-watering, super-fantastic, leave-the-customer-begging-for-more product, not just a seasoning!