Create Flavours launches fresh tasting herbs range

The Herb Leaf Boosters range has been engineered to add fresh herb tastes to recipes that would traditionally use dried herbs and is intended to capitalize on the trend for natural foods.

The range of products are clean label being designated as ‘natural flavourings’ or ‘natural herb flavourings’ and are available as water soluble and oil soluble liquids and spray dried powder flavours, depending on the final application. The single base flavour features common fresh leaf herbs including oregano, marjoram, sage, basil, rosemary and coriander.

Create Flavours said the Leaf Boosters range could be used to impart freshness into a range of products such as ready meals, stocks, soups, seasonings and meat products.

“These new natural flavourings give manufacturers an opportunity to add a bit of cheffiness to their products and what’s really great about them is that they can simply be added to existing products without the need for time consuming and costly re-engineering,”​ said Create Flavours managing director Jonathan Jones.

Fresh taste​

The company first looked at imparting the taste of fresh herbs into its flavours in 2007 with its Torn Leaf range. During the product development stage, the company’s scientists discovered that there were common aroma profiles across the range of leaf herbs that were contributing the fresh taste.

“The individual molecules that define say parsley as parsley or sage as sage are well known,”​ said Jones. “What wasn’t so well known are the other molecules that contribute to freshness.”​

Technical challenges​

From this research, the company was able to design generic boosters that can impart freshness into manufactured food products. “We’ve put about six months work into it,”​ said Jones. “Technically it’s been quite tricky and it’s taken a lot of development work.”​

Jones added that the natural, fresh herb flavours dovetailed with the consumer trend for cooking from scratch; a trend manufacturers are looking to replicate in their food products. “Everyone’s going down the natural route. There’s such a burgeoning interest in the ​UK​ in cooking from scratch and freshness of ingredients,”​ he said.