In the spotlight

Our day-to-day lives are being increasingly infiltrated by what is given the catchall name of artificial intelligence. Perfumers are no exception. So how does AI change our relationship with the creative process? Drawing on an historical analysis of his profession, Jean-Claude Ellena offers a review of these new technologies, often championed by the perfumery industry.

An astonishing 226% increase in test results.

The perception of taste is one of the most important senses and helps us identify beneficial foods and avoid harmful substances. For instance, our fondness for sweet and savory foods results from our ...

Experts predict 2024’s hottest food and beverage flavor trends.

Let’s peek into an integral part of all perfume testings by getting acquainted with blotter production company Scentis and taking a look at the beautiful and unconventional design of blotters. Not so long ago I told you that I met a company Scentis at the BEAUTY ISTANBUL exhibition, whose unusual “Wet & See” blotters caught my eye. After the exhibition, I decided to talk more with Scentis and take a look at

What does 'banana' have to do with 'handball'?

Community matters among bacteria when it comes to producing full-flavoured cheddars

Let's take a geek's journey to the heart of olfactory receptors, sources of unexpected hope, with Jérémie Topin, Assistant professor at Université Côte d'Azur, and Matej Hladis, PhD student, both members of GDR 03.

This mysterious ingredient was often found in medieval Arabic books of medicine and botany.

Analysis of 3D images reveals the organ’s bumps and grooves are as personal as fingerprints

Scientists bring lab-grown coffee closer to your cup.

Nonalcoholic beer may sound like an oxymoron, but newer techniques are producing tasty, high-quality options in this growing beverage category.

Odor is central to food quality. Still, a major challenge is to understand how the odorants present in a given food contribute to its specific odor profile, and how to predict this olfactory outcome from the chemical composition. In this proof-of-concept study, we seek to develop an integrative model that combines expert knowledge, fuzzy logic, and machine learning to predict the quantitative odor description of complex mixtures of odorants. The model output is the intensity of relevant odor sensory attributes calculated on the basis of the content in odor-active comounds. The core of the model is the mathematically formalized knowledge of four senior flavorists, which provided a set of optimized rules describing the sensory-relevant combinations of odor qualities the experts have in mind to elaborate the target odor sensory attributes. The model first queries analytical and sensory databases in order to standardize, homogenize, and quantitatively code the odor descriptors of the odorants. Then the standardized odor descriptors are translated into a limited number of odor qualities used by the experts thanks to an ontology. A third step consists of aggregating all the information in terms of odor qualities across all the odorants found in a given product. The final step is a set of knowledge-based fuzzy membership functions representing the flavorist expertise and ensuring the prediction of the intensity of the target odor sensory descriptors on the basis of the products' aggregated odor qualities; several methods of optimization of the fuzzy membership functions have been tested. Finally, the model was applied to predict the odor profile of 16 red wines from two grape varieties for which the content in odorants was available. The results showed that the model can predict the perceptual outcome of food odor with a certain level of accuracy, and may also provide insights into combinations of odorants not mentioned by the experts.

As kids, we’re naturally more likely to enjoy sweet and salty tastes and reject bitterness. But that changes as we grow older.

This review presents an outline of the application of the most popular sorbent-based methods in food analysis. Solid-phase extraction (SPE) is discussed based on the analyses of lipids, mycotoxins, pesticide residues, processing contaminants and flavor compounds, whereas solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is discussed having volatile and flavor compounds but also processing contaminants in mind. Apart from these two most popular methods, other techniques, such as stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE), molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), high-capacity sorbent extraction (HCSE), and needle-trap devices (NTD), are outlined. Additionally, novel forms of sorbent-based extraction methods such as thin-film solid-phase microextraction (TF-SPME) are presented. The utility and challenges related to these techniques are discussed in this review. Finally, the directions and need for future studies are addressed.

A bit of moisture can keep static electricity out of your coffee.