Understanding flavour quality: Difficult or impossible?

Abstract

Flavour arises from a complex series of events, starting with genetic and environmental influences on the composition of the food material, and leading via processing changes and chemoreception to the consumer's perception of flavour. Three areas in flavour research seem to be most likely to repay new work. The first is flavour release, that is what happens in the mouth, the effect of food structure, and what happens when food is eaten. Secondly, there are good opportunities for progress in studies of chemoreceptor mechanisms, and thirdly neural networks offer the hope of solving some of the more intractable mathematical modelling problems.