Flavor-Forward Pasta Sauces

The point of a pasta sauce is to enhance the flavor of starchy noodles, not emulate it. But the demands of modern food processing can play havoc with the sauces flavor.

To start with, product designers need to add stabilizers and texturizers to enhance pasta-sauce performanceingredients that not only contribute to the way flavors are perceived by altering texture and mouthfeel, but may actually result in chemical interactions that bind flavor volatiles. The relationships between stabilizers and flavor chemicals can be complexdifferent stabilizers can have a different effect on the same flavor compounds and vice versa. Other elements of the sauce, such as fat content, can also affect flavor delivery. Often, a pasty or floury sauce is the result of over-ambitious attempts at stabilization. The heavy starch content that creates such textures is also notorious for dampening flavor release. Attempts to fix the problem can go awry. People get into this cycle where they stabilize the sauce with a lot of starch or gum and mask the flavor, says Chris Kelly, director, technical services, Advanced Food Systems, Somerset, NJ. So then they add more flavor or more dairy and get more fat in the formulation and need more stabilization. Its kind of a never-ending cycle. Hes found that a strategic combination of stabilizers, rather than a single ingredient, stabilizes the sauce more effectively and at lower levels, lowering the risk that youll mask the flavor.

Flavor release in a pasta sauce can also be impacted by the way the flavor itself is put together. Bob Kaminski, director, consumer products lab, Wixon, Inc., St. Francis, WI, has some suggestions for achieving better flavor release, such as adding a flavor top note. For instance, a cheese flavor may not come through despite adding higher levels of cheese, he says. The addition of a volatile liquid cheese flavor that provides the odor or top note of cheese can help release the flavor and achieve the balance you are trying to achieve.

However, Rachel Zemser, CCS, a San Franciscoarea food technologist who writes The Intrepid Culinologist blog on the CULINOLOGY® magazine websiteis skeptical of how effectively additional flavors can replicate the taste and aroma of home-cooked sauce. Natural and artificial flavors can add back what you might lose, she says, but it is very difficult to recreate a fresh tomato flavor using manufactured flavors. This freshness gap may be the biggest drawback to processed tomato products, she says.

In addition, Zemser points out the influence of the cooking procedure. A long, slow simmer will result in a better flavor profile vs. something that is heated at 195°F for 5 minutes, she notes. Like it or not, high heat is as tough on flavor as it is essential for safety.

Whats more, the complex mix of flavor chemicals in the finished product is affected by the temperature and the exposure time as anyone who has worked with reaction flavors can attest to. But product developers and flavor technologists have gotten closer to bringing genuine-tasting, slow-cooked flavor to industrially made sauces, by teasing out what makes slow-cooked sauces taste so good in the first place. Slow cooking results in a blending of flavors, combined with a caramelizing of sugars present in the sauce, Kaminski says. His company has designed systems that combine spices and flavor ingredients to match the flavor effect desired in food systems, he says.

Lastly, the ingredient form can influence the flavor, especially when it comes to spices and seasonings that often lend pasta sauces a unique flavor signature. Seasoning options run the gamut, Kaminski says. When selecting herbs and spices, there are many forms that offer numerous advantages and disadvantages, he says. For example, frozen herbs may provide the freshest flavor but are difficult to handle and store, and can be expensive. Dried herbs and spices are the most economical and widely available, but its important to deal with a reliable source. Liquid extracts and extracts dispersed on carriers such as salt, dextrose or maltodextrin release flavor quickly and provide flavor without the appearance of spice particles, but they have limited storage lives and some dont provide a complete flavor profile. Encapsulated spice extracts provide extended shelf life in dry storage and in dry-mix products, but also have limited flavor profiles compared to dry or frozen spices.

In the end, the delicate dance between ingredients and processing is crucial to designing a pasta sauce that Grandma herself would be proud to serve.

Kimberly J. Decker, a California-based technical writer, has a B.S. in consumer food science with a minor in English from the University of California, Davis. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she enjoys eating and writing about food. You can reach her at [email protected].