It’s a complicated business to compose something that both feels and tastes natural. Carefully chosen botanicals create a delicate balance of: herbal and earthy, citrus and spice, floral and sweet. Herb and botanical ingredients can be used to impart a pleasant flavor to products where consumers seek more authentic and unconventional taste experiences. Innovative taste profiles can be developed by pairing niche botanical profiles with more familiar fruits and vegetables.

Botanicals act like bridges, making it possible to access the other ingredients, so you can experience a greater aroma and flavor potential. Botanical flavor combinations can be incredibly simple and surprisingly refreshing. Add culinary excitement to new categories, such as dairy products and yogurt, alcoholic beverages, pizza crusts and carbonated soft drinks.

Because many herbs possess a strong, often unpleasant, flavor, our strategies include carefully adjusting the level, choosing a complementary base and flavor system, blending with customized flavor systems that account for some of the existing flavor notes to mimic another flavor, and using masking flavors.

Identifying the perfect growing region is a big part of our flavor chemists’ roles. As an example, African ginger and Cochin (Indian) ginger are two different varietals—Cochin has a highly aromatic flavor, almost curry-like, whereas the African ginger has a lighter, smoother profile, the kind of flavor you’ll find in ginger ale.

Botanicals are a growing opportunity and the experts at T. Hasegawa are ready to perfect taste and aroma for your products.