Flavor from a Can

Despite the wonders of modern chemistry and four-color packaging, nobody has yet been able to make preserved food taste just as good as fresh. But this week the Evans Research & Development

Corp. of New York demonstrated a process that can put the fresh flavor back into foods before they come to the table.

The substances that produce flavor are made by enzymes (organic catalysts) out of tasteless "flavor precursors." When food is preserved by canning, freezing or dehydration, the flavor, along with the enzymes, is apt to be destroyed. The precursors survive. But without the proper enzymes, they do not produce flavor.

Working with the Army Quartermaster Research and Engineering Command (which suffers from chronic G.I. complaints about tasteless preserved food), the Evans scientists found that waste parts of many foods (e.g., vegetable stems, meat scraps) contain flavor enzymes that can be extracted and preserved separately as a fine powder. When a pinch of these enzymes is added to the preserved food, they go to work on the flavor precursors and restore a good part of the natural fresh flavor. The trick works on many kinds of canned and frozen foods, including blueberries, string beans, broccoli and meat.

Evans has a patent on the flavor enzymes, and many ideas as to how best to use them. Immediate suggestion is to treat the food with enzymes just after processing. Further in the future is a collection of packaged flavor enzymes with which housewives can revive flavorless foods.

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