Brussels sprouts are the vegetable most often avoided by parents keen to enjoy peaceful family dinners free of food strikes. However, thanks to groundbreaking work by AgResearch scientists, the dreaded sprout may be made far more appealing to palates young and old.
Scientist Dr Raise Ahmad, with his team Jihan Kim and Scott Hutching, is working with the Australian Meat Processor Corporation to extract a flavour peptide from beef offal that could bring higher value to a low-value waste stream, and be a healthy flavour enhancer.
“Kokumi” is being labelled nature’s taste enhancer to sweet, salty and umami tastes, while also turning the bitter profile found in the likes of Brussels sprouts into an appealing caramel-like taste.
“Kokumi flavour peptides are really just little pieces of proteins that bind and activate the calcium-sensing receptors on our tongue and create a distinct kokumi sensations of mouth fullness, continuity and aftertaste in our brain,” Ahmad said.
Fellow scientist Dr Santanu Deb-Choudhury said kokumi lends a greater depth of flavour, taste and richness to food.
Deb-Choudhury and his team are no strangers to getting deep into the molecular nitty gritty of what constitutes tasty food.
He has also worked with development chef Dale Bowie using technology, including mass spectrometry, to determine the optimal temperature for cooking steak to ensure the best combination of aroma, taste and texture. That temperature is 58-62 °C.
The researchers describe the process of identifying and developing kokumi as a three-step one.
“We are firstly applying cutting edge mass spectrometry techniques to determine if the peptides have this property,” Deb-Choudhury said.
The next stage uses a receptor assay test developed by Ahmad to see if the peptides generate a response, and the third involves testing on consumers with development chefs.
This has again involved Bowie’s Development Kitchen in Wellington, a partnership he established with fellow chef Shepherd Elliott.
In the consumer trials using Bowie’s recipes, dishes were cooked with and without the kokumi added, and taste testers’ responses recorded.
“People were blown away by what they were tasting. [When kokumi was] added to the Brussels sprouts, they tasted a caramelised flavour rather than the customary bitterness.
“Less salt, fat and sugar needed to be added to dishes with kokumi achieve the same level of taste,” Ahmad said.
“It really is just the elevation of the flavours, the complete mouthfeel, really the excitement of being able to taste some of the flavours you that you didn’t expect to taste,” Bowie said.
The next stage is discussion with collaborative partners on the ability to scale up production and commercialise kokumi output.
Ahmad said there is no shortage of waste offal from New Zealand’s processing stream, while the food safety aspects are also minimal given the natural kokumi peptide’s production from offal.
“You are not faced with the challenges of artificial flavour enhancers such as MSG, in terms of risk.”
Kokumi comes under an ever-broadening portfolio of food development technology AgResearch scientists have been working on. Their work in identifying the optimal cooking point for steak also unlocked greater understanding on the potential combinations of food ingredients, based off their molecular compatibility.
They have also used artificial intelligence technology to develop flavour combinations that are not typically considered, looking at the molecular composition of ingredients.
Collecting a huge number of recipes and ingredients, they use AI to start off pairing conventional ingredients, then go beyond to look at ones not normally considered. Such combinations included a chicken and chocolate dish that was surprisingly popular with its sample consumers.
The researchers are also working with potential shareholders on applying kokumi to the rapidly growing ready-to-eat sector as a meal ingredient.
“We have also started analysing what provides the sense of ‘freshness’, something that is more of a feeling than a taste. There are aromatic compounds in food that provide ‘feel’ of freshness,” Ahmad said.
“Combined with kokumi, there are some exciting opportunities out there.”
