Flavors

Flavor or flavour is the sensory impression of a food or other substance, and is determined mainly by the chemical senses of taste and smell.^{[citation needed]}

The "trigeminal senses", which detect chemical irritants in the mouth and throat as well as temperature and texture, are also very important to the overall Gestalt of flavor perception.^{[citation needed]}

The flavor of the food, as such, can be altered with natural or artificial flavorants, which affect these senses.^{[citation needed]}

Flavorant is defined as a substance that gives another substance flavor, altering the characteristics of the solute, causing it to become sweet, sour, tangy, etc.^{[citation needed]}

Of the three chemical senses, smell is the main determinant of a food item's flavor.^{[citation needed]} While the taste of food is limited to sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami (savory) – pungent or piquant and metallic, the seven basic tastes – the smells of a food are potentially limitless.^{[citation needed]}

A food's flavor, therefore, can be easily altered by changing its smell while keeping its taste similar.^{[citation needed]}

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in artificially flavored jellies, soft drinks and candies, which, while made of bases with a similar taste, have dramatically different flavors due to the use of different scents or fragrances.^{[citation needed]}

The flavorings of commercially produced food products are typically created byflavorists.[citation ^needed]

Although the terms "flavoring" or "flavorant" in common language denote the combined chemical sensations of taste and smell, the same terms are usually used in the fragrance and flavors industry to refer to edible chemicals and extracts that alter the flavor of food and food products through the sense of smell.^{[citation needed]} Due to the high cost or unavailability of natural flavor extracts, most commercial flavorants are nature-identical, which means that they are the chemical equivalent of natural flavors but chemically synthesized rather than being extracted from the source materials.^{[citation needed]} Identification of nature-identical flavorants are done using technology such as headspace techniques.^{[citation needed]}