Flavoring in the context of "Chemoreceptor"

A condiment is a preparation that is added to food, typically after cooking, to enhance the flavor, to complement the dish, or to impart a specific flavor. Such specific flavors generally add sweetness or pungency, or sharp or piquant flavors. The seasonings and spices common in many different cuisine arise from global introductions of foreign trade. Condiments include those added to cooking to impart flavor, such as barbecue sauce and soy sauce; those added before serving, such as mayonnaise in a sandwich; and those added tableside to taste, such as ketchup with fast food. Condiments can also provide other health benefits to diets that lack micronutrients.

Cocoa butter, also called theobroma oil, is a pale-yellow, edible fat extracted from the cocoa bean (Theobroma cacao). It is used to make chocolate, as well as some ointments, toiletries, and pharmaceuticals. Cocoa butter has a cocoa flavor and aroma. Its melting point is slightly below human body temperature. It is an essential ingredient of chocolate and related confectionary products. Cocoa butter does not contain butter or other animal products; it is vegan.

The gustatory system or sense of taste is the sensory system that is partially responsible for the perception of taste. Taste is the perception stimulated when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor cells located on taste buds in the oral cavity, mostly on the tongue. Taste, along with the sense of smell and trigeminal nerve stimulation (registering texture, pain, and temperature), determines flavors of food and other substances. Humans have taste receptors on taste buds and other areas, including the upper surface of the tongue and the epiglottis. The gustatory cortex is responsible for the perception of taste.

The tongue is covered with thousands of small bumps called papillae, which are visible to the naked eye. Within each papilla are hundreds of taste buds. The exceptions to this is the filiform papillae that do not contain taste buds. There are between 2000 and 5000 taste buds that are located on the back and front of the tongue. Others are located on the roof, sides and back of the mouth, and in the throat. Each taste bud contains 50 to 100 taste receptor cells.

Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cocoa beans that can be a liquid, solid, or paste, either by itself or to flavor other foods. Cocoa beans are the processed seeds of the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao). They are usually fermented to develop the flavor, then dried, cleaned, and roasted. The shell is removed to reveal nibs, which are ground to chocolate liquor: unadulterated chocolate in rough form. The liquor can be processed to separate its two components, cocoa solids and cocoa butter, or shaped and sold as unsweetened baking chocolate. By adding sugar, sweetened chocolates are produced, which can be sold simply as dark chocolate, or, with the addition of milk, can be made into milk chocolate. Making milk chocolate with cocoa butter and without cocoa solids produces white chocolate.

Chocolate is one of the most popular food types and flavors in the world, and many foodstuffs involving chocolate exist, particularly desserts, including ice creams, cakes, mousse, and cookies. Many candies are filled with or coated with sweetened chocolate. Chocolate bars, either made of solid chocolate or other ingredients coated in chocolate, are eaten as snacks. Gifts of chocolate molded into different shapes (such as eggs, hearts, and coins) are traditional on certain Western holidays, including Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, and Hanukkah. Chocolate is also used in cold and hot beverages, such as chocolate milk, hot chocolate and chocolate liqueur.

In the culinary arts, a spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garnish. Spices and herbs are both seasonings. Spices are sometimes used in medicine, religious rituals, cosmetics, or perfume production. They are usually classified into spices, spice seeds, and herbal categories. For example, vanilla is commonly used as an ingredient in fragrance manufacturing. Plant-based sweeteners such as sugar are not considered spices.

Spices can be used in various forms, including fresh, whole, dried, grated, chopped, crushed, ground, or extracted into a tincture. These processes may occur before the spice is sold, during meal preparation in the kitchen, or even at the table when serving a dish, such as grinding peppercorns as a condiment. Certain spices, like turmeric, are rarely available fresh or whole and are typically purchased in ground form. Small seeds, such as fennel and mustard, can be used either in their whole form or as a powder.

An aroma compound, also known as an odorant, aroma, fragrance, flavoring or flavor, is a chemical compound that has a smell or odor. For an individual chemical or class of chemical compounds to impart a smell or fragrance, it must be sufficiently volatile for transmission via the air to the olfactory system in the upper part of the nose. As examples, various fragrant fruits have diverse aroma compounds, particularly strawberries which are commercially cultivated to have appealing aromas, and contain several hundred aroma compounds.

Generally, molecules meeting this specification have molecular weights of less than 310. Flavors affect both the sense of taste and smell, whereas fragrances affect only smell. Flavors tend to be naturally occurring, and the term fragrances may also apply to synthetic compounds, such as those used in cosmetics.

Specialty chemicals (also called specialties or effect chemicals) are particular chemical products that provide a wide variety of effects on which many other industry sectors rely. Some of the categories of speciality chemicals are adhesives, agrichemicals, cleaning materials, colors, cosmetic additives, construction chemicals, elastomers, flavors, food additives, fragrances, industrial gases, lubricants, paints, polymers, surfactants, and textile auxiliaries. Other industrial sectors such as automotive, aerospace, food, cosmetics, agriculture, manufacturing, and textiles are highly dependent on such products.

Speciality chemicals are materials used on the basis of their performance or function. Consequently, in addition to "effect" chemicals they are sometimes referred to as "performance" chemicals or "formulation" chemicals. They can be unique molecules or mixtures of molecules known as formulations. The physical and chemical characteristics of the single molecules or the formulated mixtures of molecules and the composition of the mixtures influences the performance end product. In commercial applications the companies providing these products more often than not provide targeted customer service to innovative individual technical solutions for their customers. This is a differentiating component of the service provided by speciality chemical producers when they are compared to the other sub-sectors of the chemical industry such as fine chemicals, commodity chemicals, petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals.

Flavored milk is a sweetened dairy drink made with milk, sugar, flavorings, and sometimes food colorings. It may be sold as a pasteurized, refrigerated product, or as an ultra-high-temperature (UHT) treated product not requiring refrigeration. It may also be made in restaurants or homes by mixing flavorings into milk.

In New England, milk blended with flavored syrups such as chocolate or strawberry in a milkshake machine, is commonly called a "milkshake"; in other parts of the United States, a milkshake always includes ice cream or thickeners.

Essential oils are concentrated, hydrophobic liquids containing volatile (readily evaporate) chemical compounds extracted from plant material. Essential oils are also known as volatile oils, ethereal oils, aetheroleum, or simply as the oil of the plant from which they were extracted, such as oil of clove. An essential oil is essential in the sense that the oil contains the fragrance or essence of the plant. The term "essential" used here does not indicate that it is nutritionally required in the diet, as with essential amino acid or essential fatty acid.

Essential oils are most commonly extracted by steam distillation. Other processes include expression, solvent extraction, sfumatura, and cold pressing. They are used in perfumes, cosmetics, soaps, air fresheners and other products, for flavoring food and drink, and for adding scents to household cleaning products.