Case Studies
Flavour to savour – Partnering with industry to improve the safety and taste of smoked foods
How Reading University’s Flavour Centre has been at the centre of an innovation in smoked foods: making them taste even better while removing harmful smoke compounds.
The drawbacks of smoking
Smoked and smoke-flavoured foods have become an increasingly popular part of the UK diet in recent years. A wide range of smoky rubs, sauces, seasonings and marinades can be found on the shelves of many supermarkets. However, the smoking process can generate harsh and acrid flavours and consumers may worry about cancer-causing chemicals that can be found in smoke.
Innovation in flavour
Chemist Dr Jane Parker is the founder of the University of Reading’s Flavour Centre. She was key to the development of a new filtration technology to improve the smoking process, working with innovative smokery, BeSmoke, and food scientist Dr David Baines. Their aim was to develop a way to significantly reduce carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in smoked foods and food ingredients, without losing the desirable smoky flavour.
Smoke filtration
The mineral zeolite is a highly regular and porous material that is used in filters, where it acts as a sieve to trap molecules of a certain size or shape.
Dr Parker studied the effectiveness of filtering wood smoke through zeolite of different grain sizes, using different pre-treatments to activate the mineral. These laboratory studies at Reading led to development of a highly efficient and cost effective industrial filtration process that removes more than 90% of harmful PAHs from wood smoke.
This ‘clean’ smoke was then applied to ingredients directly or used to impart smoky flavour to brining solutions.
Balanced flavour
According to both chemical analysis and human tasters, foods treated with the zeolite-filtered smoke have a better flavour profile than those that have undergone traditional smoking techniques.
A tasting panel tried smoked chicken pieces and smoked tomato flakes served in a cream cheese. They reported the filtered-smoked foods to taste less harsh, more balanced and savoury compared to “acrid” and “ashtray” notes of the same foods flavoured with unfiltered smoke.
From lab to plate
The innovative smoking technology is trademarked by BeSmoke as PureSmoke. It was launched to the food and drink industry in 2016 and quickly used in the development of two products: Tesco’s Rich and Smokey Stockpot and Fever Tree’s Smokey Ginger Ale.
Further, several more food companies and retailers are developing their use of PureSmoke technology to improve the flavour and reduce the carcinogens in mainstream food products, such as smoked bacon and chicken.
BeSmoke’s founder Huw Griffiths said: “The collaboration with the University of Reading’s Flavour Centre has resulted in a truly ground-breaking technology given great credibility by its association with this centre of academic and research excellence.
“PureSmoke has gained significant traction within the global food and flavour industries, and rightly so. It is becoming widely accepted that a reduction in carcinogens in smoked food is an achievable and worthy objective. Furthermore, the enhancement of flavour from PureSmoke Technology is presenting wide commercial opportunities as well as opening the door to further research and development projects.”
Further information
Contact details for Dr Parker and links to her published research can be found on her Staff Profile.
More information about PureSmoke can be found at http://besmoke.com/
Related reading
Parker, J. K., Lignou, S., Shankland, K., Kurwie, P., Griffiths, H. D. and Baines, D. A. (2017) Development of a technology for reducing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in smoked food and smoked ingredients. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. ISSN 0021-8561 doi: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.6b05399