So why doesn't all our food taste great? Perhaps, to some, it does. 'Great' is always subjective.
Taste is not just about the flavour, it's a combination of the flavour, texture and aroma. It's about bringing the senses together and, at that one moment, creating an experience that's perfect for that particular occasion.
Look at Marmite! Love it or hate it, it has a niche, individual identity and mass appeal that no one else can copy or, if they can, then it's just that: a copy.
I worked on the development process of the Galaxy Cake Bar. The challenge was to convert the unique taste of the Galaxy chocolate bar into a product format that had never been achieved before. We had to encapsulate that brand identity in a new way.
The main hurdle we had to overcome was how to make the chocolate enrobable. Galaxy chocolate has its unique and luxurious taste because of the particle size. The chocolate particles are so small that they coat your mouth when you eat it. That's what gives it its luxurious mouthfeel, which is part of its taste but it isn't about flavour. Although it gives the chocolate a great taste, it makes it really thick and therefore hard to use for enrobing.
For reasons of confidentiality, I can't go into the scientific process we went through to achieve our goal of making an enrobable form of Galaxy chocolate. But every successful product launch in our industry has a start that leads to an unexpected finish and the one thing that binds each one is the passionate individuals who live and breathe their work.
Mark Rigby is senior business development chef for Premier Foods.