Vilgis Flavour 2013, 2:12

http://www.flavourjournal.com/content/2/1/12

OPINION Open Access

Texture, taste and aroma: multi-scale materials

and the gastrophysics of food
Thomas A Vilgis

Abstract
The common feature of the large variety of raw and cooked foods is that they are multi-component materials that
consist at least of proteins, carbohydrates, fat and water. These basic classes of molecules define most of the
structural and textural properties of the foods cooked and processed in the kitchen. Given the different solubility of
these components in the basic solvents, water and fat, it becomes clear that many physical properties, such as
structure and texture are determined by a large number of competing interactions between these different
components.

Introduction their sensory properties, taste complexity and specific

Cooking and eating are definitely pleasures. Cooking and aroma release. Here again, the water–oil/fat solubility
eating are definitely materials research fields. Cooking and of taste and aroma compounds plays a significant role.
eating are definitely complicated forms of physical, chem- Water dissolves most of the taste-relevant hydrophilic
ical and biological processes with only one aim: pleasure, units (ions, protons, sugars, glutamine acid), whereas
satisfaction, and satiation. Natural materials as grown in oils and fats act as ‘good solvents’ for the lipophilic
fields, on trees or in water change their state, structure, aroma compounds. Consequently, the interplay between
colour, taste, and smell. Consequently cooking involves aroma release and odour activity with structure and
simultaneous and non-separable physical, chemical and texture properties follows certain fundamental physical
biological processes in a highly coupled manner, unlike in principles. Some of these ‘universal’ features define a re-
classical physics, chemistry and biology. Cooking and eat- lation between structure, processing, solubility and aroma
ing define a new class of multidisciplinary scientific pro- release and close the circle from materials to cultural
blems on many length and time scales. However, cooking sciences via the ‘culinary triangle’ developed by the an-
and eating remain culture [1]. thropologist Claude Lévy-Strauss. The large variety of tex-
The conformation and dynamics of water-soluble long ture, taste and aroma can already be viewed in the ‘raw,
carbohydrates and partially water-soluble native or dena- cooked and fermented’ state of corresponding foods.
tured proteins define, together with the water content,
the textural properties of foods. In addition, local short- Gastrophysics: multi-scales in foods and sensory
range interactions of these macromolecules with com- sciences
paratively small ions (salts), polar molecules (water, low From a purely physical point of view, foods need to be
molecular weight sugars) and amphiphilic molecules treated as multi-scale systems [2]. This becomes obvious
(emulsifiers) have a strong influence on macroscopic from the sensory qualities of the food felt while eating
properties, for example, the mouthfeel as it is demon- [3]. By biting, chewing, and swallowing, foods are des-
strated with simple model systems such as tasty multi- troyed by the teeth, aroma gets released, taste becomes
component gels. released, broken food pieces are wetted by the salvia and
These pure ‘materials properties’ are typical in the field are transformed to a partially liquid bolus that can be
of soft condensed matter physics but all foods live from swallowed with pleasure [4]. By translating these ele-
mentary processes into naïve physical ideas the relations
to materials sciences become visible. The texture of
Correspondence: [email protected]
Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Ackermannweg 10, 55128, Mainz, the food is defined via its physical structure including
Germany the swelling and lubrication agents, water and oil. The
© 2013 Vilgis; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Figure 1 A simple view of the hierarchy in length scales and of the different sensory sensations.

rupture and breakdown of the structure determine, to- gastrophysics similarly involves many time scales, which
gether with the water content and oil concentration, the are not independent and cannot be clearly separated from
aroma and taste release. The temperature of the food each other, since at the perception level all length and
yields the perception intensity of the culinary sensation. times matter - unlike in food processing where time and
Finally, size, surface states, wettability, and composition lengths scales can be selected to design certain properties
of the damaged food in the mouth determine volume of foods.
and viscosity of the bolus, as well as the satiation.
The unconscious way of eating involves more than is Molecular hierarchies
visible on a macroscopic scale. Of course, its macro- From the physicist’s point of view, foods are hierarchical
scopic shapes and its surfaces determine the first im- complex systems where structure and texture can be re-
pression when the food is taken into the mouth, but lated to structural polymers, such as proteins and carbo-
only a number of non-visible processes lead the overall hydrates with different solvability. Figure 2 shows the
pleasure and the flavour of the foods. Figure 1 illustrates basic building blocks of all foods. Every food consists of
the hierarchy involved during eating [5]. At the lowest proteins, carbohydrates, oil, and water. Proteins and car-
level, the basis, some of the macroscopic properties are bohydrates form the basic structure. The two contrary sol-
listed. They concern surface properties, such as rough- vents water and fat (oil) determine their self-organization
ness, properties like hardness or softness of the state of in the foods. Carbohydrates are mainly water soluble,
the food, for example foaminess or creaminess. The next
level in Figure 1 shows another form of the complexity:
most foods are composite and structured materials that
contain more than one aggregate state of the matter.
Gases inside bubbles form with liquids or solids inside
the boundaries foams. ‘Solid’ chocolate consists of solid
spherical crystals with liquid cores of fatty acids of higher
unsaturation degree [6].
Both the water and fat content of the foods determine
the solution properties of aroma and taste-relevant com-
pounds and ions, exploit spreading on the tongue and
stimulate taste buds and trigeminal channels. At the
highest level and smallest scales in the scheme shown in
Figure 1, aroma release takes place. Characteristically
shaped volatile aroma compounds are detected by its Figure 2 Classification of the food constituents. Proteins and
receptors in the olfactory bulb. carbohydrates basically define, together with the water and oil
‘Eating with pleasure’ involves thus the entire length distribution/ratio, the structure/texture, whereas aroma compounds
and ions determine the taste. The overall perception is usually
scales ranging from macroscopic dimensions down to
described by the flavor.
molecular scales almost simultaneously. Consequently,
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proteins, which consist of hydrophilic and hydrophobic alcohols, and so on) it can be demonstrated how local
amino acids, accept partially water and oil as solvent, de- properties such as hydrate shells have indeed a strong in-
pending on their function and their primary structure, fluence on the gelling properties and mouthfeel. These are
that is, the arrangement of the amino acids along the indeed important questions especially for sweets, desserts
backbone of the protein chain contour. and confectionaries. The interplay between hydrocolloids
The basic taste qualities [7], sweet, sour, salty, bitter with different persistence length (stiffness) and polar and
and umami of the foods are governed a number of small ionization (for example, agarose as a polar gelling agent,
molecular compounds, which are in most cases water and xanthan as a rather stiff polyelectrolyte) and their dif-
soluble. All sugars and sweeteners are ions or dipolar ferent interactions with low molecular weight cosolutes,
molecules, salts dissociate in their ions. The acid taste is show ways how the strong effect of sugars on the elastic
related to proton activity and umami to a number of properties can be minimized [11-13]. Model systems in
water-soluble molecules, the most well-known glutamic gastrophysics do then indeed have practical implications
acid [8]. Moreover, the ions and the overall ionic ranging from gastronomy to the food industry.
strength (salt content) in foods have some implication There exist many more examples how simple model
for the structure and texture of the foods. Monovalent systems show basic physical correlations between differ-
ions contribute to the screening of electrostatic interac- ent food constituents. In addition, some of the dishes
tions [1]. Bivalent ions can, under certain circumstances, created by Ferran Adrià and others of that kitchen style
provoke liquid-to-solid phase transitions like calcium or can be viewed as physical model systems, for example
magnesium ions in certain alginates [1,9]. when the same food is presented by different drying
Aroma compounds are, in contrast, mostly weakly water methods. Drying at moderate temperatures brings dif-
soluble but dissolve strongly in a fatty environment. In- ferent textures and taste compared to freeze-drying or
deed, their odour activity is more or less determined by microwave drying. The differences are clear signs of the
the volatility (a thermodynamic property defined by the energy of water binding, the state diagram of the food
corresponding vapour pressure) and the odour threshold and the corresponding thermodynamic pathways to the
(a physiological-chemical property). Both quantities can glassy state [14]. Even when the remaining water content
be easily measured in defined solvents at a certain tem- of the freeze-dried and temperature-dried food is similar,
perature. Nevertheless, odour impressions turn out to be taste and mouthfeel are different. Both methods define
more complicated in real foods; many proteins in food therefore different culinary functions. Here as well, dif-
have special (hydrophobic) binding sites for aroma com- ferent length scales play essential roles: local scales and
pounds that define a ‘local’ vapour pressure [10]. Thus the interactions (polarity, charges) on molecular scales up to
same aroma compound will appear with different odour the resulting porosity due to the water dehydration.
activity values in different foods.
Cooking is more than natural science:
Are model systems of help? gastrophysics links to cultural sciences
The study of simplified model systems is one of the basic Even when model systems show some physical qualifi-
approaches in all areas of physics. Model systems con- cation, in most cases they appear far away from natural
tain, despite a high degree of simplifications, most of the
general features of the original system. In many cases,
model systems define a class of universality valid for
many systems. In gastrophysics (as in biophysics) the basic
concept of universality does not lead to the most appro-
priate answer, since local interactions and their origin in a
detailed chemical structure matters for the final result - in
the ‘laboratory mouth’.
Nevertheless, a number of model systems, in most
cases gels with different types of hydrocolloids have been
developed that show significant differences in crack be-
haviour during chewing and mouthfeel, properties that
are defined by length and time scales defined by the size
of the molecules, respectively the mesh sizes of the gels.
Their water binding as well as taste and aroma release
are, however, determined by local scales and the rupture Figure 3 The culinary triangle proposed by Lévy-Strauss [15].
The transition from raw to cooked is temperature-driven, from raw
of individual chains forming the network. By adding
to rotten by microorganisms.
different sugars (monosaccharides, disaccharides, sugar
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means the structural transitions induced by changing

temperature. ‘Rotten’ can be translated into ‘fermented’,
when the structure of the foods becomes transformed by
microbiological processes by bacteria or enzymes. The
latter stands, for example, for foods like yoghurts, ripe
cheeses or fermented vegetables. With this definition,
motivated from natural sciences, one long-debated di-
lemma of the culinary triangle can also be resolved:
the ‘cooked’ is close to ‘rotten/fermented’, because long
cooking times correspond always to a hydrolysis of pro-
teins and carbohydrates, which define the structure of
the foods, as schematically depicted in Figure 4. More-
over, modern cooking and its arrangements of plates as
practised in avant-garde cuisine, New Nordic Cuisine,
‘nova regio’ cuisine and other forms require a systematic
extension of the culinary triangle according to the
Figure 4 The physical interpretation of the culinary triangle. underlying physical and chemical processes. These ideas
Temperature changes the structure (symbolically drawn as lattice)
will be published elsewhere [16].
physically: polysaccharides and corresponding cell structures
become softer, proteins denature. Microbiology changes the
structure by destroying certain structural elements. Long cooking Conclusion
implies hydrolysis of certain structural polymers, too. Gastrophysics joins many length and time scales. Apart
from ‘food physics’ and physical-oriented chemistry, it
also needs to take into account physical aspects of aroma
food and cultural background. Nevertheless, physical chemistry and structural thermodynamic aspects of aroma
ideas appear useful even to cultural sciences and anthro- compounds. It also ranges deep into the understanding of
pology. One example is the idea of the ‘culinary triangle’ biophysical processes in cell physiology via the dynamics
developed by Lévy-Strauss [15]. He proposed cooking, of receptors and psychophysics of perception. Even from
after the use of the fire in the early days of humankind, a pure physicist’s point of view, cooking-related pro-
as the transition from ‘nature’ to ‘culture’. To visualize blems are non-trivial: most of them are of highly non-
the idea of such a ‘universal structuralism’ a triangle was equilibrium nature. The final states of cooked food depend
proposed, whose sides join the edges of ‘raw’, ‘cooked’ strongly on the pathway, that is, the ‘processing’. In
and ‘rotten, see Figure 3. Physically, this triangular cons- contrast to many (classical physical) material proper-
truction also makes sense when the physical food struc- ties, the resulting structure depends on the processes
ture to each of the three edges and the pathways for the themselves and apart from a structure–property rela-
transitions are assigned. ‘Raw’ then becomes the original tionship, gastrophysics needs a clear structure-process-
structure of the foods as grown by nature. ‘Cooked’ then property-flavour relationship.

Figure 5 Gastrophysics and its overlap with different scientific disciplines as motivated by its multi-scale character.
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The multi-scale character of gastrophysics implies a

link to many other fields of sciences, as cartooned in
Figure 5. Pure aroma chemistry, without the appropriate
quantum and statistical physical properties of the aroma
compounds and their coupling to appropriate receptor
proteins, does not automatically provide a deeper under-
standing of the foods and the perception [17,18]. Sensory
studies without the proper links between the behaviour
of molecular scales, length scales that define food struc-
tures and macroscopic scales, remain empirical and phe-
nomenological. So what about ‘gastrophysics’? It starts
indeed often in the kitchen where many questions pose
themselves. It ends in laboratories, at desks and compu-
ters, where some of them are solved, and many others
are reposed, but in any of these cases, gastrophysics helps
to make dishes more exciting and taste better. Gastro-
physical results show their consequences immediately.

Competing interests
The author declares that he has no competing interests.

Received: 9 November 2012 Accepted: 9 November 2012

Published: 9 January 2013

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