Status: Fake flavors
The latest scandal in the world of French gourmet cuisine: the use of artificial bottled flavors (aka arômes artificiels) to substitute for high-end ingredients such as truffles, wild mushroom, caviar, prawn, crab, shallot, scallop, saffron, and even wine.
The London Times reports:
in the kitchen, the chefs are spraying an omelette with a truffle-flavoured chemical and injecting fake wild-mushroom drops into a duck filet. Science fiction? No, this is the reality in many French restaurants, which are “cheating” their customers with a growing range of artificial products, according to gastronomic purists. They say that the use of flavourings to enhance the taste of otherwise ordinary dishes is misleading because they are rarely mentioned on the menu. For years, secrecy surrounded the products, which come in liquid and powdered form. They were an unspoken ingredient of contemporary Gallic gastronomy. But their existence has been brought into the open by two leading chefs, Joel Robuchon and Alain Passard, who have both spoken out against what they describe as a “scandal”. “It is shameful,” said M Passard
Many of these aromes can be purchased at
chefsimon.com. Their pictures of the flavorings, such as the artificial wine powder, are kind of interesting. But their product page also bears the warning: USONS SANS ABUSER! (Let us use without abusing!)
Comments
I mean, if people are going to very high end restaurants & think they're getting product A, but actually get product B with essence of A...it's not fair to charge the A price.
Sort of like ordering beef & potatoes & getting a bigmac & fries.
But what about the texture? I like my BLT thick and juicy; I don't think a spray would ever do it for me.
The only problem I would have with these is if cooks were passing them off as the real thing, and charging you prices for real truffles or whatever. To me, that would be fraud.
Sometimes they're used, not for reasons of cost, but because they're easier to store and handle, they're more concentrated, and for various other technical reasons.
For example, vanillin (an artificial vanilla flavor) is usually used in baked goods because most of the flavor of real vanilla evaporates during the baking process. Artificial vanilla, and other flavors, are also used in some products because they can be produced in a colorless form. Real vanilla will darken white cakes or frostings, but certain artificial flavorings keep them snow-white.