1.2 Transporte de fluidos
1.2.3 Flujo de fluidos a través de tuberías
How did a chemical become a flavoring material? How much of a role did chemical research play in the development of new synthetic flavoring materials? As noted, in the nineteenth century, the components of “artificial fruit essences” were esters,
169 Isakovics 1908: 10.
64
most often synthesized from fusel oil and related chemicals.170 Other types of materials
were also used in flavorings, including essential oils, botanical extracts, and tinctures, prepared from spices, roots, leaves, fruits, and other botanical materials. Although these were not, properly speaking, synthetic chemicals, their production depended on chemical techniques and technologies, including distillation, expression, and extraction using alcohol or other solvents. Further, buyers and users of essential oil utilized chemical methods to detect adulterations, verify claims about identity, and assess value.
Determining boiling point, measuring specific gravity, or adding reagents that reacted in certain ways with known adulterants supplemented organoleptic (ie, sensory) evaluations of essential oils. Books such as Ernest J. Parry’s Chemistry of Essential Oils and
Artificial Perfumes became essential texts, providing tables of physical and chemical constants for various commercially important substances, as well as instructing readers in techniques of analysis, including newer methods such as refractometry.171
Some new flavoring materials were introduced to the market due to analytic research conducted within the essential oil industry. Flavorings have always been closely linked to fragrances and perfumes, connected by raw materials, craft processes, and technologies, as well as shared cultural meanings. As the essential oil and perfume trades industrialized in the nineteenth century, they began producing aromatic materials on a
170 “Compound ether” is a synonym for esters, organic compounds comprising an oxygen
atom bonded to an alcohol radical and an acid radical. Compound ethers with a fatty acid radical were known to have a fruity smell. List some, say where they were sold.
171 Ernest J. Parry, Chemistry of Essential Oils and Artificial Perfumes, (Scott,
Greenwood & Co., London and D. Van Nostrand, New York, 1899). Parry’s Chemistry of Essential Oils was reprinted at least four times in the subsequent two decades, in expanded and revised editions that reflected ongoing research in the field.
65
large scale, at costs suitable for use in mass-market goods.172 They also began producing
new materials — perfume isolates (compounds isolated from “natural” essential oils) and synthetics that claimed to reproduce valuable constituents identified in essential oils, such as citral, piperonal (“artificial heliotrope”), and geraniol (“artificial rose”), from cheaper raw materials. This followed the pattern that Isakovics had described in his Columbia University lecture: analysis followed by synthesis.
These novel perfumery synthetics contributed to a transformation of the sensory qualities of perfumes, as well as to the transformation of cultural and social meanings which diffused with these molecules from the modern, perfumed body.173 Meanwhile,
many of these new synthetic fragrance molecules also found uses in flavorings, though their meanings and associations varied in these different contexts, and their common presence in perfumes and flavorings was likely unsuspected by consumers. 174
172 As Eugenie Briot notes, the shift from perfumery as an artisanal trade to one that
utilized industrial manufacturing processes did not result in decreasing prices for
perfumes, but saw a rise in prices even as their use became more widespread. She argues that this is a result of deliberate marketing strategies by nineteenth century perfumers, who aspired to associate their goods with luxury even as they became more widely accessible. See Eugenie Briot, “From Industry to Luxury: French Perfume in the
Nineteenth Century,” Business History Review (Summer 2011): 273-294. See pp 279-283 of that article for a survey of some of the technical innovations (including use of steam power, the vertical integration of flower farms with factories, and the adaptation of machines from other industries (such as pharmaceuticals, soap making, and distillation) for use in perfume material factories. See also: Geoffrey Jones, Beauty Imagined: A
History of the Global Beauty Industry, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010), especially chapter
one.
173 See Jones, 20-9; also, Maksym Klymentiev, “Creating Spices for the Mind: The
Origins of Modern Western Perfumery,” The Senses & Society 9.2 (2014): 212-31, and Luca Turin, The Secret of Scent, (New York: Ecco, 2006).
174 For instance, Houbigant’s Fougere Royal, an important masculine scent introduced in
66
Vanillin, one of the most commercially important flavoring synthetics, is an exception to the general pattern by which new materials became available to the flavoring industry. Although vanillin had been identified in vanilla beans in the 1850s, its correct empirical formula, molecular structure, and synthesis emerged not from further analysis of vanilla beans, but from basic research into the chemical structure of glucosides. In 1874, Ferdinand Tiemann and Wilhelm Haarmann were studying the composition of the glucoside coniferin in the laboratories of August Hofmann at the University of Berlin, when they obtained a substance that they later confirmed to be vanillin. Tiemann and Haarmann partnered with fellow chemist Karl Reimer to manufacture synthetic vanillin from coniferin. The Haarmann & Reimer factory in Holzminden is often celebrated as the birthplace of the synthetic flavor and fragrance industry.175
In the twentieth century, new materials emerged alongside the development of new synthetic processes. In 1904, Georges Darzens, a French chemist who headed the research laboratory of L.T. Piver, a Parisian perfumery company, described a method for
fougere, a new, modern family of fragrances. Coumarin, a compound originally identified in tonka beans, was first synthesized by Perkin from coal tar in 1868, was an important component of vanilla flavors as well as flavorings added to tobacco products. Methyl anthranilate — a compound most of us now will associate with the musky purple of artificial grape — was first isolated and identified as a key component of neroli (orange blossom) essential oil, and subsequently in other flower oils as well, by Schimmel, in Lepizig. Linalyl formate, which was sold as artificial oil of bergamot or petit grain, was used in formulas for synthetic peach, apricot, apple, and quince flavorings soon after its commercial introduction. Jones, 23. Patricia de Nicolai, “A Smelling Trip Into the Past: The Influence of Synthetic Materials on the History of Perfumery,” Chemistry and Biodiversity 5 (2008): 1137-1146.
175 The process by which vanillin became a viable synthetic alternative or adjunct to
vanilla beans, and a source of vanilla flavor, is quite a bit less direct than this summary implies. See Nadia Berenstein, “Making a Global Sensation,” 2016, especially pp. 405- 410.
67
synthesizing aldehydes and ketones which now bears his name.176 One of the first
commercial products produced via the Darzens reaction was ethyl
methylphenylglycidate, which, along with its homologue, ethyl phenylglycidate, are described as having a strawberry-like aroma. This compound was sold under the name “Aldehyde C-16” (although it was not an aldehyde, and did not contain 16 carbon atoms.)
Another important new addition to the series was so-called “peach aldehyde,” undecalactone, first synthesized by Russian chemists Shukov and Shestakov in 1908. This was produced and sold under a variety of trade names, including Persicol and Pescol, as well as “Peach Aldehyde” or Aldehyde C-14, although it, too, was not an aldehyde. One 1916 catalog from a New York essential oil and synthetic chemical dealer listed the substance under the name, Aldehyde C-14, noting “similar products are sold in the market as Persicol and Pescon,” before going on to say that their product was
“absolutely pure” and guaranteed to contain “no foreign bodies or matters.” The
catalogue recommended it for use in flavoring extracts, as well as in talcum powders and creams. The description concluded: “It gives new odors,” and praised its stability and lack of reaction with acids and alkalies.177
These synthetic ‘aldehydes’ marked a significant shift in the chemical market for flavoring materials. While the “compound ethers” used in flavorings in the nineteenth century bore no verified relationship to the fruit they were intended to suggest, many
176 Pierre Laszlo, “Georges Darzens (1867-1954): Inventor and Iconoclast,” Bulletin for
the History of Chemistry 15/16 (1994): 59-65.
177 George V. Gross & Co. “Essential Oils and Synthetic Chemicals,” [catalog] (New
68
chemists understood that the reaction process that produced these esters could occur as a result of fruit ripening.178 But with these new synthetic aldehydes, lactones, and ketones,
as one flavor chemist remarked later in 1949, “here then was a really new development, for now the synthetic chemist had developed compounds with flavors similar to those of natural origin, but of vastly greater flavoring power.”179
Although companies such as Synfleur and Van Dyk manufactured these materials domestically before the war, most of the new synthetic aromatics were manufactured on a very small scale, in laboratory glassware.180 The First World War, and its disruption of
trade networks with Europe, spurred the growth and diversification of an American synthetic chemicals industry, including the production of pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, and petrochemicals.181 It also drove the domestic manufacture of a wider range of synthetic
flavor and fragrance chemicals, including materials which had previously been imported from Europe.
Sometimes, the production of an important new flavoring material could be a matter of happenstance, emerging not from directed chemical analysis or exact chemical knowledge but from a close attention to, and capitalization upon, the sensory qualities of chemical materials. A sterling example of this can be found in the story of Fries’ peach
178 See, for instance, Clemens Kleber, “The Occurrence of Amyl Acetate in Bananas,”
American Perfumer & Essential Oil Review 7.10 (December 1912): 235.
179 David E. Lakritz, “Development of Flavors,” Drug and Cosmetic Industry 65
(December 1949): 723. Lakritz was the chief chemist at Florasynth, a synthetic flavor and fragrance manufacturer.
180 Paul Z. Bedoukian, “The Perfumery Aromatics Industry in the United States,”
American Perfumer & Aromatics 70 (November 1957): 31.
181 Kathryn Steen, The American Synthetic Organic Chemicals Industry: War and
69
flavor, as recounted by James Broderick, a flavorist whose career began in the late 1930s.182 Fries’ peach had been the “target for peach” when he entered the industry.
During the war, Fries’ had a government contract to process castor oil. During processing, “something went wrong and a powerful odor of peach developed. They repeated the processing exactly and again developed a peach aroma.”183 At the time, they
were unaware that the peachy component in the reaction mixture was a gamma undecalactone; even without analytic knowledge of the identity of the compound in question, they used this substance as the basis of their peach flavor, which gave them an unmatchable edge over competitors until the lactone in question became commercially available. Another compound used in Fries’ admirable peach flavor was also derived via a similarly inexact process. “For reasons we never ascertained,” Broderick writes, using his customary first-person plural, “a strong cheese had been soaked in alcohol and placed in the basement near the furnace.” Months later, the cheese gave off an estery-fruity peach scent. Although neither of these compounds would pass contemporary quality control procedures, their use showed an open-mindedness to the sensory potentials of materials, the chemical improvisations necessary to achieve new effects. “The modern flavorist might — the flavor researcher most certainly would — think this strange,” Broderick agrees. “But in the days when there were no lactones, no hexenols, no
pyrazines, no raspberry ketone, etc., the flavorist had to resort to various modifications to
182 James J. Broderick, “Reflections of a Retired Flavorist Before He Forgets: Peach,”
Perfumer & Flavorist 17.1 (Jan/Feb 1992): 35.
70
achieve desired nuance.”184 The virtues of a well-made flavor, he concludes, derive from
the skillful use of synthetics.