Why do artificial flavors like Apple, Cherry, Banana, etc taste exactly like real Apples, Cherries, Bananas, etc but Grape flavored anything just tastes like the color Purple instead of real Grapes.
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They taste like Concord grapes, the purple-colored grapes that are commonly used to make grape jam and grape juice.
Green and red grapes that you typically find in a supermarket are juicier and sweeter, so they’re better for eating as-is, but they taste very different than Concord grapes.
Also, I’d argue that artificial fruit flavors don’t taste “exactly” like real fruits, but they are reminiscent. Artificial grape is certainly no worse in that regard.
Poor Americans with their grape flavour, you need to have a word with your government and make blackcurrants legal to grow.
Seriously, you don’t know what you’re missing 🙂
What does the color purple taste like?
Artificial cherry doesn’t taste anthing like real cherries. Maraschino cherries do not taste like real cherries.
Ok but hold up. Banana flavoured anything does not taste like banana. It’s tastes like a variety of banana that has been extinct for half a century. Ps, bananas do not have diversity like any other fruit. There is just the one type of banana. All over the world. Any naner siblings are called something else entirely.
The products we use to mimic the flavors of nature are not necessarily from the plants themselves; even if we have done a good job creating a good product for ‘apple flavor’ it doesn’t really mean anything in terms of development of a good grape flavor product eg. You can think of what we know as that artificial grape flavor as simply the best (business decision) known way to mimic grape flavor. You’re welcome to try to make a better one, I’m sure there are people out there right now in fact whose job it is to address this very issue!
Artificial flavors tend to be esters of alcohols and acids. For most fruit only a particular ester dominates. Hence just using this ester mimics the taste.
Basically pick a alcohol and a carboxylic acid(read as: alcohol acid)
eg. 2 carbon atom alcohol (ethyl) and 2 carbon atom acid (ant acid) give you ethyl formate, which are the flavors: strawberry also: lemon, rum
switch out the 2s for any number and look up the flavor for fun!
Remember: common alcohol is 2nd in the list, which is why when distilling you only need to be careful with methyl(1 carbon) alcohol.
long list: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ester#List_of_ester_odorants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ester#List_of_ester_odorants)
The issue now becomes that fruits are much more complex hence you might notice a certain difference in taste. That’s where the difference comes from.
Full disclosure: there is also cyclic stuff, but screw that for now. [Hexagonal stuff]
Weird you had this 100% wrong.
The ‘grape’ flavor is the closest to the actual fruit, one variety of grape but still.
Apple flavors are just sour stuff, cherry I can understand if you think they are mushy bright red things that come in sugar water. What artificial flavor you think tastes exactly like banana is a mystery to me.
I think your issue comes from the fact that you eat different kinds of grapes than the one artificial flavors are based on.
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