McCormick & Company, Inc

The company was started by Willoughby McCormick in 1889 in a one-room basement and is now a close-to $4 billion global company. He began selling herbs and spices extract on the street of Baltimore.

He bought a spice company in 1896 and began importing and exporting spices, herbs, seasonings and other products.

In the aftermath of the crash of 1929, the company’s fortunes took a turn for the worse. Profits turned to losses. In 1932 at the height of the Depression, Willoughby died. The board of McCormick & Company elected Charlie McCormick as president.

In the 1990s, McCormick redefined itself from an herb and spice maker to a ‘flavoring company’ and addressed the needs of time-pressed working families by introducing seasoning  mixes, trying to capture the market for gourmet cooking and marketed more aggressively to industrial customers.

On June 8, 2006, McCormick & Company announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to purchase the assets of Epicurean International for $97 million in cash.

In 2008 the company acquired Lawry’s brand of seasonings and marinades.
McCormick & Company, Inc

History of bouillon

In the late 18th century, Count Rumford (1753-1814) an American born physicist during his service to the Elector of Bavaria, he invented and mass-produced a fully nutritious, solidified stock of bones, inexpensive meat by products and other ingredients. He fed the Duke’s army with it. His invention was the precursor of the bouillon cube.

When bullions are used in preparation, it is bullion of beef or chicken that late-medieval recipes call for most frequently.

A stock of beef bouillon sees most have been a staple of most kitchens of the time, and in mid-19th century cooks were instructed to keep soup stock on hand for the base ingredient of soup, of for use in cooking other foods.

Soup stock which wasn’t wanted for soup could be used to make gravy or given to the poor so that they could use it to make nourishing soup.

The word is French, a derivative of bouillir ‘to boil’ and in present-day English is commoner in America where stock cubes are known as bouillon cubes than in Britain.

He was an innovative chef, who introduced many new ideas, including compressing bouillon in a storable tablet in 1831.

From 1843, together with his students, Justus Liebig studied the composition of the meat from different animals. He then developed meat extract, but it was more expensive than bouillon cubes.

Industrially produced bouillon cubes were commercialized by Maggi in 1908 and by Oxo in 1910.  In 1890 The Maggi favor was invented to improve soups. Julius Maggi simplified the recipe for bouillon, and made it cheaper. He then produced a concentrated bouillon based on meat extracts, first in capsule form, then as a cube.
History of bouillon

History of Worcestershire sauce

Worcestershire sauce takes its name from the English county – or shire – of Worcestershire, the home of the condiment’s inventor, Sir Marcus Sandys.

Despite its name, Worcestershire sauce was originally an Indian recipe, brought back to Britain by Lord Marcus Sandys, ex-Governor of Bengal.

One day in 1835 he appeared in the prospering chemist’s emporium of John Lea and William Perrins in Broad Street, Worcester and asked them to make up a batch of sauce from his recipe.

The result tasted so horrible that it was abandoned in its vat in the basement, After a couple of years, someone had a second thought, took another sip, and shouted for joy.

With the assistance of the English grocers, Lea and Perrins, Sandys began selling his sauce in 1838. In 1842, Lea & Perrins sold 636 bottles of Worcestershire sauce. In 1845, factory was set up in Bank Street, Worcester. Ten years later the yearly sales were up to 30,000 bottles of Worcestershire sauce.

During the 1800s, the ingredients used in making Worcestershire sauce were a carefully kept secret. Forman in 1886 was one of the first to state that soy sauce is used as an ingredient in Worcestershire sauce.

Soy sauce remained the main secret ingredient until World War II, when supply problems caused it to be replaced by hydrolyzed vegetable protein.
History of Worcestershire sauce

History of vanilla

Vanilla is one of the most exotic, rare, expensive, intense and popular of all flavors and fragrances. The Totonac peoples were the first to use, and later grow, vanilla.

It was agreed nearly all ethnobotanists, anthropologists, and historians agree upon is that, although the vast majority of vanilla beans today are produced in the Island of Madagascar, the plant originally domesticated in southeastern Mexico.

Vanilla was used in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican for a variety of purposes: tribute, cacao flavoring, medicinal, etc., and by numerous indigenous groups such as the Maya, Aztec, and Totonac.

Vanilla beans were first picked from wild vines in the forest when they were ripe and already full of scent. Eventually the Totonac farmed vanilla vines and learned how to cure the beans.

Aztec aristocracy used it mostly as an after-dinner luxury. They never saw for themselves. This due to the plant hidden deep in the tropical forest far from Tenochtitlan, it was known only to the people who lived within its range.

The Aztecs added vanilla to a drink they called chocolatl, which include cacao beans, corn, honey and chili peppers.

Following Spanish colonization of Mexico and Central America, vanilla began a more international journey. Impressed by the taste and flavor of the drink offered by Aztec Indians, Hornando Corte introduces it to Spain. It was a cocoa drink mixed with vanilla.

An early record of vanilla’s various uses as medicine, perfume, and flavor is presented in the Florentine Codex, a series of books written and illustrated under the supervisor of the Spanish Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagun between 1540 and 1585. In the books it was mentioned that Aztecs used vanilla in cocoa, sweetened with honey and sold in their markets.

The Spanish named the bean vainilla, which comes from a Spanish word from the ‘sheath’ since the cured pod looks like a miniature sword sheath or cover.

England’s Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558 to 1603, was said to eat and drink only food to which vanilla extract had been added, after he apothecary suggested that the spice could be used for purposes other than flavoring chocolate.

Beginning in the mid- to late eighteenth century, the Totonac of the Papantla region of the state of Veracruz were the first and only vanilla exporters in the world for nearly 100 years.

The Mexican monopoly on vanilla fell apart with the discovery of method for hand pollination of vanilla in Belgium in 1836.

Though it was documented during 16th century, the commercial cultivation started only in the early 19th century.

More than half of the world’s vanilla beans end up in the United States. Half of those are used in the dairy industry, mainly in the form of vanilla extract, or essence.
History of vanilla

History of Maggi brand of Nestlé

Maggi is owned by Nestlé: seasonings are their main products. Maggi really grew on its dehydrated soups-an instant food at the start of the industrial revolution.

The original owner was Julius Michael Johannes Maggi in Switzerland.

In 1883, Julius Maggi produced appliances for roasting and grinding vegetables, to make flour form peas, beans, lentils, etc. enabling women to make a quick nourishing soup.

His objective was to provide nutritious and flavorful meals for working class women who lacked the time ad money to prepare proper home cooked meals.

Eventually in Maggi put his instant product vegetable powders on the market, under his friend Doctor Schuler’s patronage. Julius Maggi started produced first instant soup in his Kemptthal factory in 1886, followed by various kinds of soups in cubes or bags and even beef cubes in 1908.

The Maggi soups and seasoning business was acquired in 1947 by Nestlé by merging with the Alimentana S.A becoming Nestle Alimentana Company.

Finding its core customer aging during the 1980s and 1990s, Maggi reached out to the younger generation with meal-maker products, ready to eat foods, and frozen snacks as well as ethnic and children’s product lines.
History of Maggi brand of Nestlé

Ancient history of cinnamon

Cinnamon is one of the oldest spices known used by humankind. At one point in ancient history, cinnamon was so highly treasured that it was even considered more precious than gold.

The term cinnamomum is derived from the Greek root kinnamon or kinnamomom, meaning sweet wood. Cinnamon was one of the first spices to reach the Mediterranean; the ancient Egyptian used it in embalming, and it’s mentioned repeatedly in the Old Testament.

It was also used as beverage flavoring and medicinal herbs. Asian and Near Eastern people have long used cinnamon to flavor meat. Nero, an emperor of Rome in the first century, burned a year’s supply of cinnamon on his wife’s funeral pyre as an extravagant gesture meant to signify the depth of his loss.

Greeks and Romans did not really introduce it into their cooking until the final period of the Roman Empire, around the third and fourth century.

Cinnamon brought from China was well known to Arab perfume makers by the 9th century.

Cinnamon was prized in medieval Europe as a preservative and also as a staple ingredient in cooking. Meals including both meat and fruit were prepared in a single pot and cinnamon along with ginger helped flavors blend together.
Ancient history of cinnamon

History of artificial flavor

It was not until the latter half of the 19th century that chemist began to realize the flavoring opportunities of synthetic aromatic compounds. They started to synthesize products that could be used as artificial food additive for the enhancement of color, odor and flavor.

In 1858, vanillin was first crystallized from an alcoholic extract of vanilla beans by Nicolas Theodore Gobley.

In the early part of the 20th century, German’s powerful chemical industry gave it an advantage in flavor production.

German scientist unexpectedly discovered one of the first artificial flavors, methyl anthranilate while mixing chemical in laboratory. Methyl anthranilate later became the chief flavor additive in grape Kool-Aid.

In 1860, the first known book on artificial flavor formulations was published anonymously in Philadelphia. 

This was followed in 1916 by a manual for the essence industry by Walter, in which a large number of formulations for artificial flavoring were published.

Artificial flavors were especially popular during the 1960s and 1970s. For the past 20 years food companies have tried hard to use only ‘natural’ flavors in their products.
History of artificial flavor

History of Food Flavor

Flavorings are a major category of ingredients intentionally added to food. It is a sensation evoked with a range of technical terms in Greek and Latin.

Their history began when people discovered that components characteristics of the aroma of natural products could be enriched by simple methods.

The known utilization of spices and herbs extends over some 5000 years, starting with the ancient Egyptian. One of spices and herbs functions according to the historical period was the enhancing of food flavour.

The flavour industry has developed only after the past 160 years from small beginnings in companies specializing in the processing and marketing of natural botanicals such as the herbs and spices, vanilla beans, vegetables drugs and the distillation of essential oils and aromatic essences, the isolation of aromatic chemicals from these products and drug extraction.

Systematic development began in the 13th century, when pharmacies started to prepare so-called remedy oils and later recorded the properties and physiological effects of these oils in pharmacopeias.

Many essential oils currently used by perfumes and flavorists were originally prepared by distillation in pharmacies in the 16th and 17th centuries.

It was not until the latter half of the 19th century that chemicals began to realize the flavouring possibilities of synthetic aromatic chemicals.

In 1858, vanilla was first crystallized from an alcoholic extract of vanilla beans by Gobley.

Methyl salicylates followed in 1859 as ‘artificial wintergreen oil’ and benzaldehyde in 1870 as ‘artificial butter almond oil’ were synthesized by chemical industry for fruity odor.

It was 1872 before Charles established its empirical formula and two years later before Tieman and Haarman reported its structure and later Reimer confirmed it by synthesizing vanillin from guaianol.

Tieman and Haarman later founded a company, Haarman and Reimer and started the first industrial production of vanillin.

At about the same time organic chemists were preparing a wide range of highly odorous aromatic chemicals which were later to be of great value to the flavour industry.

The flavor industry emerged in the mid nineteenth century processed foods began to be manufactured on large scale.

In the early part of the twentieth century, Germany’s powerful chemical industry assumed the technological lead in flavour production.

A solution of esters for use as artificial fruit essences were exhibited in a trade fair in London and shortly after were in use in the United States.

In 1869, the first book of artificial flavouring formulations was published anonymously in Philadelphia.

In 1916, Walters manual for the essence industry was released. Its named ‘Manual for the Essence Industry.’ The intermediate period between the late 1950s and the early 1960s, produce major breakthrough in raspberry and strawberry flavors.

Today the industry is dominated by several very large multinational flavour and fragrance companies mainly prime in natural products and/or synthetic chemicals which are used in the compounding of an almost limitless range of flavorings and fragrance products.
History of Food Flavor

Food Flavor Before 19th Century

In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail to find seasoning. Today the influence of flavor in the world market place is no loess decisive. The rise and fall of corporate empires – of soft drinks companies, snack food companies and fast food chains - is frequently determined by how their products taste.

During the early days of history, people used mainly herbs and spices (whole or ground) to impart flavor to , or modify the flavor of, foods. It is to make food more appetizing, first by using spices and herbs and then by the extraction of fruits and aromatic plants during Middle Ages or distillation of essential oils.

The latter were predominantly used by pharmacists, and it was not until the 19th century that some people found out that essential oils can be used to impart flavor to foods.

It is believed that people began the practice of adding flavor to foods by marinating or soaking them in seasoned and salted liquid between the mid-1600s and the mid–1700s.

In the second half of the 19th century, chemists began to realize the flavoring potential of some synthetic chemicals e.g. vanillin.

Wohler and Liebig synthesized benzaldehyde in 1830 and this substance was identified in 1932 by Robiquet an Boutron-Charlard to be responsible for the odor of bitter almonds.

Thus was born the flavor industry around the middles of the 19th century.
Food Flavor Before 19th Century

History of Flavor Industry

History of Flavour Industry
Human are decisively influenced by their sense of taste and odour and human history is, therefore, closely tied to the development and usage of flavours.

Whereas in prehistoric times, only herbs and species could be employed for flavouring purposes, today a broad spectrum of flavourings is available, not only for use in the individual household, but especially for the production of food on an industrial scale.

The application of all products from the flavour and fragrance industry is solely aimed at enhancing the human striving for increased pleasure and sensual enjoyment.

Hedonistic aspects, therefore, form the basis of our industry.

The roots of this industry date back to early Egyptian history, as this extraordinarily advanced civilization was already thoroughly aware of and acquainted with perfumery and the embalming characteristics of certain species and resins.

Simple methods for the distillation and extraction of essential oils and resins already known in pre Christian times and subsequently elaborated by the Arabs.

Balsamic oils produced by these methods were later on primarily used for pharmaceutical purposes; it was not before the times of the courtly baroque period that fragrance was an aspect of growing importance.

In the medieval age, mostly monks were the pioneers in the art of capturing natural essences and transforming them into substances capable of flavouring food.

The onset of the industrial production of essential oils can be dated back to the first half of the 19th century.

After the importance of single chemicals was recognized in the middle of the century, efforts were started to isolate such compounds from corresponding natural resources for the first time.

This was soon followed by the synthesis of aroma chemicals.

Generally, the dynamics of the flavour and fragrance industry mirror the trend of many industrial sectors: the most important representatives of a large number of nationally oriented companies have through mergers, acquisitions, and market expansion developed into globally operating multinational enterprises.
History of Flavor Industry

History of Flavors and Colors in Softdrinks

History of Flavors and Colors in Softdrinks
Original carbonates were artificial imitations of naturally occurring mineral waters. Manufactures blended mineral salts in the same proportions as found in the natural spring waters and added carbonated water. A large range of such waters was available during the early 1800s. Early attempts at producing flavored products were limited by a lack of stable flavoring and spoilage problems.

The flavoring materials used consisted mainly of herbal/botanical extracts, for example, ginger, nettle, nutmeg, horehound, lemon oil, vanilla etc., but the technology for manufacture of soluble stable flavoring extracts develop rapidly during the middle of the century with the establishment around this time of many specialty flavor companies.

An early recipe for lemonade consisted of citric acid essential oil of lemon and sugar syrup, the mixture being topped up with water and impregnated with carbon dioxide – instantly recognizable as the forerunner of today’s lemonade.

By the second half of the century, carbonate manufacturers could buy a very comprehensive range of flavors to use in their products and the science of flavor chemistry as well under way. As demonstrated by the development of artificial vanilla by Tiemann and Wallach in 1872. This reduced the cost of vanilla flavor by factor of more than x30.

Many of the popular drinks of today were on sale before 1900. The quantity of CO2 added to a drink has a pronounced effect upon its clear character and flavor impact. The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as temperature increases but increases with increasing pressure, that is, a given level of carbonation will generate a higher pressure as the temperature increases. Ice cold water (0 degree C) will dissolve 1.7 volumes (3.4 g/l) of CO2 at atmospheric pressure.

At CO2 levels and at temperatures above this, increased pressure must be applied to retain the CO2 in solution. In some of his early highly carbonated waters Nicholas Paul used carbonations of up to eight volumes of CO2 (16 g/l): however, the usual carbonation levels now range from about two volumes for a slightly sparkling fruit drinks to around five volumes for a mixer drink such as tonic water.

In the early 1800s, colors were restricted to mainly variants of brown and red that is, those which could be produced from caramel or cochineal. This remained the case until the introduction of synthetic aniline dyes around 1880. In 1885 the manufacturing of some colors from vegetable extracts but that there was a trend for these to be replaced by the new aniline-based dyes, even though these are considered objectionably by many. It also strongly warned manufacturers not to use colors such as arsenic sulphate, lead chromate, mercury sulphate and copper arsenite, which it claimed were sometimes used to color confectionary.
History of Flavors and Colors in Softdrinks

History of Asparagus

History of Asparagus
Asparagus name is derived from Greek word asparagos. It’s native to the East Mediterranean area, cultivated form antiquity and now grown in much of the world. Asparagus cultivation began 2000 years ago in eastern Mediterranean region. Greeks and Romans ate it fresh when in season and dried the vegetable for use in winter.

Having appeared in England as early as the year 1000, it was known as sperage and sperach. Asparagus has been used as a vegetable and medicine, owing to its delicate flavor and diuretic properties.

The Emperor Augustus coined the phrase ‘velocius quam asparagi conquantur’, meaning to do something faster than you can cook asparagus. Julius Caesar first ate it in Lombardy and wanted it served with melted butter. And in the time of King Louis XIV asparagus was dubbed ‘The King of Vegetables’.

In the 16th century, asparagus gained popularity in France and England. From there, the early colonists brought it to America and often called the “Food of Kings”. King Louis XVI of France, who did indeed dress in silken splendor when he dined, was so in love with asparagus that his gardeners were instructed to grow it in hothouses for his year round pleasure.
History of Asparagus