ABSTRACT
Introduction e sweet taste of neohesperidin dihydrochalcone (neohesperidine DC) was discovered by Horowitz and Gentili in 1963 while studying the relationships between structure and bitter taste in citrus phenolic glycosides. To their surprise, the product resulting of the hydrogenation of the bitter flavanone neohesperidin yielded an intensely sweet substance: neohesperidine DC (Horowitz 1964; Horowitz and Gentili 1961, 1963a, 1963b, 1969). Since then, a very large number of variants of the original sweetener have been synthesized. Some of these represent only small variations on the theme while others are more radical departures. All were made to gain a better understanding of taste-structure relations, to improve taste quality or raise solubility. From a practical standpoint, it appears that even the best of the new derivatives was not significantly better than the original compound. For this reason we shall focus on neohesperidine DC, which is the only sweet dihydrochalcone currently in use.
