ABSTRACT
Citrus flavours are popular in beverages as well as in other sweet products such as confectionery, cookies and desserts. Lately, they have also become popular in food, particularly in sauces and dressings. Their level of use varies widely, from about 200 ppm in beverages to more than ten times higher in chewing gum. This is related mainly to flavour release because of the particular food system. The main flavour used in soft drinks are cola, lemon-lime and orange, all which are based on citrus oils, and constitute about 80 per cent of all soft drinks in the world. The colas are the main segment in the US, but in international markets orange and other flavours are far more important. One third of the oils is consumed in the US, and the usage is about equally divided over the main flavours: cola, lemon-lime and orange. Soft drinks flavours utilise citrus oils in various ways for technological reasons, mainly based on solubility in water. Cloudy beverages use citrus oils as such because the terpenes provide part of the cloudy appearance. In clear drinks such as lemonades, we typically use extracts which remove most of the terpenes. Concentrated and terpeneless oils are used for the same reasons, as well as for flavour effect or stability. The performances of citrus oils in soft drinks is quite different from most other food applications, because low levels of oil in water at pH 3 or less are employed and this leads to many reactions which affect flavour quality. This types of changes are typical for soft drinks and, in general, are not found in other food or fragrance applications, or they occur at a much lower rate. This means that quality considerations for the soft drink category should be quite different, too. The next large user of citrus flavours is the confectionery industry. Here orange, lemon and lime are the most popular flavours in certain categories, and to a large extent, these flavours are, indeed, based on citrus oils. Twenty per cent of confectionery is citrus flavoured and comprises hardy candy or boiled sweet. There are many other applications besides soft drinks and confectionery, but these are all much smaller in usage, and there are no reliable statistics. Example are ice cream, cookies, desserts, powdered drinks, alcoholic beverages, food, etc. Citrus oils are extremely important for the flavouring of foods and beverages and their consumption is growing steadily at more than three per cent per year. On the other hand, the demands for performance can be expected to become more strict, particularly as far as stability and purity are concerned (Buchel, 1989).
