Essential oils for flavour

On Friday, I visited F D Copeland’s facilities in Woolwich, London to see the distillation, rectification and blending of all natural oils for confectionery applications.

Essential oils are like fine wines, their flavour is affected by climate change and world origin. This is the one of the challenges that F D Copeland faces – Manufacturers want the flavour of their product to be consistent, but when working with natural ingredients, the flavour will never be exactly the same twice.

In the September issue of Confectionery Production, I will go into more depth on how F D Copeland processes oils and the dosage required for different confectionery applications.

Do any of you work with essential oils? What are your thoughts?

“As a chocolate maker I add in some of my recipes essential oils. For example in a mint dark ganache you can add drops of oil on top of an infusion to keep the test longer and bring more freshness. As the mint infusion is volatile.”

Franck Duchene, chocolatier confiseur, Quebec, Canada

“I use Copelands oils in my products – they are excellent indeed ! They manufacture my winter nip blend, and I also use a far west mint from them which is heavenly. I visited site in 2006 – it is a fascinating place, especially the distillation operation. I highly recommend them and their products. Incidentally, a drop or two of patchouli oil into candy gives an interesting taste… “

Andy Baxendale, MD of Connie’s Kitchen manufacturing and sales. Also MD of ‘The Sweet Consultant’

“F D Copeland facilities have been updated since 2006. so it may be worth another visit! The trip was definitely interesting!

“What are the reasons why a confectioner would choose oils over juices for flavour?”

Amy Hollamby, Editor

“Juices aren’t strong enough to impart any flavour – they are only used for declaration purposes – for example if you want to include pictures of oranges, but the actual flavour is not from the named fruit, adding some orange juice allows the manufacturer to pictorially represent on packaging. It is just a way of getting round the legislation really!

“However, as the oils are much stronger than juices, they are suitable for flavouring purposes, and also for depiction.

“Would you be interested in visiting a small scale manufacturer and learning how to chocolate coat, and make fudges, toffees, chews and high boiled candy?”

Andy Baxendale, MD of Connie’s Kitchen manufacturing and sales. Also MD of ‘The Sweet Consultant’