food browning

There are many types of food browning, some of them desirable and some undesirable.

Desirable food browning:

• non-enzymatic browning
  • Maillard reactions — a reaction between an amino acid and a sugar
    • [molecule] 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline
    • [molecule] 6-acetyl-2,3,4,5-tetrahydropyridine
    • [molecules] melanoidin
  • caramelization — pyrolysis of a sugar
  • Strecker degradation
  • associated molecules
    • melanoidins
    • hydroxymethyl-furfural
    • Maillard reaction intermediates (MRIs)
    • Amadori/Heyns rearrangement products (ARPs)
• enzymatic browning — Beneficial enzymatic browning happens in coffee, cocoa beans, tea, and dried fruit (such as figs and raisins).
• examples of foods that depend heavily on browning reactions — caramel, dulce de leche, traditional balsamic vinegar, liquid malt extract,
  • almost all reduced [2] sauces undergo browning while the reduction process happens — brown sauce, Béchamel,
  • When traditional balsamic vinegar begins being made, the grape must is put together and then cooked for a bit. The result is called vincotto, mosto cotto, or sapa/saba, and it's this cooking that gives traditional balsamic vinegar its browning flavors.
    • (The above sauces are always unfermented, and therefore non-alcoholic. There's a similar product that happens when cooked must is fermented, and it goes by names such as vino cotto.)

Undesirable browning — that cause undesirable flavor changes:

• enzymatic browning — Non-beneficial enzymatic browning happens in apples, potatoes, bananas, avocados, and crustaceans such as shrimp. It also happens during the process of winemaking [2].

Browning reactions associated with health problems:

• advanced glycation end-product

Things to maybe explore later:

• Category:Flavors
• Category:Amino sugars