Occupational Outlook Quarterly • Winter 2004-05

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When’s the last time you had ethyl butyrate? It 

could’ve been as recently as breakfast, if you 

drank orange juice. Ethyl butyrate is one of 

about 30 chemicals that Carol Militescu might use to 

enhance the taste of your favorite morning beverage.

Carol is a flavorist, or flavor chemist. Flavorists blend 

aroma chemicals, essential oils, botanical extracts, and 

essences to create natural and artificial flavorings for a 

variety of foods, beverages, and other products. Ethyl 

butyrate, for example, is a common aroma chemical; in 

conjunction with another aroma chemical, acetaldehyde, 

it’s what gives orange juice its succulent quality. “All 

food has flavor,” says Carol, “and we’re trying to recreate 

those flavors using materials available to us.” 

Laboratory-created flavors do what their naturally 

occurring counterparts can’t: provide cost-effective taste 

that withstands the processing, freezing, cooking, and 

other forms of preparation required by many of today’s 

products. Compared with flavors found in nature, manufactured flavors often last longer, taste sharper, and smell 

better; they can also be formulated not to trigger people’s 

food allergies.

Recreating flavors is complex work. Not only do 

people’s taste preferences vary, but there are numerous 

possibilities for combining chemicals to achieve a desired 

flavor. “It’s very subjective,” says Carol. “Even if you 

have two flavors that seem the same, one of them could 

have a 1-page formula and the other a 2-page formula. 

You might think the flavors are identical, but how you put 

the chemicals together makes them very different.”

Carol needs to know what’s in a naturally occurring 

flavor before she can decide how to recreate it in the lab. 

Flavorists rely on the work of researchers who have analyzed about 80 to 90 percent of the components in most 

flavors. Armed with this information, flavorists determine 

which components are important to an overall flavor profile. Then, flavorists attempt to duplicate the profile using 

mathematics, for calculating parts per million; chemistry, 

for choosing which substances to combine; and a lot of 

artistry—especially when developing “fantasy flavors,” 

such as punch or orchard blends.

But long before they build flavors by combining 

chemicals, flavorists must understand how chemicals 

react with each other and change in different conditions. 

A blueberry flavor that’s delectable in a beaker is worthless in a muffin mix, for example, if some of its chemical 

composition breaks down in the heat of an oven. “Flavor 

chemistry is only as good as your knowledge of the raw 

materials,” says Carol.

The best way to ensure that chemicals behave as 

expected, of course, is to test them. For Carol, this means 

taking a solution she’s created in the flavor-development 

laboratory over to the flavor-applications laboratory—the 

test kitchen—for a trial run. She works with the applications team to figure out how much flavor should be put in 

the product, then taste-tests the final result. A flavor that 

disappoints will be modified in the development lab.

Success in transferring a solution from the beaker 

to the end product is usually the norm for experienced 

flavorists like Carol. She’s a senior flavorist in a flavor 

house, a company that creates and manufactures flavors 

for foods, confections, and beverages; pharmaceuticals, 

such as chewable medications and liquid prescriptions; 

oral care products, such as toothpaste; cosmetics, such as 

lip balm; “nutraceuticals,” or nutritional products, such as 

vitamins and sports gels; and pet foods. 

Carol has also worked as a flavorist in a beverage 

company’s research and development lab. But most food 

and beverage manufacturers don’t employ flavorists; 

instead, companies buy the flavors they need from flavor 

Flavorist

Kathleen Green is managing editor of the OOQ, 

(202) 691-5717.

You’re a what?

by Kathleen Green
47

Winter 2004-05 • Occupational Outlook Quarterly

tonomy and begin taking on their own projects. Trainees 

take another oral exam after 2 years of apprenticing as a 

junior flavorist. Successful passage of the second exam 

entitles the flavorist to professional certification, and a 

certified flavorist receives the title of senior flavorist.

Beginning flavorists have much to learn, so they 

usually tally more than the standard 40 hours that senior 

flavorists log each week. “In the places I’ve worked,” 

says Carol, “most trainees never watch the clock.” 

For flavorists, as for workers in most occupations, 

the investment of time and effort is likely to pay off as 

they advance from training to certification. There are no 

reliable earnings data for flavor chemists, but industry 

sources suggest that median salaries are well above the 

$54,960 that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 

for chemists in 2003. 

Another payoff for flavorists is seeing a product on 

the market that they helped to develop. “It’s very rewarding,” says Carol. “I really enjoy what I’m doing.”

houses. Flavorists from these houses, located primarily on the east coast but with a few in the Midwest and 

California, often travel to make presentations to foodmanufacturing companies in an attempt to win contracts 

for supplying flavors. 

Consequently, communication skills and an ability 

to work under pressure are nearly as important as knowledge of math and organic chemistry in this small but 

competitive industry. In addition, Carol considers patience, creativity, meticulous recordkeeping skills, curiosity, and an ability to stay focused to be vital for flavorists. 

Collaboration with other members of the flavordevelopment lab is another necessity of the occupation. “Teamwork is essential,” says Carol. “A flavorist 

wouldn’t survive working alone.” When you’re creating 

a flavor, she says, you need others’ feedback because you 

can’t always decipher flavor subtleties on your own. 

Creating flavors requires being able to “think outside 

the box,” says Carol. This goes hand-in-hand with having 

enough confidence to try something different—even if 

you’re just starting out. “No matter how senior I am in 

the lab, I still learn things from the technicians,” she says. 

“I’ve always encouraged trainees to try.”

Because of the range of knowledge and skills needed 

to build flavors, training to become a flavorist requires 

a minimum commitment of 7 years. That’s in addition 

to any academic preparation. A bachelor’s degree in a 

chemistry discipline might not be required to enter the 

occupation, but most trainees have one. Carol’s degree is 

in chemical engineering.

Trainees spend their first 5 years in a flavor-development laboratory, learning the basics of the flavor industry. 

Working with at least two senior flavorists, trainees discover which chemicals are available for creating flavors 

and how those chemicals are used. Trainees hone their 

sensory skills as they gradually begin mixing chemicals 

for specific flavors. They also must learn the U.S. Food 

and Drug Administration’s regulations that apply to flavoring agents. 

At the end of the 5-year training period, trainees take 

an oral examination administered by the Society of Flavor Chemists’ membership committee; trainees who pass 

become apprenticing members, and their employers usually give them the title of junior flavorist. Junior flavorists 

are supervised for another 2 years, but they have more auPhotos courtesy of Carol Militescu

Carol Militescu taste-tests flavors when creating them.

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Winter 2004-05 • Occupational Outlook Quarterly