Plant-based 2.0: Harnessing culinary creativity in alt-cheese applications at MANE’s UK site

02 Apr 2024 --- At its UK-based R&D center in Derby, French flavor player MANE remains focused on plant-based applications and beyond utilizing flavor innovation from their global headquarters in France. Food Ingredients First recently visited the site and had an exclusive tour and discussions with Louise Wisdom, marketing manager for Flavours UK & Snacks EMEA, Andrew Belstead, R&D technical manager and development chef Chris Randle-Bissell.

Nestled in Derby’s Pride Park, the company’s facility is equipped with four application laboratories and an innovation kitchen where much of its flavor expertise comes to life.

Food technologists and chefs like Randle-Bissell, who has been with the company for 16 years, work to design new flavors in line with industry and market needs. 

“Within our labs, we explore and create ingredients for beverage applications, including carbonated soft drinks, alcohol, teas and coffees and then sweet foods, which includes bakery, dairy, ice creams and confectionery and protein, under which come protein powders, one area that is growing significantly are plant-based protein powders,” Belstead tells us. 

“We also have our savory lab, which focuses on eating occasions, snacks, instant ready meals, etc. So that’s our seasoning side of the business, which incorporates natural flavoring and  taste solutions that MANE is historically known for.”

Andrew Belstead, R&D technical manager at MANE.Application expertise in plant-based
Observing huge growth in the market for plant-based dairy, one of MANE’s key areas of development is to provide new flavors for vegan cheese applications, which, according to Belstead, the company has spent a lot of resources and time developing and perfecting. 

To meet consumer expectations and respond to the demand for cheese alternatives, the team at MANE has developed an extensive range of flavors including cheese, vegetable and herb profiles, all of which leverage its Sense Capture expertise in mouthfeel and umami taste delivery.

“We call it plant-based 2.0, meaning we have an entirely new range of flavor and taste solutions for plant-based dairy, specifically cheese,” Belstead says.

The company has a whole toolbox for masking solutions, he underscores. “It’s not about throwing flavor at it until it becomes a new concept or you can’t taste the plant protein anymore. You’re actually masking off-notes and counteracting those astringent, bitter notes using our technology.”

“When we engage with food producers, this expertise on flavor masking, specifically in plant-based food applications, is a point of difference.”

“We’ve done quite a lot of work in terms of understanding the raw materials and ingredients going into the bases that our customers are using in terms of vegan cheese applications,” explains Wisdom. 

“We’ve also developed our own recipes and explored how those different materials and our flavors and ingredients actually interact and work with those different bases.”

Cheese type flavors 
MANE has developed its own portfolio of flavors for plant-based cheese. The company launched an initial range of cheese flavors around two years ago as part of its flavor development but innovation is ongoing.  

Wisdom says: “They are directions of different types of cheeses that go into vegan cheese. We also had more spreadable, creamier types of cheese flavors, so the range ticked quite a few boxes.”

However, MANE’s R&D teams wanted a better and deeper understanding of how its flavors interact with the different plant bases and how different processes can affect flavor. MANE presented a vegan cheddar-style block cheese with a crumbly texture and a spreadable soft cheese to sample.

“Our R&D team based at our head office in France has been working to understand more about the fermentation process, to assess the impact on the base and then how our flavors perform in a fermented base and what it means in terms of taste and what the flavor is bringing to the formulation.”

Scoring on nutrition and meltability 
One of the other things that MANE technologists were keen to understand was the “meltability” and nutritional improvement of the cheese.

“A lot of the vegan cheese that we see on the market are not great when it comes to meltability and contain little or no protein,” Wisdom underscores. “We wanted to better understand how we could improve both the protein content and melting properties of vegan cheese in the same base.”

Regarding the nutritional improvement and the melting and slicing properties of plant-based cheese, MANE worked with an agri-food college, Oniris Nantes, in France, looking at various plant proteins for their nutritional and functional properties. 

Wisdom states: “Plant-based cheese with fava bean delivered good meltability and also offered good taste and texture.”

As a result of this discovery, MANE recently launched a range of cheese-style flavors for plant-based cheese in hot recipes and sauces. 

Louise Wisdom, marketing manager for Flavours UK & Snacks EMEA.“These have been designed specifically for end-use,” adds Wisdom. A few examples are blue cheese, Camembert and Raclette cheese.  

Plant-based cheese tasting
Some of the innovations that MANE had for sampling were a vegan cheddar-style block cheese with a crumbly texture and a spreadable soft cheese similar to that of a Philadelphia-type cheese.

According to Randle-Bissell, “exactly the same flavor goes into the two products.”

He believes the company’s flavors represent how far they’ve come in the realm of plant-based dairy alternatives. 

“You can have the same flavor or ingredient in two different types of applications, and they’re completely different versions, with two different matrices,” Randle-Bissell summarizes. 

By Elizabeth Green, reporting from MANE’s R&D center, Derby, UK