Banana flavouring. You know it well. If you close your eyes for a moment and think back to those countless pieces of confectionary or flavoured puddings, that recognisably artificial banana-like note will probably come back to you. Monotone, saccharine, and quite removed from the real, fresh bananas you eat as a snack or with lunch.

Artificial flavours like these are often criticised as unnatural. However, some artificial flavourings are significantly closer to ‘natural’ than it might appear. The reason they sometimes fail to taste like their fresh counterparts can be more complex than simple chemistry– which is why flavour wizards and foodmakers are employing clever new techniques to trick our senses.

So, why doesn’t banana flavour taste like banana? The answer is complicated – and it begins with a legend. There’s a story that the archetypal banana flavouring has very authentic origins; that artificial banana flavourings were developed from an old variety of banana called the Gros Michel. The Gros Michel, or “Big Mike” as it was affectionately known, was once prevalent in Western supermarkets.

That was until a ruthless fungus called Fusarium oxysporum, or “Panama disease”, all but wiped out the Gros Michel during the 20th Century. To keep consumers’ love of bananas satiated, producers cultivated a banana strain known as the Cavendish, which was resistant to Panama disease but which had a somewhat different flavour. The story goes that more pungent Gros Michel-derived flavourings persisted, which accounts for the dichotomy between banana flavourings and the commonly eaten fruit.

Banana myth?

However, if you dig in to this tale a little it soon becomes clear that there is little or no verifiable source that artificial banana is based on Gros Michel. “It sounds very, very unlikely to me,” says synthetic organic chemist Derek Lowe. “The thing is, banana can be mimicked most of the way with a simple compound called isoamyl acetate. Many chemists know it as ‘banana ester’ and anyone who smells it immediately goes, ‘banana!’ ”

Isoamyl acetate, which is indeed found in bananas, is a very simple compound that is both cheap to produce and highly versatile. Diluted, it smells more like pears than bananas and logical combinations of this ester have proved popular. Pear drops, for example, a well-known classic British sweet, contain both isoamyl acetate (banana flavour) and ethyl acetate (pear flavour).