What Is Recipe Development?
Have you ever wondered how food and drinks companies come up with their new recipes
and product ideas?
Or how supermarkets decide what new items to add to their shelves?
The answer to this question lies in Recipe Development and the recipe developer is the person tasked with the job.
What does a recipe developer do?
Every great chef will tell you one thing - it takes trial and error to create a new dish of any kind. There are times when you get something perfect the first time but, in most cases, it can take a number of attempts, adjustments and variations to find the perfect recipe. The job of the recipe developer is to not only conduct those tests but also to understand the subtle changes that are made and recognise which option is best.
There are lots of little changes needed to make to a new drink, dessert, meal or food item of any kind to get it just right. Add a little more of this, cook a little longer, take out this ingredient. It is the job of the chef but also a little scientific, figuring out what works and what needs to be changed.
Changing existing recipes
Sometimes the job is about taking an existing recipe and making it your own. Or finding a new adaptation for a recipe to suit current needs or requirements. Food and drink trends can be a big influence on this - trends such as Keto or Paleo, for example, can mean a recipe needs to be rethought with this viewpoint.
It may also mean removing an ingredient that causes problems for people and finding an alternative. Gluten-free dishes and food options are huge at the moment both as people recognise this intolerance in themselves or want to adopt this dietary style. Vegetarian and vegan options for dishes are also popular options.
Other versions of recipe development
Sometimes the role is about more than just creating a new drink or dessert or adopting a recipe for gluten-free standards. Sometimes it is looking at creating completely new products with existing ingredients or finding entirely new ways to offer them.
Fruit juice is an example - people are constantly looking for new fruits to have with their breakfast and this means finding fruits that can successfully be made into a juice product - which usually involves more than just squeezing out the juice.
You may also find yourself in the position of working with an entirely new ingredient and finding ways to create dishes with it. This may often mean more testing because there is little information on how the ingredient will behave with other ingredients. An example is Acai berry - the juice of this rare berry has unsaturated oils that don't work well with water or other juices. So, the job of the recipe developer is to figure out what to mix it with to use the berry in different dishes.
Other aspects of the role can be creating the recipes in written form as blog posts, recipe books or menus for businesses to use. This involves understanding the right information to provide someone to allow them to either recreate the recipe themselves or to understand what is in the dish.
The job of the recipe developer is an interesting and varied one. While it might sound like a lot of playing around with food and sampling, there is a lot of methodologies involved to get the right results - and then be able to recreate them again. Some work for a specific company, working with their products or lines while others are freelance, working with different types of companies and different ingredients but all find new challenges in their daily work.
If you would like to contact us regarding any of our services or just have a query you want answering, then please feel free to get in touch, we will be happy to help.
You can also Request a Call Back or request a sample of one of our products before buying. If you have an idea for a new product, we would love to hear it so please let us know and we can discuss how to go forward with your innovative fruity idea!
