New journal to launch soon: Flavour

While we’re still waiting for the first edition of International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science to appear: I learnt in the Copenhagen MG seminar that yet another journal is to launch soon – the Flavour journal published on BioMed Central. It’s open source (= free) which is good news for chefs and other enthusiasts without an academic afficiliation that gives access to journals. The chief editors are Per Møller and Peter Barham (co-authors of the highly recommended molecular gastronomy review). – I am passionate about good food and cooking, so I hope that the articles in Flavour will not only further our understanding of all the processes that go to developing and appreciating the flavour of the food we eat, but will also provide me, and many others with new ideas to try out in our own kitchens so we can prepare ever better dishes, says Peter Barham.

It’s emphasized that Flavour wants to focus on real foods and therefore welcomes contributions from academia as well as chefs and other food professionals. They are accepting manuscripts for peer review as we speak. I guess they need to build up a certain volume of submissions before they launch, so the sooner you submit your manuscripts, the closer we are to a launch date. Quoting from the presentation: “Flavour is a journal that reflects the growing interest in the developing new science of molecular gastronomy and seeks to create a shared forum for the publication of evidence-based research in an open access context that will make it accessible not only to researchers but also the wider community of chefs, policy makers and the public.”

According to the journal home page the main areas of interest include:

• Mechanisms of taste and flavour
• How flavour affects liking and satisfaction gained from eating
• Relationships between satiety and perceived quality of foods
• Choice behaviour with respect to food quality and satiety
• Multi-modal integration and multi-sensory perception of flavour
• How all senses play their role in our perception of flavour both in combination and separately
• How ingredients are changed by different cooking methods and in the mouth
• Aroma release mechanisms in the mouth
• Interoception
• The evolution of our organs of taste
• The psychology and neuroscience of food preferences and habit formation