Understanding the unique taste of bubble gum flavor

Today, we're bursting the bubble gum on what exactly bubblegum is supposed to taste like. Bubblegum did have one specific inventor. His name was Walter Diemer. And in 1928, he worked at the Fleer Chewing Gum Company. The fact he invented bubblegum would probably lead you to assume he was some sort of scientist. But Diemer was actually an accountant. Nonetheless, in his spare time, he liked to experiment with the factory's product line. He decided to add some latex to the recipe. And the moment he did, bubble gum was born. Diemer tested his product at local candy stores and discovered that kids loved bubble gum. It sold out fast, which caught the attention of Fleer, who decided to mass market the stuff under the name Double Bubble. Double Bubble became the first mass marketed bubble gum in history, and the company sold $1.5 million worth of it in the first year alone. For perspective, that's the equivalent of roughly $28 million today. OK, so what exactly is bubble gum supposed to taste like? Believe it or not, the short answer is fruit. While every company makes their own version of it, and they're all slightly different, bubblegum flavor is a combination of various fruit flavors and a good deal of sweetener. Typical mixtures include cherry, banana, and strawberry. But it's common to find elements like orange, lemon, kiwi, pineapple, mango, blueberry, and raspberry in there as well. This complex mixture of competing flavors doesn't occur naturally. And that's partially what makes it so hard for most people to articulate what bubblegum tastes like. Go ahead, try it without saying the word gum. As far as anyone could tell, the flavor itself was created by a scientist and businessman named Thomas Adams. Adams is widely credited as being the man who invented the very idea of flavored chewing gum. And he's also probably the inventor of the gumball machine, which made its first appearance in 1907. For what it's worth, Adams himself called the flavor he created tutti frutti, which is Italian for all fruits, and Little Richard for an absolute bang. Believe it or not, that tutti-frutti flavor can be achieved with natural ingredients. If you're interested in giving it a shot, savvy culinary types have figured out a number of mixtures that get the job done, including one composed of pineapple, banana, cinnamon, wintergreen, and cloves. That being said, corporate gum manufacturers aren't grinding up fruit to put in your pouch of Big League Chew. The flavors in chewing gums are achieved using chemical simulations called esters. Esters give off a fruity aroma, and those aromas play a huge role in how we perceive taste. They're used to flavor dozens of different kinds of foods and beverages, as well as products like soaps and perfumes. Esters commonly found in bubblegum flavor include science-y sounding things like ethyl butyrate, benzoyl acetate, methyl salicylate, amyl acetate, and cinnamic aldehyde. Of course, none of those sound terribly appetizing, which is probably why they decided to just call the flavor bubblegum. Maybe we should have stuck with tutti frutti.