Bubblegum Flavor

Bubble gum as a product dates to 1928. Walter Diemer, an accountant at the Fleer Chewing Gum Company in Philadelphia, worked out a gum that stretched into bubbles without sticking. Fleer sold it as Dubble Bubble. The first batch came out a dingy gray, so he colored it with red dye diluted to pink, because that was the dye on hand.¹ The pink and the flavor have traveled together ever since.

The blended-fruit idea is older. Gum makers sold tutti-frutti, "all fruits", before bubble gum existed, and outside the US the pink flavor is still often called tutti-frutti. The same blended-fruit thinking sits behind Red Bull.

What is in it

Flavor people describe it in parts. A senior food scientist at Givaudan put it as "a sweet part, a fruity part, spice and citrus".² A Virginia Tech food scientist in the same piece named pineapple or banana with cinnamon or clove, sometimes cherry or orange, blended so that no single one dominates.

The usual building blocks:

These are the common ingredients of a bubblegum flavor, not anyone's recipe. Brands balance them differently, which is why two pink gums can taste noticeably different. The strawberry here is the candy kind, not the fresh-fruit kind.

Like blue raspberry, it is a learned flavor. Nothing in nature tastes like it, yet almost everyone recognizes it.

Why it fades in gum

In chewing gum, much of the flavor sits in the gum base, the rubbery part that never dissolves. Oil-loving flavor compounds cling to the base and come out slowly. Sugar and the water-soluble parts wash out first.

People judge gum flavor heavily by sweetness. Research on mint gum found that perceived flavor dropped as the sugar ran out, even while aroma was still being released. That is why long-lasting gums use encapsulation: coated sweetener and flavor that release later in the chew.

Using it outside gum

Bubblegum now turns up in ice cream, hard candy, gummies, freeze-dried candy, cotton candy and pre-workout. Each needs its own version.

• Change the carrier. Gum flavors are usually oil-based. In a drink or a powder you need a water-soluble flavor or an emulsion, or the flavor floats and rings the bottle neck.
• Dose up for ice cream. Cold dulls flavor, so frozen products need more than room-temperature ones. Gum pieces go hard when frozen, so decide early whether you want that texture.
• Hard candy is forgiving. The esters and spices hold up well. Add the flavor after the cook, as with any hard-candy flavor, to keep the light banana notes.
• Keep the spice low. Cinnamon and clove make it read as bubblegum rather than fruit punch. Too much and it turns into a spice candy.
• Check the pink. Pink is half the cue. If your pink comes from Red 3, the FDA has revoked its use in food, with a compliance date of January 15, 2027.³ Natural pinks from beet or anthocyanins work, but they can fade with heat and light, and a paler product reads as a weaker flavor.

A fully natural bubblegum is possible, since natural versions of the key esters and vanillin exist. It costs more, and it is hard to get the same punch. That is one reason so many gum labels simply say artificial flavor.