Compounds cool without minty taste

Imagine the crisp, refreshing sensation of peppermint chewing gum. Now, imagine it without the mint.

That’s a possibility proposed by researchers who’ve created a compound that delivers a more potent version of the cooling sensation of menthol, without the minty taste or smell.

Thomas Hofmann and his colleagues at the German Research Center for Food Chemistry in Garching, Germany, recently identified four natural cooling compounds in malt.