Ethyl maltol is a broad-spectrum synthetic flavoring agent that can improve the flavor of food. It is commonly used in the production of beverages, fruit juices, dairy products, ice creams, fruit wine, sauces, and pickled vegetables to enhance the sweet taste like fruits.

It can also be added to candies, biscuits, cakes, chocolate and meat products (ham and sausage) to impart a caramel aroma.

Only a small amount (0.01%-0.1%) is needed to achieve the desired intensive and long-lasting flavor. Some manufacturers may add other flavors or fragrances into ethyl maltol to make its flavor stronger or purer. In some countries, it is not permitted to be added in edible vegetable oils, such as sesame oil, soybean oil, peanut oil, rapeseed oil, and blended oil.

Yogurt
In yogurt, it improves the flavor, reduces the sourness, increases the sweetness and adds fruity aroma.

Ice cream
It increases the creamy taste of the products in low-fat and low-calorie ice creams.

Beverage
It improves the fruity sweet, reduces the acidity and gives the drink a pleasant aroma.

Bakery
It is an ideal flavoring agent for baked goods due to its sweet and caramel aroma. It can be used in the fillings of baked goods, such as fruit filling, milk cake filling, pudding filling, or cream fillings.

Meat
In meat products, ethyl maltol is not only used to improve the color and delay fat oxidation in cured meat, but also increase the meat flavor.

It enhances the meat color by combining with Fe3 + to form a stable myoglobin complex, therefore preventing the degrading of myoglobin from into iron-free porphyrin-globulin complex, which is easy to be further decomposed to light green porphyrins, which will make the quality and flavor of poultry meat products bad.

The color of pork mainly depends on the pigments in the meat, such as myoglobin (most important), hemoglobin, and cytochrome C.

It can make canned meat pink without the use of nitrite. It can also be used together with other ingredients, such as ferric citrate and zinc gluconate for color development in poultry products.

How to use
Generally, there are two ways for the applications: formulated to a certain concentration of solution (e.g. 0.25%) or dry mix.

It should be added at a lower temperature as much as possible to reduce the volatilization if the end product needs to be heated during the production.

It can also premix with one dry ingredient, and then blend with other ingredients to achieve a uniform mixing effect.