FOOD NEWS
Great Lengths Are Taken To Create The Strangest Jelly Belly Flavors
By Chase Shustack
Jelly Belly is known for its outrageous takes on jelly beans, using the flavors like rotten eggs, dog food, dishwater, or barf in their Russian Roulette-style guessing game “BeanBoozled,” where half of the beans are delicious while the others are disgusting. As extreme as these flavors are, Jelly Belly goes to just as extreme lengths to build a taste based on a smell.
The source of the smell is processed through a machine known as a gas chromatograph, where it is converted into vapors, analyzed, and the chemical makeup, or flavor profile, is printed out. A scientist at Jelly Belly even stored his own unwashed socks in a plastic bag for a few weeks, then ran them through the chromatograph to create a candy that is as close to the chemical makeup of the socks as possible.
Although these beans aren't made by crushing up dog food or straining the sweat from moldy socks, they still require the real source to be as authentic as possible. In some cases, the artificial smells and flavors are so pungent that it even affects the scientists working on it, as was the case of one member whose clothes were ruined by the intense smell of rancid socks.