Why does toast smell so good

Related stories. Holey heck Ever wondered what that hole in the middle of a spaghetti is for Who knew? Ever wondered what the holes in your Converse trainers are for? But chemically leavened baked goods such as biscuits and muffins made with baking soda and baking powder rather than yeast can smell very tempting once they start to brown. The color change is a sure tip-off that Maillard reactions are happening.

These reactions—in which sugars combine with amino acids to form tasty golden and umber complexes— throw off lots of volatile aromatic compounds that float through the kitchen air and into your nostrils.

Recipes for biscuits and muffins almost always call for added sugar of some kind: the lactose in buttermilk, the fructose in fruit, the dextrose in corn, or even crystals of sucrose sprinkled into the mix.

Added sugars help kick-start Maillard reactions. Another, even better way to generate pleasant aromatic compounds such as ethyl esters ethyl acetate, hexanoate, and octanoate is to leaven the flour with yeast.

The longer the fermentation, the more pronounced the yeast flavors become since the microbes have more time to produce these compounds. We have tried baking the same bread recipe with and without yeast, and the yeast bread develops a far more complex flavor profile. A big part of the difference is how much better yeast bread smells. But science has a very good answer for why we love the warmer stuff You see, when bread is toasted it goes through something called the Maillard reaction, a scientific process that makes many of your favourite foods - like steaks, cookies and marshmallows - more flavoursome.

This happens when a chemical reaction occurs between the sugars in the bread and amino acids, which produces hundreds of lovely, new flavour compounds. These compounds break down to form yet more flavour compounds, and so on, and so on One of the compounds is furanones which create a delicious, caramel-y flavour, and that explains why toast is ultra comforting.

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