2024: The Year of Unusual Dessert Pairings
Americans love desserts! From a fruit salad to a tiramisu, we always have space for our favorite sweet treat after a meal. Among America’s top dessert choices are pie, cobblers and crumbles, cheesecake, banana, cupcakes and cakes, ice cream, S’mores, lemon squares, and cookies.
Moreover, even with heightened awareness of the health risks associated with fatty and sugary foods, the US dairy desserts market is forecast to grow from around USD 21.33 billion in 2024 to USD 24.28 billion by 2029, a CAGR of 2.62%1. Similarly, the confectionery market, valued at an estimated US$198.80 billion in 2024, is predicted to increase by a CAGR of 2.67% by 20282.
At the same time, governments, consumers, and producers increasingly emphasize healthy, more natural ingredients. In response, dessert recipes are transforming to offer no or low-sugar options, fewer and purer components, no or limited additives, and cleaner labels.
Healthier – and Unexpected – Dessert Options
Innovators exploring reducing added refined sugar and introducing more nutritious elements to their portfolios are turning to natural sweeteners. These preferences include sugar alternatives such as stevia, xylitol, coconut sugar, honey, maple and yacon syrup, jaggery, agave, molasses, dried fruit, and dates.
Another way of adding nutrients and interesting layers is to incorporate savory ingredients in sweet desserts. Sounds counterintuitive? Yes, but culinary creatives produce gems such as chocolate, smoked salt, and carrot mocha pastries. The concept is also not new, with salted caramel delighting taste buds across various treat categories.
These unusual dessert pairings embrace healthier sucrose replacements such as coconut and date sugar, transforming sweet offerings with savory surprises for less sugary, more scrumptious after-dinner treats and puddings.
These fresh and inspiring combinations add flavor, texture, and increased health benefits. For example, tahini shortbread biscuits bring nutritious sesame seed goodness to familiar sweetness, while fruit or sweet vegetable crisps offer crunch and tang and extra vitamins and antioxidants.
Less sweet, more savory cakes include lemon and rosemary tea, carrot nut bread, and banana bread with salted peanut streusel. You may find hybrid dairy desserts such as blueberry basil and green tea honey frozen yogurt. Producers can add sweetness to savory treats, such as white chocolate and peppermint candies, to popcorn.
Consumers still want their happy foods, just healthier and including a daily serving of fruit or veg. Tweak your desserts portfolio to include one or more novel sweet-savory synergies to ride this exciting trend in 2024.
Achieving a Happy Hybrid Marriage
Balancing flavor, especially when pairing “contrasting” profiles, requires knowledge, sensitivity, and perhaps all five primary flavors. The science of combining relies on knowing the basic rules of each taste and how it reacts with, impacts, and even counteracts its pairing partner. The guidelines are as follows:
- Sweetness: Typically, sweetness counteracts sour and bitter flavors and helps cut down spicy heat.
- Saltiness: Salt enhances most flavors while counteracting bitterness.
- Sourness: Citrus or vinegary acidity is crucial for balancing, counteracting heat and sweetness, and adding vitality.
- Bitterness: This less desirable flavor from dark greens, beer, or grapefruit can moderate sweetness and richness and is vital in balancing other flavors.
- Umami: This hard-to-describe yet highly satisfying savory taste is found in mushrooms, cheeses, oysters, and soy sauce. It perfectly accompanies most other flavors, adding verve and depth.
Perfecting your sweet-savory dessert profile will involve the science of understanding ingredients and the art of combining them. To ensure your formulations are balanced, natural, and healthy, rely on sustainably sourced and responsibly produced EU-certified ingredients from Advanced Biotech.
Partner With Advanced Biotech to Create Your Sweetly Savory Treats
It’s time to research and develop unusual flavor pairings to be savored by sweet tooths. Request samples or order from our comprehensive range of 100% pure and natural aromatics, distillates, oleoresins, pyrazines, thiazoles, concentrated extracts, plant-based ingredients, and so much more. Then, just add imagination. Please contact us for more information.
1 https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-states-dairy-desserts-market
2 https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/food/confectionery-snacks/confectionery/united-states