What Does a Galaxy Taste Like?

In 2017, Starbucks released the Unicorn Frappuccino for four days only. This swirled, color-changing concoction of purple and blue Lisa Frank hues came on the heels of a wave of social-media food hype for all things “unicorn”: cakes, drinks, and even bagels dyed improbable pastels and often sprinkled with edible glitter.

But what did this “unicorn” drink taste like? I missed the trend entirely somehow, but internet commentary from 2017 reveals that people were mixed on what it could be. Was it raspberry? Cotton candy? Creamsicle? Opinions abounded, but baristas weighed in to note that the main flavor was actually mango, along with brightly colored, tangy powder mixed together with white chocolate drizzle. “Tangy” is a bit of an understatement. The Washington Post said that the drinks tasted “like sour birthday cake and shame.”

Though the unicorn trend seems to have died down somewhat, other brands have since leapt on the fantastical flavor train. And “unicorn” treats are still around, usually in various pink shades, with flavors like cotton candy or bubble gum—which, with their pastel hues, seem like a sensible assumption for what “unicorn” would taste like.

Connecting concepts and flavors is both an art and a science. That’s according to John Heller, a flavorist who works at Imbibe, a flavor chemistry and beverage development company based in Illinois.

If you’ve never heard of the term flavorist, that’s not surprising to him. “I actually didn’t know that the flavor industry really even existed until I started working in it,” Heller says. With a degree in chemical engineering, he decided to go into the consumer products industry, unlike many of his classmates. “Most people went into the petroleum industry,” he says. “I didn’t want to end up on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.”

There are only a few hundred certified flavorists, or flavor chemists, in the United States. Becoming one is a grueling process, requiring a seven-year apprenticeship on the job, under the supervision of another certified flavor chemist. Certification involves the ability to identify different chemicals based on smell and taste, knowledge of food regulations around the world, and expertise with specialized equipment. Despite all that, says Heller, “it’s a fun job.”

“A flavor itself is a mixture of a bunch of different aroma chemicals, either natural or synthetically derived,” Heller says. Whether the flavoring comes in a liquid or powdered form, he says, depends on what the client wants to use it for. “So we’ll be able to make a liquid flavor for ready-to-drink sparkling water, or Gatorade . . . and then we’ll also be able to provide powder flavors for baking mix, [powdered] lemonade, or stick packs.”

If you Google “fantasy flavors,” various cosmic and mythology-based candies and syrups will pop up. But in Heller’s line of work, a “fantasy flavor” can mean something else. “Usually, when I hear the term “fantasy flavor,” it’s assigned to something that doesn’t grow in nature,” he says. Strawberry is not a fantasy flavor, but birthday cake is. “You have an idea of what a strawberry should or can’t taste like,” he says. “Fantasy is a bit different. You’re not going to go pick a marshmallow off of a plant. You’re not going to get a birthday cake growing in someone’s garden. So it’s left open to interpretation.”

Even though some people might insist on a chocolate or carrot cake for their birthday treat, I ask Heller to talk me through how he might design a flavoring based on a “standard” birthday cake—the round, white, Funfetti-style confection that might show up in a children’s book. Heller begins to list off what he could include: sugary sweetness, caramel, “creaminess” from the frosting, vanilla, bubble gum, tutti-frutti, and citrus. But, he adds, everything is contingent on what his client thinks the perfect birthday cake would taste like.

When it comes to flavors such as unicorn, Heller notes, it’s common for “the marketing side of it,” such as color, concept, or a name, to come “before a flavor profile is even discussed.” But even when a client asks for a flavor based on an imaginary concept, Heller explains, the result is rooted in something real. “The idea of dragon’s blood has come up, where it’s dragon fruit paired with a blood orange flavor profile,” he says. “That was back when Game of Thrones was on the air.”

A flavor trend I’ve been seeing lately is for foods and drinks based on meteorological phenomena and astronomical objects. Unlike unicorns and mermaids, they’re real, but they share much of the same mystery and magic. (It also helps that flavors such as “starlight” or “rainbow” cry out for bright colors and glitter, all the better for social media.)

Even these flavor concepts can be rooted in reality. Last year, the Torani brand of syrups released what they called their first fantasy flavor, “Galaxy.” Appropriately, the syrup is a deep cosmic purple, a hue you’d spy in a shot from the Hubble telescope. The flavor is a mixture of rum and raspberry, with a “mineral finish,” notes the Torani website, which also suggests adding it to coffee, tea, or lemonade.

Rum and raspberry are not random flavor picks. Instead, food scientist Mailyne Park took inspiration from a 2009 article in The Guardian about how scientists identified ethyl formate inside Sagittarius B2, a swirling cloud of dust and gas at the center of our galaxy. Ethyl formate has two interesting properties: It gives raspberries their flavor, and it has a distinct rum-like scent. Thus, the “Galaxy” flavor was born.

In the end, creating fantastical flavorings is not a new thing in the world of food and drink. Blue raspberry slushies and Superman ice cream exist, after all. Today, the challenge for flavorists such as Heller is how to use real-world ingredients to distill the magic of unicorns, the happiness of birthday cake, or the beauty of the stars into something that can be bottled. “You can have this fantastical idea of the galaxy, the mythologies, but those all are rooted out of something more tangible,” Heller says. “Something grounded.”