Is it possible to analyze a secret mixture of spices?

NickR

NickR

Well-known member
I used to get a spice mixture from an internet website that is apparently now defunct. This mix was the best thing ever when mixed with terriyaki or mesquite marinade and used on duck breast pieces.

In the process of moving this summer I found a small bottle of the stuff that had been lost for several years. Upon opening the cap, the aroma was as fresh as the day I sealed it.

The source never revealed the ingredients or ratios.

Is there any way to figure out how to reproduce the mixture?

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

NR
 
Were money and time no object you could, but my guess would be that it would take tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of work given the potential mix of spices if you were starting from scratch in a lab set up to do the kinds of analyses you needed. I can't imagine that there would be any labs that would be set up to do it as contract work and if there were it would be very expensive.

T
 
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If you could find a professional supertaster they could probably be able to taste each separate ingredient. Don't laugh there are really people who can do that. It would probably easier and much cheaper to try 100 new spice mixtures and find a new favorite.

What's the brand name? Someone might know someone who knows where the mixture came from.

Tim
 
Something to try... Put 1/2 teaspoon in your eye, if it burns like a bitch, then there is probably some salt or pepper in it.

T
 
Yes, if you really really want it. You might try to contact someone in the chemistry department at a close college/university. Preferably someone that works with/has access to a gas chromatograph. You just need to find someone that looks at it as a challenge and has the time. If you get the wrong person they will think you're crazy and you will not get a response, or you could try a culinary school. --j
 
Nick,

I hear "CSI" does this on TV all the time, maybe they could work it into a story line. :>) :>) sorry I can't be of serious help.
 
Yes, if you really really want it. You might try to contact someone in the chemistry department at a close college/university. Preferably someone that works with/has access to a gas chromatograph. You just need to find someone that looks at it as a challenge and has the time. If you get the wrong person they will think you're crazy and you will not get a response, or you could try a culinary school. --j
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Good thought and my first instict, given that is my training, but the chemical approach is not a feasible approach given the diversity of classes of compounds within potential plant spices and the fact that many spices will have overlap in chemicals AND that the chemicals vary greatly from sample to sample of spice depending on producer and year. If you had the exact spice lots used to make the mix you could do it, but I bet it would take a year in a well equipped laboratory. There is so much diversity in chemical classes within the potential spices, no one person or laboratory would have the expertise to handle it. To put it another way, there is no magic chromatograph that can handle all the potentials, so it would require an approach using many many chromatographs or at least several with different setups. Even if there was a machine that could handle it, the samples would be so messy with overlap and diversity that there would be no way to get a ratio.

T
 
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Geez Tod, that's just nasty.


Kenmack - I will post a pic this weekend.


I was thinking more along the lines of someone who was a culinary master taking a look, whif, and taste and giving a rough idea of how to re-create the mix.

Is there anybody like that on board here?

NR
 
Nick,
With the gov't allowing "x" percent of mice and rat droppings in spices----you might not want to know what that magic mixture was------Just a thought.
Al
 
Nick -

If it goes into you body, there are requirements to list the ingredients in a spice mixture. If you can find out the product name, I can probably find out the mixture of the spices. Here is where there will be difficulty using this approach - while I may be able to tell you what is in the mix, I won't be able to tell you how much of each spice is in the mix. Can't get this info from an ingredient listing.

Gas chromotography while it will work, will not be easy to do. As was mentioned above, way too much overlap and noise in a single scan of the mixture as a whole. If you could get someone to seperate the various spices using various chemical techniques, then a GC would be of use. I'm thinking that as a mixture, it would be impossible to figure out (I'm more of a nuclear magetic resonance and Mass Spectroscopy guy than a GC guy).

Get me the name of the product and I'll see what I can find out.

Mark W
 
I agree you cant get the exact mixture, but I believe that the ingredients have to be listed in decending order, htat is the most common ingredient first, etc. With a list and some trial and error you could probably get close.
 
Nick,
With the gov't allowing "x" percent of mice and rat droppings in spices----you might not want to know what that magic mixture was------Just a thought.
Al
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Thanks Al. :-)
Last night I opened a can of corn and it had several chunks of cob in it. Then the stupid thought that it is OK to have something like 100 bug parts per can pops into my head. That made for a relaxing meal. Now I'll think rat droppings next time I grab the spice mix.

Tim
 
Todd--Thanks for setting me straight. A prime example of why I hated all five semesters of chemistry and attained a PhD in Fisheries Biology.

Best
j
 
Off the topic but still related

I don't believe that it was a company but a person more or less. They went around to chain restaurants and such and figured out how to make one of their signature items....like the biscuts as Red Lobster. I think they finally got in trouble when they gave out the receipe for some pretty famous cookies. Apparently a lawsuit was filed or threatened. Weird thing to me is that I really don't see what was wrong with what they did. I'm speaking from a legal sense, not a moral one. Unless they had a patent on their secret stuff and even then patents run out. The more that I think about it, it think this actually became a book as well. I'll have to ask my wife since she is the informant on this.

btw....thanks for the comments about the rat droppings....as I am eating my lunch as I am writing this.
 
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