Dr. Oetker and the tastes of the world
Bielefeld-based food company Dr. Oetker adapts its recipes worldwide to suit tastes in individual countries.
Canadians enjoy it most with spicy sausage, Britons prefer it with mozzarella and Poles put it in their ovens with mushroom sauce and ham on top, while Germans love it with salami. Frozen pizza may be extremely popular worldwide, but each nation has its own preferences. “Globalization stops at food and drink,” says Claus Günther. As head of the research and development department for food at Dr. Oetker he knows all about the world’s different tastes. Founded over one hundred years ago, in Bielefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, the family business is one of the leading manufacturers of brand-name products in the German food industry and active in some forty countries worldwide.
The fact that the world’s recipes do not give rise to a monotonous mishmash is also proved by a study completed for the European Commission. Nearly 2,000 children from eight European countries were tested to discover their taste preferences. The study found that nationality had the greatest influence on the results. More than seven out of ten German children like eating high-fat biscuits, while in Cyprus and Sweden the proportion was less than four in ten. On the other hand, German and Belgian children preferred apple juice with natural sweetness, while boys and girls from Sweden, Hungary and Italy preferred sweetened juice.
Dr. Oetker maintains several research and development departments worldwide and manufactures its products at different locations to satisfy consumers’ tastes all over the world. Nevertheless, there are phenomena that even the experienced food specialists cannot explain – for example, the mystery about jelly. While people in Norway have an enormous appetite for this wobbly dessert, there are hardly any jelly products in Sweden, Finland or Denmark. The situation is similar in Eastern Europe: Poles love jelly with woodruff, raspberry and lemon flavour, whereas the dessert never appears on tables in Hungary or the Czech Republic.
Claus Günther and his colleagues have ascertained a veritable north-south divide when it comes to blancmange recipes: Turks love chocolate blancmange with lots of sugar and a large lump of butter, while Belgians prefer soft desserts with as little starch as possible. And in Slovakia people will spurn the chocolate dessert if it doesn’t contain any biscuit crumbs. Regional differences like these have been embedded in the cuisine of the respective countries for centuries. However, Dr. Oetker also pays attention to the latest trends. In Germany, for example, consumers increasingly want low-sugar and natural products.
44th International Sweets and Biscuits Fair (ISM) in Cologne from 26 to 29 January 2014
