Joined: Dec 15, 2003 Posts: 50 Location: Escondido, CA
Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2004 3:45 pm Post subject: Re: Recipes for Root Beer and Sarsaparilla Extracts
Yes, I'm alive...
If you look at those ingredients, you'll see that they are the modern substitutes for sassafras. Most root beer now is actually synthetic birch beer. methyl salicylate in chemical wintergreen flavor (and scent), and birch twigs and birch bark are high in that chemical. So is wintergreen of course, but it's always been much easier to get huge quantities from birch trees rather than a little herb.
All of the commercial oil from sassafras has to be safrole free.
Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2004 6:37 pm Post subject: Re: Recipes for Root Beer and Sarsaparilla Extracts
parsa wrote:
Yes, I'm alive...
If you look at those ingredients, you'll see that they are the modern substitutes for sassafras. Most root beer now is actually synthetic birch beer. methyl salicylate in chemical wintergreen flavor (and scent), and birch twigs and birch bark are high in that chemical. So is wintergreen of course, but it's always been much easier to get huge quantities from birch trees rather than a little herb.
All of the commercial oil from sassafras has to be safrole free.
Parsa
The safrole ban in food is an idiosyncrasy of the USA FDA. In addition, it is a controlled substance because amphetamines can be made out of it. Same for heliotropine which is a secondary constituent of sassafras oil. However, I assume that real sassafras oil is not banned in some countries. Let's pretend that I live in such a country. I augment A&W Diet Rootbeer with real sassafras oil at the rate of 1/3 drop per 2 liter bottle. It tastes soooo good! Incidentally, a flavor substitute for heliotropineis ethyl benzoate.
There are different species of birch trees, some of which do not yield methyl salicylate. According to http://www.essentialoils.co.za/essential_oils/birch.htm the main constituents of white birch oil are betulenol and sesquiterpenes. If you ever smell the bark of paper birch trees (the kind American Indians made canoes from), you will not detect the odor of methyl salicylate. I made a tea out of paper birch bark, and it tasted pretty good. I think that essence of paper birch, which I suspect may also be principally betulenol, might be useful as rootbeer flavoring. Possibly, this was historically a rootbeer flavoring that got lost because of nomenclature confusion.
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