“There are fresh notes, citrus notes,” comments Marie-Laure Supplie after taking a sip of Coca-Cola.
She points to the list of ingredients: "Natural flavors", we read on the label of the bottle.
“It's really the crucial ingredient that makes cola taste like that,” she adds.
Our interlocutor knows what she is talking about: composing flavors for the food industry is her job.
This flavourist works for the company Fontâme and, for the purposes of our report, she has agreed to reproduce the tastes of Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Let's start with the brand with the red logo.
In a small bottle, she pours, drop by drop, essential oil of lemon, essential oil of orange, essential oil of lime.
"It's a lime note which, for me, comes immediately when you drink a cola", specifies the woman in the white coat.
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She takes a sip of the original Coca-Cola and remarks: “There, I have little notes of spices too (*).
“So she adds essential oils of nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, natural vanillin, camphor to her bottle…” It is often found in medicines to give an impression of freshness.
Borneol, which she finally adds, fulfills the same role.
“And here is our cola flavor!
concluded the expert, shaking the bottle.
We tried to redo the Pepsi recipe in the laboratory
And to get the Pepsi (*)?
“This one is a little less fresh.
In my opinion, you have to add spices.
She splits her cola base in half and adds synthetic cinnamon flavor, synthetic eugenol with clove notes, and natural ginger flavor.
The Pepsi flavor is ready!
It is then enough to mix water, phosphoric acid, sugar, brown coloring and to add, on the one hand the aroma which imitates Pepsi and on the other hand that which imitates Coca-Cola .
A passage to the gasification machine and here are our two sodas ready.
Marie-Laure Supplie tastes both: “We have the difference between the two colas!
she concludes.
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The battle between sodas is so hot that even neuroscientists have looked into the matter, as shown in an article published in 2004 by a group of researchers in the prestigious journal Neuron.
“They took 67 participants, placed them in an MRI and asked them to drink sips of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, says Anne-Sophie Bayle-Tourtoulou, associate professor at HEC Paris and co-author of a book entitled “ The neuro-consumer” (ed. Eyrolles).
Occasionally, before they took a sip, they were shown a picture.
When Pepsi appears in front of them, the brain shows no specific activity.
But when Coca-Cola appears, strong brain activity is observed in the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex and in the hippocampus.
“These two areas of the brain are part of the memory and emotional memories system,” comments Anne-Sophie Bayle-Tourtoulou.
Coca-Cola is very, very good at awakening those emotional memories through ads showing festive moments, with Santa Claus, etc.
So they provide additional information to forge our preference vis-à-vis this brand.
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Coke, Pepsi and… cola from Leader Price, tested blind: who wins?
What if we taste these colas blind?
"I smell a lot of sugar and a lot of fruit", describes Jessica Hodge, sommelier and patroness of the restaurant Pompette, in Paris, after having blindly tasted Pepsi.
"I prefer this smell," she said, smelling the aromas of the second glass containing Coca-Cola.
But in the mouth, it falls directly, it is flat and sweet.
She winces and grabs a third glass.
This one contains Leader Price cola.
“It smells of wet cardboard or dirty laundry.
Then she moistens her lips: "I prefer."
There is more tension.
The acidity is longer.
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In the ranking, it places Leader Price cola (€0.59 per litre) at the top, then Coca-Cola (€1.20 per litre) and finally Pepsi (€1.06 per litre).
Finally, that's kind of the scoop of this report: between Coke and Pepsi, the best… is Leader Price!
(*) For competition reasons, Marie-Laure Supplie did not mention a brand name during our filming in her laboratory.
