Edible essence is a mixture that can be added to food to increase flavor. Edible spices are added in a small amount in the food industry production, but they can make the food more delicious. Edible spices are the main source of food flavor in food industry production and play an important role in food industry production. The application of edible essence in food industry has greatly improved people's pursuit of food quality, and also promoted the development of modern food industry.

In recent years, China's food essence and spice industry has developed rapidly. From 2011 to 2017, sales and profits increased year by year, reaching 66.02 billion yuan and 10.679 billion yuan respectively in 2017. In 2017, the output of edible essence products in China reached about 1.248 million tons. Among them, the output of edible essence is about 752900 tons, while the output of other types of edible essence is about 495100 tons. In addition, with the progress of production technology of edible essence and flavor and the increase of product technology content, as well as the development of downstream industries such as food, daily chemical industry and medicine, it is expected that the scale of the edible essence and flavor industry will continue to grow in the next few years, and it is expected that the sales scale of the Chinese edible essence industry will reach 97.71 billion yuan by 2024.

Edible spices are widely used in the food industry, with a wide variety of flavors. There are different classification methods based on their flavor type, state, and use

(1) According to the flavor type of edible spices, there are mainly citrus essence, mint essence, fruit essence, meat, vegetables, nuts, alcohol, etc.

(2) According to the state of spices, there are mainly water-soluble edible essence. It is the basis of edible essence made of various natural or synthetic spices, and is easily soluble in water. Oil edible essence is usually the oil edible essence formed by diluting vegetable oil and other edible essence.

(3) Emulsified edible essence, emulsified edible essence is to add a certain amount of emulsifier and stabilizer to oily edible essence, decompose it into granules in water, with fresh fragrance, long fragrance effect and diffusion in water. Colorants can be added during use.

(4) Powder edible essence, powder edible essence mainly has two production methods. First, lactose is used as carrier to mix the edible essence base together to make monomer; The other is to make edible essence base into emulsified edible essence, which is made with dry spray. Powdered edible essence is easy to use and transport, but it is easy to absorb water blocks during storage, leading to corruption and deterioration.