17 November - Best Flavours for Pea & Rice Protein Products | Vegan Product Development Tips

November 17, 2025

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to download The Flavour Blueprint⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, a free guide based on the process I use with my clients to fix underperforming food and drink products.

Got an Instagram question: "I'm creating a vegan product using rice protein and pea protein, which flavour do you think will work best?"

Perfect! Because this is exactly what I help my clients with in my CHOOSE package, and I'm sharing the process with you today.

Here's the thing: most plant-based products using pea and rice protein have nutty, earthy, roasted, and beany notes (and I'm not talking about lovely vanilla bean - I mean kidney beans, black beans... not exactly pleasant).

So if you just throw in trendy flavours without understanding your product base first, you're going to end up with something that tastes like play doh. Yep, I said it.

In this episode, you'll discover:

🌟 Why you need to understand your product's flavour profile WITHOUT any flavours first (this is the game-changer most brands skip)

🌟 Which flavour notes you want to enhance vs. mask in pea and rice protein products

🌟 The specific flavours that work brilliantly with plant-based proteins (and the ones you should avoid at any cost - berries and vanilla, I'm looking at you)

🌟 Why "caramel" or "chocolate" is never enough - you need to go deeper into the flavour profile (milky and buttery vs. dark and bitter makes ALL the difference)

🌟 How to get creative by mixing flavours together to create unique profiles for your product

🌟 The questions you need to ask about your target consumers before making your final decision (are they Gen Z adventurous or boomers wanting nostalgia?)

If you're developing plant-based products and struggling to find the right flavour direction, this episode will show you exactly how to choose flavours that complement your base, mask the unpleasant notes, and create something your target consumers will actually want to buy again and again.

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If you want to design food or drink products that taste perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases, and see your sales go through the roof — there’s no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy.

👋 Hi, I am Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour expert with over 10 years in the food industry.

In each episode, I share what I’ve learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction, or fix products that just aren’t performing.

Because flavour isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the number one reason people buy.

👋 Connect with me directly on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00.1]
If you're a food and drink brand and your product isn't performing the way it should, maybe the sales have slowed down or the review. Keep mentioning that the taste is not that great. I have created something to help you. It's called the Flavour Blueprint. It's a free guide that based on the process I use with my clients to fix their underperforming products.

[00:18.4]
If you're tired of guessing and you want clarity before another batch, download your free flavour blueprint. If you want to create food or drink products that actually taste amazing, get the repeat purchases and see your sales go up.

[00:33.8]
You need the flavour strategy. I'm Manon Galizzi, food scientist and flavour expert. And in this podcast I share what I've learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch. Choose the right flavour direction or fix the flavours that are not working. Welcome to another episode of my 30 days podcast challenge.

[00:52.9]
And today we are day six. Today I'm answering a question that someone asked me on Instagram, which I'm creating a vegan product using rice protein and pea protein. Which flavour do you think will work best? And this is something I work with my clients in my choose package where we understand the flavour profile of the food and drink product without the flavours to be able to select the best flavours that fit the product, then we refine according to the target consumers and the bridge image.

[01:26.5]
So the first thing is to understand the flavour profile of your product without any flavour at all. Most food and drink plant based products that are based on pea protein and rice protein, from my experience, will have flavour notes like nutty, earthy, roasted and beany.

[01:46.4]
And when I mean beany, I'm not saying the nice and lovely vanilla bean notes. I'm more thinking about sort of kidney beans, black beans, this kind of beans. All right, so not necessarily a pleasant note.

[02:03.7]
So on that basis, the best is to choose flavours that have similar notes of what you want to enhance. In this case, we don't want to enhance all of these beany notes. There are lots of pea protein on the market and some of them are very strong in this bean, beany notes, which is very unpleasant and is something we want to mask instead of enhancing it.

[02:29.5]
So anything that is nutty, roasted, we definitely want to enhance. Earthy, we definitely don't want to enhance. So we want to find flavours that complement the base and hopefully mask the notes that we don't want to enhance.

[02:47.5]
So think about anything that is, nutty and roasted. Okay, so we have caramel Chocolate spices like cinnamon. In particular nuts like walnut, coffee and banana.

[03:03.6]
And avoid at any cost flavours like berries, citruses, vanilla. I know, I know, but trust me, it's just going to taste like play doh and apple. So then according to your food and drink product, you have to find the right flavour profile.

[03:23.6]
It never stops. At the kind of flavours you want in. Never stop. I, I think caramel can fit my product. Go deeper. What type of caramel do you want? A very dark caramel, you know when you make it at home on the saucepan and it's almost bitter.

[03:40.7]
Or do you want a milky and buttery type of caramel? You know like the type of soft salted caramel you have as sweets. Chocolate is the same. Do you want it more milky and creamy or do you want it more dark and fruity?

[03:57.6]
The cinnamon, do you want it more or less woody? A cinnamon is never a cinnamon. And sometimes I quite like playing with this note together. So you can combine flavourings. If you're using flavouring or ingredient powders or liquids, whatever you use to bring the flavours to your food or drink product, you can mix them together so you create this unique flavour profile for your product.

[04:25.5]
So for example, for cinnamon, I quite like a cinnamon bun. So I may mix for example some cinnamon and caramel or request a different cinnamon bun flavourings for example because I quite like this cinnamon taste with a little bit of caramel, some biscuity notes as well.

[04:47.5]
So you can be very creative when it's about flavours, it's just finding the flavour profile that fit your product. So you may find maybe two or three, maybe one or two doesn't matter. Different flavour profiles is always good to have maybe two to be sure.

[05:06.6]
Then you have to focus on your target consumer and your brand image. For your target consumers. Ask yourself that question. You really have to know them by heart. Are they Gen Z adventurous and want to travel through food or are they more like bloomers and they want something that is more nostalgic and soft and nothing overpowering or nothing new?

[05:32.3]
Do they want something that is treaty or something a little bit more light and sophisticated? The amount of the flavour. Do they want flavour that is boom in their face as the first seep or the first chew or do they want something that is a little bit more subtle?

[05:48.7]
All of this data from your target consumer will help you make informed decision for your final product. Then when you're ready, send some samples to your current customers. Try to go to event and make them try. Maybe you have two or three versions before you take your final decision, and they're going to help you decide which one they prefer.

[06:13.0]
So then you can maybe tweak and tweak until you can validate your final product. This is the end of today's episode. As always, I hope this episode was helpful. You can find all of my tips around tasting, flavours and product development in my newsletter.

[06:31.5]
So don't forget to subscribe and I will see you in tomorrow's episode. Bye.

17 November - Best Flavours for Pea & Rice Protein Products | Vegan Product Development Tips

Download The Flavour Blueprint