Yes, the grape flavoring is Methyl Anthranilate. The “banana estery smelly” chemical you made in chemistry class was probably isoamyl acetate (also an attack pheromone for many social insects of order Hymenoptera).
The wintergreen herb Gaultheria procumbens may be decribed as a shrub, but it almost always is found growing prostate along the ground in moist and/or acidic soils. A tin of Altoids shows the plant, with it’s prominent small red berries, but most of the Methyl Salicylate is in the leaves . This wintergreen scented chemical is also produced by the inner bark of yellow birch trees (Betula allegheniensis).
Well, another way to ask this question is to ask: “Why do the esters and compounds in human food taste good and smell good, while the compounds in inedible compounds taste and smell horrible?”
And the answer is that we have evolved to eat the substances that we eat, and therefore have evolved to find those substances palatable. And for toxic materials that are commonly found in nature (ie, vomit, dog poop, mold, rot, etc) we have evolved to find them unpalatable. Our olfactory receptors have evolved for a reason. Evolutionarily, we aren’t going to develop taste or smell receptors for substances that we are never going to encounter. Organisms don’t typically have sense organs to detect things that they never encounter.
So we are unlikely to find the smell or odor of a newly synthesized random organic molecule palatable, unless it mimics or is similar to palatable organic molecules found in human food.
I submit that there is no such thing as a blue raspberry, so that flavoring has to be man-made. On the other hand, this could let in all the weird stuff marketed to kids like Slammin’ Squirrelberry or Triple-tropi-treacle.
What about wine flavor? It’s not as if wine is exactly natural.
Not too long ago Starburst was selling Fruit Chews with a ‘Mystery Flavor’ in one of them. Apparently it was supposed to be some sort of ‘contest’ where you wrote them telling them what flavor you thought it was. And of course they had the correct answer written down somewhere so that the right guess would win. Marketing genius, I tell you. To me, it tasted at different times like one or more of kiwi, cherimoya, watermelon, pineapple, and quince.
What you said seems to actually raise an issue rather than put it to death.
Sure one can see how our repulsion to certain ‘danger’ smells (excrement, vomit, fetid hominid, etc.) would have evolved along with our attraction to pleasant ones (banana, wintergreen, rum). But did we evolve a dislike for all tastes and smell that were not found in our primordial foodbasket? Clearly not, otherwise we would never have evolved a hankerin’ for hickory or coffee or anything that wasn’t staple food source. Similarly, our sense of smell has evolved to allow for the friendly acceptance of certain aromas.
Many people enjoy the smell of gasoline, for instance - even if they don’t sniff it long enough to enjoy its euphoric effects. Clearly some pleasantness of aromas is related to personal memory, but there are some odors which our vine-swinging ancestors couldn’t have smelled that we like the first time we smell them.
So why aren’t there synthetic tastes that we fall for in the same way? Is it simply because we can’t keep synthetic odors out of our nostrils but we’re a bit more reticent when it comes to putting things in our mouths? If this is the case, maybe “new car” taste beats “new car” smell.
Does cola flavor qualify? William Poundstone, in one of his Big Secrets books, reveals that there’s only like a zillionth of a smidgeon of kola nut extract in Coca Cola and you can’t taste it at all.