For everyone who has read the Harry Potter books, you are aware of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Bean. You might also know that you can buy these, thanks to the folks at Jelly Belly. Aside from all of the good flavors, they also come in Vomit, Grass, Dirt, Booger & Earwax. I’m sure it’s a trade secret on how they really managed a vomit flavored jelly bean, but I’d have loved to be at the meeting where taste testing of puke flavored jelly beans took place.
Well, in the name of science or maybe the fact that I know what all of these really taste like, I tried them all. (I don’t think I’ve tried Earwax… but I could tell you if it was right on or not.) The taste is quite accurate. If I could add sugar to my boogers, then I’d be in business. So, how do they do it? How much of this (or any) “flavor” is based on your sense of smell? Could they make a vomit jelly bean that smells more like vomit than tastes like vomit, using the smell as the illusion of taste? If grass juice or “dirt juice” or sardine juice is used in some sense for this, how do they avoid having this listed on the ingredients?
How does Jelly Belly make any of their flavors? They’re quite good at making the jelly beans taste like what they say, and they probably don’t use the actual flavor in the bean in most of them. Jelly Bellys are amazing.
It’s that all-encompassing ingredient, “natural flavors.” shudder
I’ve heard that the vomit flavor was developed before the books. They were trying for pizza flavor, but it was an abyssmal failure, and everyone said it tasted like vomit. But then when they started the Every-Flavor Beans, somebody remembered that previous failure and dug up the formula.
Hmmm. I went through a bag of these once trying to find the nasty flavors, just to show people how adventurous I was. If you look at the flavor key, you will see that each of these nasty flavors looks just like one other normal flavor. I never found any vomit or booger (which I think looked like pear). I don’t remember seeing dirt or ear wax on my bag. I do remember black pepper, which was quite accurate. I went away thinking those nasty flavors were just whimsical labeling and I am still skeptical that they exist.
BTW I always thought popcorn Jelly Bellys were really gross until I found out they were popcorn, then I thought they tasted good. It is just when you’re expecting something else they tasted bad.
The dirt, booger, vomit & grass (earwax?) were just released… believe me, they exist and they are so right on… here’s one we could add to the jelly belly “recipies”…
dirt + grass = freshly cut lawn?
So maybe when you at the vomit flavor, you were expecting something else, so thought it tasted good?
What I want to know is…who in the hell would WANT vomit flavored jelly beans?
Or vomit flavored ANYTHING, for that matter!
Wouldn’t want to get those mixed up with your Tic Tacs on a Friday night.
Some friends in college used to blow their burps on unsuspecting people in bars. They would have had a hayday with these.
“Pffffuuuuuu…”
If I recall correctly, some of the flavorings were listed in the ingredients. I’m pretty sure black pepper was a listed ingredient, and there may have been others as well.
The flavors I recall were:
Grass
Dirt
Black Pepper
Jalepeno
Sardine
Earwax
Booger
Vomit
Those that I tried were dead on.
Here’s the ingredients for Bertie Bott’s … i’m still curious about the puke flavor… http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/bertiebotts/
Drawing on my distant memories of flavour chemistry at university I think the fumaric acid might be one of the vomitty ingredients, along with the “Distilled Vinegar”.
Yummy.
Butanoic (butyric) acid has to be here somewhere. Once smelt, never forgotten. The closest smell you can get to vomit with a single chemical.
TRUST me on this, they do exist and they are quite accurate (read NASTY)
I didn’t know about these things until my best “friend” handed me a white jelly bean flavored like SARDINE! gag It was NASTY. I tried dirt, grass (which wasn’t bad) and pepper. My more adventerous s/o had the vomit and ear wax…he was the guinea pig. I was driving down the road, best friend and her s/o in the back, my s/o in the passenger seat crying we were laughing so hard.
According to smootman’s link, they’re both in there!
I had to spit out the sardine and dirt ones because they were so bad. The grass was actually kind of refreshing. I couldn’t work up the nerve to try to booger, vomit or earwax ones, however.
What fun we had in the faculty lounge that day. 
I’ve heard that “vomit” was really a failed attempt at “pizza” that Jelly Belly kept on file, just in case they’d ever need a nasty flavor.
[Homer] Mmmm, ester of wood rosin . . . [/Homer]
Strangely, I really like the cut grass flavored bean 
Are these “marked” or can I put them in the candy dish at work without anyone knowing?