Complex recipe flavor % -- reduce proportionally?

[Mad Scientist]

Looking over some of the various complex (many-flavor) recipes, it just looks like many of them end up with a ridiculously high percentage of flavoring in total. In theory, at least, that's not what I'd expect to work. As a simple example, let's say we want to make strawberry banana (which I do lol). Let's say each flavor works well individually at 3%. So, for the single flavor juice,10 ml of mixed juice will contain 0.3 ml of its respective flavor.

Now if I were to take 10 ml of one and mix with 10 ml of the other, the result is 20 ml of the blend, with each constituent flavor remaining at, of course, 0.3 ml. The volume of each flavor remains 0.3 ml, but the percentage in 20 ml of total juice made of each flavor is 1.5%. In other words, to make 20 ml of banana strawberry equivalent to just taking premixed bananna and premixed strawberry and mixing them in equal proportions (assuming equal portions gives the desired result) I should use only 1.5% of each flavor in the total mix, not 3% of the total.

For those experienced in multi-flavor recipes, what say you? Do you scale the flavoring to the total volume of the resulting mix or add each flavor as if it would stand alone in a mix? Has anyone tried both approaches and what did you observe?

 

[Aheadatime]

Contextual. There is no right answer. Let's say I use these flavors at these percentages in single-flavored mixes.

Flavor A 10%
Flavor B 4%
Flavor C 2%
Flavor D 12%

Combining them all is not limited to the two choices of ending up with either 28% or 14% total flavor. Perhaps Flavor A should remain at 10%, and all others should be added at 1/3 their original strength. Perhaps they should all be added at full strength besides Flavor D. It takes trial and error and an understanding of each component in the mix. I wish there was a more simple answer, but there's not. Experimentation is the only answer in this case.