Job title: Flavorist

Companies that hire them: Large flavoring companies such as International Flavors & Fragrances, Givaudan, and Firmenich; smaller companies like Aromatech and Flavor & Fragrance Specialties; and the flavor divisions of large food and beverage companies like Cadbury Schweppes and Kraft.

How to find out about openings: The flavorist profession is a bit like a secret society, but jobs are occasionally posted online at industry websites such as Perfumer & Flavorist (perfumerflavorist.com).

How much you can earn: Trainees start at about $50,000 a year, but the superstar flavorists can make $200,000 to $250,000.

Useful skills: Flavorists should have a chemistry or food chemistry degree, a keen sense of taste and smell, and a bold imagination.

Number of jobs in the U.S.: There are probably fewer than 500 full-time flavorists in the country now and an equal number worldwide.

What does erotic taste like? As a top flavorist at International Flavors & Fragrances, Marie Wright is paid to know the answer. Her work consists of mixing and matching various artificial and natural chemicals to come up with taste profiles that will match ethereal flavor names such as virgin and muskberry, and also the more mundane raspberry and maple.

To do so, she draws on years of experience in the flavor business and a degree in chemistry from King's College in Britain, as well as inspiration from fashion, design, and even architecture. “The majority of what I do, at this point, is thinking and imagining,” says Wright.

I.F.F. and other flavor companies create and manufacture flavors that are purchased, usually on commission, by companies in the food and beverage industry. Their products are used in almost all of the items on grocery store shelves except for fresh meat and produce—everything from potato chips to toothpaste to ice cream. Worldwide, the flavor industry generates $18 billion a year in revenue.

On one particular afternoon, Wright has been charged with coming up with a flavor called erotic for a Japanese candy made from bean curd. She tries to imagine what this type of flavor should taste like and then adds layers of flavors to achieve it. In the end, she settles on a mixture of sweat, dirt, sweet cream, vanilla, musk, aromatics, and honey.

“Erotic is a little dirty so it had to have these sweaty, dirty, animal-y type notes in it,” Wright says. “And then it also had to cover up that kind of bean note in the candy.”

Wright began her career as a chemist analyzing the flavors of various sweetening agents for a food company before getting her first job as a flavorist at top flavor firm Bush Boake Allen, which would later be bought by I.F.F. “That’s when I learned that there was a whole world out there creating flavors,” she says.

There she began the requisite two-year apprenticeship during which an aspiring flavorist learns about the chemical compounds that make up flavor and how they work in each of the food “application areas,” including beverages, candies, and savory items. “That’s about all there is to learn. The rest is creativity, and it builds with experience,” she says.

Wright’s sense of taste is so good now that she can instantly recognize the person whose work is behind various flavors in products she tastes. Just as painters have their own styles, “it’s the same with flavorists,” she says. For example, “I can recognize Mike Zampino’s vanilla right away,” Wright claims, referring to a colleague at I.F.F. who is the resident expert on vanilla. “I can pick it out anywhere.”

Wright’s office is a lab lined with brown bottles and white canisters with labels like CIS-3-HEXAMOL and GAMMA-DECALACTONE, two of the components of strawberry flavor. The counters are clean and clear of anything but the usual instruments befitting a lab—scales, beakers, hot plates, and other necessary scientific equipment. But then there’s this: The room smells clearly of freshly picked raspberries.

One of her assistants squeezes a drop of liquid from a long, narrow eyedropper into a small glass beaker. Seconds later, the aroma in the room has turned to raspberry jam. “He’s just adding the jammy notes,” Wright explains. “It’s the dimethyl sulfide.”

Though she spends much of her time in the lab, Wright also meets often with clients, discussing customer research and target markets with product developers and marketers. “There’s no room for antisocial types of scientists,” she says.

Even after such a long career, Wright says she never tires of new challenges. “Why can’t you have a cookie the shape of the top of the Empire State Building, and what would that taste like? I think about things like that,” she says.

Some of Marie Wright’s most-exciting flavor creations:

Virgin: Created as part of a promotion for the 2006 film Perfume, the flavor went into a chocolate truffle and was composed of ingredients based on an analysis of the aroma extracted from—no joke—the belly button of a virgin.

Generessence (pear): I.F.F.’s Generessence line is made exclusively from components found in the fruit itself.

Muskberry (for a high-end chocolate and ice cream): The berry is deep and rich with sensuous and relaxing musk notes. Says Wright, “You are really trying to stretch the imagination and target the emotional aspects of flavor.”

Duck liver pâté (for a snack-food seasoning): This was the first flavor she made from scratch. “When it was finally finished it was amazing, but it took forever to make,” says Wright. “It still sells today.”

Her first raspberry flavor: “I was so proud of it,” Wright says. “Now it doesn’t take me long to make a flavor, but the pain that went into making something like that when you are learning is unbelievable.”

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