Chickpeas, yellow peas, common beans and fava beans deliver more protein per hectare than almost anything else a food manufacturer can buy, and they taste unmistakably like beans, which works beautifully in hummus but ruins yoghurt. Most of the industry handles the problem cosmetically, layering on flavours, sugar and gums until the eater stops noticing, while a filing from KU Leuven proposes taking the flavour out of the intact seed before anything gets milled or extracted. Whole bean in, neutral bean out.
Off-flavour comes out before the grinder
The method reads like something you could run in a decent kitchen: whole, split or coarsely chopped pulses are stirred in dilute baking soda, 0.5 to 5 percent bicarbonate in water, held between 55 and 65°C for roughly one and a half to four hours at a pH of 7.5 to 10, after which the liquid is poured off carrying the bitterness with it and the seeds are rinsed.
The number the filing leans on is hexanal, held below 0.05 µM/g. Hexanal is the aldehyde behind the green, cut-grass, wet-cardboard note tasters call beany, and it forms when the seed's own enzymes go to work on its own fats, so holding it that low means the palate stops registering "bean" long before a formulator ever sees the ingredient.
Two details lift this above a long soak. The seeds stay structurally intact throughout, cell walls still holding the protein bodies and starch bodies in place, so those fractions separate cleanly afterwards by milling and air classification. And the treated pulse emulsifies on its own. The filing (AU2025212782A1) describes yoghurt and quark analogues built from pulse, oil, water and a vegan starter culture, carrying no xanthan, guar, carrageenan or CMC. Dried, the same seeds land at 10 to 30 N hardness and fall apart in the mouth, which points toward snacks and breakfast cereal analogues.
Where this came from
The applicant is KU Leuven, which some patent databases render as the clipped Kath Univ Leuven. The work traces to TRANSfarm, the university's pilot farm at Lovenjoel, and its FoodLab, home to a plant-based development kitchen and a food-grade line producing prototype yoghurts, cheeses and burgers under the Veglé programme. It reads like process work aimed at first production batches rather than a publication. A patent in the same family has already been granted in the United States.
Congratulations and a warm thank you to the inventors: Ivo Roelants, Wouter Merckx and Mathijs Soogen, for going after pulse off-flavour at the whole seed instead of downstream of it.
About the Author
I’m Kandice Vincent, a writer and editor covering cellular agriculture, food tech, and the future of how we produce and consume food. I work closely with founders, researchers, and mission-driven companies to turn complex science into something people can actually understand. I care deeply about where food is headed, how we get there, and who’s shaping that future. Based in Mexico, I’m usually writing with my rescue dog Taco nearby, who remains unimpressed by patents but highly invested in mealtimes.
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This article is based on publicly available information. Lab Grown Technologies is not affiliated with the inventors or organizations mentioned.
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