In pharmacology, in the old days when prescriptions were made up of several ingredients, some of the less important ones were referred to as adjuvants, meaning they tended to enhance the effectiveness of the main ingredient.
I was reminded of them in thinking about flavoring agents that are mixtures of different molecules. For instance, there used to be a flavor of chewing gum called "tutti frutti" which had about four similar esters.
(an ester is a compound of an alcohol and an organic acid, typically acetic acid) Methyl salicylate is wintergreen.
The culinary snobs would have trouble finding and be dismayed by the price of "natural" flavors of this type.
When I was in the Philippines, the largest distillery on the island, Tanduay, had been refused permission to sell their product to soldiers, because the lab we replaced had reported that some of their products contained methyl alcohol. We had a chemist who was sharper than his predecessor, and showed that the apparent test for methyl alcohol was from methyl salicylate made by a firm in US. Tanduay was so grateful to us to be able to sell again, that they sent us a demijohn of their very best stuff gratis every Saturday.
