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For a series of menthol esters of increasing size and polarity, “mintyness” decreased rapidly as molecular weight increased. For molecular weights above about 700, the compounds were tasteless to a significant proportion of the taste panel. As polarity increased, the “sweet minty” taste of hydrophobic menthol esters became increasingly bitter, until water‐soluble menthol esters were strongly bitter. Bitterness was still apparent in quite high‐molecular‐weight water‐soluble esters; a different receptor may be involved for bitterness than for mint. An overall hypothesis relating flavor to molecular solubility parameters is proposed.

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