What Does Cricket Protein Actually Taste Like? What the Sensory Research Shows

It is the first question almost everyone asks, usually before they have finished reading the packet: what does cricket protein actually taste like? Most people are braced for something dramatic. The honest answer, based on a decent body of food-science work, is that it is far less dramatic than you would expect — and that how much is used matters more than the fact that it is used at all.

The short answer: nutty, savoury, slightly earthy

When trained sensory panels describe cricket powder in baked goods, the words that keep coming back are nutty, earthy and bean-like. In a 2025 study in Applied Food Research on wheat buns enriched with cricket meal, assessors consistently described buns containing 8–10% cricket meal as having a nutty-like, earthy taste with bean-like flavour notes, while plain wheat buns were perceived as sweeter by comparison.

That descriptor set — nutty, earthy, faintly savoury — is roughly where toasted seeds, wholemeal flour and roasted chickpeas live. It is not a flavour most people would struggle to place if you did not tell them where it came from.

Why crackers are one of the friendlier formats

The most directly relevant research is a 2025 paper in Food Chemistry: X by Hradecká and colleagues, who baked salty crackers with 0%, 5%, 10% and 15% cricket powder and put them in front of a sensory panel.

Crackers with 5% cricket powder came out best. Panellists gave them the highest ratings for pleasantness of aroma, texture, overall taste, and both fatty and salty taste. In the straight preference test, 64% of evaluators picked the 5% white-flour crackers over every other version. In the wholegrain batch, 50% chose the 5% version and 36% chose 10% — and, notably, not a single evaluator preferred the plain control crackers with no cricket powder at all.

The panel also noticed the crackers with cricket powder were more fragile, which the authors attribute to chitin content rising alongside the cricket powder. Colour shifted from grey towards brown, which the panel rated as pleasant.

The dose is the whole story

Here is the honest counterweight: more is not better. In the same cracker study, the 15% version was rated as distinctly more bitter and higher in off-flavour intensity than the 5% version. The pattern repeats elsewhere. A 2025 review in Global Food Security describes a Kenyan study in which buns were made with 0%, 5% and 10% cricket flour and rated on a nine-point scale: the 5% buns scored highest for taste, ahead of both the plain buns and the 10% buns.

The Applied Food Research team found the same trade-off on texture — 5% cricket meal gave the most pleasant texture, while 8% and 10% made the buns noticeably tougher.

So the useful reframe is this: cricket protein does not have one taste. It has a dose-response curve. Used lightly, it reads as nutty and savoury and most people prefer it to the plain version. Pushed hard, bitterness and heaviness show up.

Where the savoury note comes from

There is a straightforward biochemical reason cricket powder tastes savoury rather than bland. A 2025 review in Foods on house crickets notes that the non-essential amino acids glutamic acid and aspartic acid are abundant in Acheta domesticus — and those are precisely the amino acids that drive umami perception. Glutamate is the same compound that makes ripe tomatoes, aged cheese and dried anchovies taste moreish.

Baking adds a second layer. The Food Chemistry: X researchers tracked the volatile compounds coming off their crackers and found that baking time, not cricket content, was the biggest driver of the aroma profile. Longer bakes produced alkylpyrazines and furan derivatives — classic Maillard reaction products, the same family of molecules behind the smell of toast, roasted coffee and browned butter. Adding cricket powder increased how much of them formed.

In other words, a good deal of what you taste in a baked cricket cracker is browning chemistry, not the insect.

A fair caveat

These are small panels, mostly in Europe and East Africa, testing wheat products — not Singaporean palates, and not rice crackers. Sensory findings travel imperfectly. The Global Food Security review also found that around 58% of attitude scores towards insect-based food were neutral or hesitant, so nobody should pretend this is a settled, universally loved ingredient. Some people in these studies did dislike the bitterness at higher inclusion levels.

What the evidence supports is narrower and more useful: at sensible inclusion levels in a baked, well-seasoned product, cricket protein tastes nutty and savoury, and panels frequently prefer it to the version without.

The only real way to settle it

Reading about flavour is a poor substitute for tasting it. Our baked brown-rice crackers use cricket protein in a savoury, baked format — the same broad category the research above keeps finding works best. If you would rather not commit to a full packet of one flavour, the Try-All 3-Pack lets you taste across the range and form your own view. Most people tell us afterwards that the surprise was how unsurprising it was.

Sources

Back to blog