Why do so many foods have a ‘chicken’ flavour, when the flavour tastes nothing like chicken?
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“Chicken flavor” is largely marketing – if the *idea* of chicken is put into your head, then your brain is prepped to interpret the flavor as “chicken”.
In reality, most “chicken flavor” is usually made from salt, garlic, salt, parsley, salt, glutamate or soy isolates for a “roasty”/”meaty” flavor, and salt, with some coloring added to make it “look right”.
Chicken flavored spice packets in things like Ramen noodles are almost always made of actual chicken, so they do in fact taste like chicken.
That said, the reason there is a different flavor is essentially the same reason that orange juice taste different from oranges. Chicken itself is very quick to spoil, so it has to be processed in order to turn it into a shelf stable product. Which in the case of chicken flavoring packets, basically means boiling the fuck out of chicken, grinding up any of the organic material, and drying it out. That breaks up a lot of the larger proteins and other molecules and changes the flavor somewhat.
Because they want meat flavor (Glutamate), and chicken is cheap and plain, so if you want to make a dish that normally has meat, without adding meat (like ramen, because you need the shelf life) then you use “chicken flavor”, lamb flavor for example is expensive and many people don’t like it, beef is even a little strong, and fish can have a lot of off flavors.
Anyways, the process of making the flavoring is make meat broth (boil chicken in water), and then boil the water completely out. What’s left is meat protein concentrate, which in practice is nearly 100% MSG, and it imparts a strong meaty flavor. Cheap things will add extra MSG to reduce cost, but this will wash out the chicken flavor. In Asian cooking they often will use oyster sauce or fish sauce which is basically just concentrated fish broth and has a similar flavor profile. Soy sauce is the vegetarian equivalent. All are essentially straight MSG (and water), and make a dish taste meaty and add a bit of their own flavor.
fat tastes much more striking than protein and other things found in meat so the strong taste of fat like that found in chicken tends to tastes like chicken
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