Professor University of Illinois Urbana, IL, United States
Abstract: Lipid-derived volatiles play important roles in the overall aroma of numerous foods and are especially prevalent in edible oils and certain oil-bearing foods/ingredients. Odorant screening of such products is best achieved using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry olfactometry (GC-MS-O). The best practice is to conduct volatile isolation or extraction by at least two approaches prior to GC-MS-O. Two complimentary approaches are headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) versus solvent extraction-high vacuum distilling [via solvent-assisted flavor evaporation (SAFE)]. The combined results of the two methods provide a comprehensive listing of highly volatile to semi-volatile aroma-important components of the test material. This step is often followed by quantitation of selected odor-important compounds that are present at GC-MS detectable levels. When absolution quantitation methods are used, such as stable isotope dilution analysis (SIDA), it is also possible to calculate the odor-activity values (OAVs) based on the published odor detection thresholds (ODTs) of the odorants. OAVs are useful since they help verify GC-MS-O results. This presentation will provide examples of how the above approaches have been effectively used to identify odor-important components of selected products.
