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Determination of key aroma and taste components
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A specific procedure is followed by NIZO food research to determine the 'key-flavours' efficiently. To start with, a sensory panel gives a description of the product or one of its attributes. A notion like 'tasting good' or 'tasting bad' is split up into different features, which are judged separately. Most of such tests are performed by trained panels of experts, since they have a better grasp of the meaning that different attributes have and their results are more reproducible. NIZO food research has trained panels for various dairy products; for any other product, panels can be trained. These panels can perform different types of sensorial test (Quantitative Descriptive Analysis, Free Choice Profiling, Difference tests etcetera).
In order to link these sensory descriptions to chemical compounds (flavour compounds) gas chromatography is linked to olfactometry. In this method a trained person sniffs up the smell of the volatile compounds leaving the GC detector one after another. In this way it is determined which aroma components have the largest potency in a product. When these key aroma components have been identified (in most cases with mass spectrometry) it is of essential importance to confirm their role in a recombination experiment. This means that the key aroma components that are found are added proportionally to a matrix equal or similar to that of the product that was examined (e.g. water/alcohol mixture in the case of wine, or a gelatine gel in the case of custard). These sensory models are then evaluated by a sensory panel and should cause about the same flavour sensation as perceived earlier with the original product. |
