Aroma Impact Compounds in Three Citrus Oils: Cross‐matching Test and Correspondence Analysis Approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT Twenty‐three odor chemicals from 3 Citrus essential oils (lemon, Valencia orange, and Citrus sudachi) were selected as the potent character‐impact compounds on the basis of their limited odor unit values, and then every chemical was cross‐matched by sensory test to the 3 oils to attribute each aroma character to 1 of the 3 Citrus oils. The matching‐frequency data (ratio data) obtained was subjected to correspondence analysis and graphed on a diagram. Consequently, it was found that the aroma character of lemon oil was mainly represented by citral, with a high matching frequency of 0.89 (59 counts out of 66 trials, x2o= 93.36). The orange character consisted mostly of linalool and nonanal. α, β‐Pinene, α‐sinensal and myrcene were related to the aroma of C. sudachi oil. The application of the cross‐matching test and correspondence analysis in the characterization of food aromas has never been reported in the literature to date, and the validity of these methods was successfully demonstrated by our study.