Kinetics of Flavor Formation during Maillard Browning

Abstract

It is well recognized that the Maillard reaction plays an important role in the formation of aroma compounds during the thermal processing of foods. Early flavor studies on this reaction focused on identifying the aroma compounds that were formed through the heating of model systems. This work provided some insight into the relationships between aroma precursors and thermal processing conditions and the formation of individual aroma compounds. Subsequent work has focused on determining chemical pathways to explain the formation of these aroma compounds. Some of the most recent studies in this area have included quantitative aspects which has permitted kinetic analysis of the data. This kinetic work has demonstrated how sensitive the Maillard reaction is to both compositional and processing changes. Additionally, we have found that the formation of volatiles can be extremely interdependent and unpredictable. One can generate kinetic data for volatile formation in a simple model system, include another precursor that should have no direct effect on the kinetics of interest and find major kinetic changes. This presentation will include an overview of the published kinetic data and discuss some of the unexpected anomalies observed.