Quantitation of flavor volatiles in oxidized soybean oil by dynamic headspace analysis

Abstract

A dynamic headspace procedure was developed for isolating the volatiles from oxidized soybean oil and trapping them on an adsorbent under conditions that gave minimal decomposition of hydroperoxides (50°C for 30 min at a helium flow of 75 mL/min). The volatiles were desorbed from the adsorbent and separated by gas chromatography (GC) on a methyl silicone capillary column. Equations were derived from theoretical considerations that allowed the actual concentration of each flavor component in the oxidized oil to be calculated from the area of the GC peaks. The reliability of the method and calculations was demonstrated by recovery experiments. The concentration of 2‐heptanone in a mineral oil emulsion, equivalent in flavor intensity to each component, was calculated and summed to estimate the overall flavor intensity of the samples. The overall estimations were compared with the concentrations of 2‐heptanone observed to be equivalent in flavor intensity to the oxidized oil samples when these were tasted in emulsion. The concentrations of individual components calculated from the headspace volatiles data were all present at concentrations below their flavor thresholds, and the simple sum of the intensities of their flavors generally accounted for less than half of the flavor intensities of the oil samples. The differences in the headspace and sensory analyses might be attributed to the flavor of the unoxidized oil, synergistic interactions, and/or the presence of unmeasured flavors components.