Recording and reproducing citrus flavors using odor recorder

Abstract

Despite high significance of the sense of smell, the technique of recording and reproducing the olfactory modality was hardly investigated. The odor recorder developed by our group enables electronic recording of the odors and their reproduction at any time and at properly equipped place. The odor recording technique is expected to be useful in many fields such as virtual environments and e-commerce. To realize the future application of the odor recorder, the range of flavors to be handled by the instrument has to be significantly expanded. However, the expansion has to meet the constraint of reasonable number of odor components. One way to achieve that is using the approximation technique with significant reduction of the flavor components. The alternative way could be blending the complex mixtures of odorants treated as single components. In the present study, we focused on investigating both approaches. In the first part of experiment, we successfully recorded the typical orange flavor, approximating the smell with only 3 of 14 components. Subsequently performed human sensory tests (triangle test) confirmed similarity of reproduced flavor and the target one. In the second part of the experiment, three binary mixtures of essential oils extracted from citrus fruits were successfully recorded using the odor recorder. Results of both parts of the study allowed further expansion of the applicable range of flavors for odor recorder.