Response Surface Methodology for Meat‐Like Odorants from the Maillard Reaction with Glutathione II: The Tendencies Analysis of Meat‐Like Donors

Abstract

Understanding the flavor effect of molecules on food products is fundamental for the food technologist. In this study, the formation of different meat-like compounds was controlled by various influence factors. Furthermore, the concept of interrelationships between Maillard reaction products (MRPs) was demonstrated by statistical analysis for the first time, which provides data and hence production system parameters by which to generate and optimize meat-like flavors through Maillard reactions. We report here the analysis and synthesis trend of the 13 meat-like donors which are regarded as forming the major flavor compounds of cooked meat. Response surface methodology (RSM) has not previously been reported in the literature as a technique to identify which parameters have the greatest influence on the synthesis of these flavor compounds. RSM has been used here to identify the influence of initial pH and ΔpH on flavor compound generation. As all ΔpH had positive RSM values between 0.5 and 1.5 it can be concluded that MRPs of this meat flavor-adapted system would be mostly acidic. These positive values also indicate that under this condition the Maillard reaction is stable and will therefore promote more meat-like flavor compounds to be generated. In addition to ΔpH, varied concentrations of glutathione, cysteine, thiamine, and xylose were investigated for their ability to influence the generation of meat-like flavors.