Volatile flavour composition of cooked by-product blends of chicken, beef and pork: a quantitative GC–MS investigation

Abstract

Volatile flavour composition of cooked chicken (CB), beef (BB) and pork (PB) by-product blends was investigated using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and the results were compared with those for cooked chicken white muscles (CM), beef shoulder muscles (BM) and pork shoulder muscles (PM), respectively. The total volatile flavour concentration of CB (4828 μg/kg sample) was three times higher than that observed for CM (1604 μg/kg sample). In BB and PB, the total volatile concentration was lower than that observed for their muscle counterparts. Aldehydes, alcohols and nitrogen- and/or sulphur-containing compounds dominated the volatile flavour profiles of CM, BM and PM while a marked dominance of alcohols was evident for CB and BB. The concentration of aldehydes in BB and PB was lower by about 66 and 70%, respectively, than that evident for the corresponding cooked muscles. The difference between the concentration of aldehydes in CM and CB was ∼7%. These differences between the volatile flavour profiles of cooked muscle samples and the corresponding by-product blends may be attributed to the compositional differences in aroma precursors in the samples. This study demonstrated that the volatile flavour compounds in cooked meat by-products are recoverable, but a careful blending of different by-products of a particular species in appropriate proportions may be necessary to generate an aroma similar to that of the respective cooked muscles.