Release of flavor compounds from full fat and low-fat ice creams during eating

Odor-active volatile compounds, which are mostly responsible for the flavors during eating, need to be released above the buccal headspace in order to be perceived as flavors. Development of a novel instrumentation method that can represent the in-mouth environment will serve as a useful tool in understanding the flavor release during eating in different food matrices.; The objective of this experiment was to understand the release behavior of flavor components during mastication using odor-active flavor compounds in ice creams with various amounts of fat and fat replacers. Instrumental methods that can analyze the overall and the temporal changes of the volatile profile in an ice cream during eating were developed. Overall volatile profiles of the ice creams varying in fat and flavor levels were analyzed by GC-MS utilizing three extraction methods, Purge and Trap (PT), Direct In-Nose Breath Analysis (DINBA), and Modified Dynamic Headspace (MDH). Also the temporal volatile profile of the ice cream using temporal DINBA (TDINBA) and Temporal Modified Purge and Trap (TMPT) were investigated. The overall and temporal volatile profiles were correlated with the sensory flavor profiles obtained by Descriptive Analysis (DA) and Time-Intensity (TI), respectively. DA, TI, MPT, and TMPT analyses were then applied to investigate the interactions between flavor-volatiles and fat replacers (FR), i.e. a carbohydrate (CFR) or a protein (PFR) based fat replacer, in reduced fat cherry flavored ice creams.; The overall and temporal volatile profile acquired by MDH and TMPT correlated well with the corresponding sensory flavor profiles. The results obtained by DINBA varied widely between and within subjects, consequently, the effect of fat on flavor release pattern was not clearly demonstrated using this method. Fat significantly affected the chemical and sensory flavor release of ice cream. Decreasing fat content increased amounts of aldehydes responsible for stale flavor but decreased the amounts of methyl ketones associated with cream flavor being released when PT and MDH were used as extraction methods. Hexanal (stale) and benzaldehyde (cherry), both chemically and perceptually, were released faster and at higher intensity as fat content decreased whereas, vanilla flavor was released faster and at higher intensity as fat level increased. The performance of FRs for mimicking milk fat varied depending on the fat content of the original ice cream. PFR more than CFR behaved similarly to milk fat in low fat ice cream from both chemical and sensory aspect. However, CFR was more effective than PFR in mimicking milk fat in full fat ice cream when it was added to the ice cream mix containing more than 6% of milk fat.; Employing MPT and TMPT methods for flavor analysis provided a better insight into the flavor release pattern during eating from the ice cream with various levels of fat and fat replacers. This approach, integrated with sensory analysis, might facilitate the reformulation of a flavoring for lower fat products so that the flavor of the products will be improved to resemble those of the corresponding original products.