Differentiation and identification of volatile flavor compounds in wooden ice cream sticks

The study was conducted to investigate the volatile compounds in different wooden sticks obtained from different geographical locations. It was hypothesized that these compounds could alter the aroma perception of ice cream novelty products. The volatiles in white birches, beech, and hoop pine were differentiated by the Electronic Nose with a mass selective detector (EN/MS). The MS was run in electron ionization (EI) and negative chemical ionization (NCI) mode. Data analysis was accomplished using multivariate techniques and pattern recognition. Results indicated differentiating masses that contributed to separation. Additionally, EN/MS in both modes successfully classified wood samples into different groups according to their types and geographical locations.; Identification of volatile compounds in different woods was carried out using GC/MS with a library search. A total of 24 compounds were tentatively identified. The major group of compounds identified contained a carbonyl functional group. Stick samples were qualitatively and quantitatively different. It was discovered that many of these compounds have the same masses. Therefore, it is difficult to associate the differentiating masses with compounds that are of greatest importance in aroma separation.; The study of leaching effect from wood compounds to ice cream was investigated using ice cream mix as the worst-case scenario. White birch sticks obtained from different sources were exposed to ice cream mixes and aged for 6 days at 4°C before analysis with EN/MS in EI and NCI modes. The control mix was clearly differentiated from treatment mixes. The principle component analysis indicated some separation among treatment mixes, even though a considerable variation between replicates of mixes was observed. Sensory evaluation, using a series of warmed-up paired comparisons, was also conducted to detect aroma differences in the mixes. Results analyzed by one tailed binomial distribution showed that each stimuli pair was significantly different at p = 0.031.; Overall results suggested that combining EN/MS and GC/MS together is useful in differentiating and identifying volatile compounds in different types of sticks, and that these differences can be distinguished perceptually. However, knowing the masses that differentiate in EN mode is of minimum use in determining the chemical basis of the EN differentiation.