Characterization of odor-active compounds of chicken broth and improved flavor by thermal modulation in electrical stewpots

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodres.2018.04.036Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Identification of odorant compounds in chicken broth prepared in stewpots.

  • Temperature modulation significantly improved chicken broth flavor in stewpots.

  • Characterization of odorants of chicken broth by sensory analysis, GC–MS/O and PLSR.

Abstract

The influence of high temperature modes (cooking in traditional clay stewpot (TS) and cooking in commercial ceramic electrical stewpot (CS)) and low temperature modes (cooking in electrical stewpot with Temperature Modulations, TM1-TM6) on chicken broth sensory evaluation and flavor profile was studied. Sensory evaluation results showed that chicken broth processed using TM1 had the best flavor with higher chicken meat-like and lower off-flavor scores. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and GC-MS/olfactometry (GC-MS/O) results revealed that the TM1 samples had the most abundant odorants. The umami-taste components from TM1 samples such as umami free amino acids and inosine 5′-monophosphate (IMP) had the highest amount, 20.0 ± 0.10 mg/g chicken broth and 17.19 ± 0.58 μg/g chicken broth respectively. The relationship between sensory evaluation and odor-active compounds were evaluated by Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR), and the PLSR analysis indicated that heptanal, benzaldehyde, (Z)-2-decenal, (E,E)-2,4-decadienal, 1-pentanol, 2-undecanone, 2-pentyl-furan and one unknown compound were significantly and positively correlated with chicken meat-like note. Whereas, fatty aroma were significantly and positively correlated with octanal, (E,E)-2,4-decadienal and 1-pentanol. (E,E)-2,4-Decadienal and 2-undecanone had a significant and negative correlation with off-flavor attribute.

Introduction

Due to its desirable and typical aroma and taste profile, chicken broth is highly appreciated as a savory dish all over the world (Carter, Monsivais, & Drewnowski, 2011). Chicken broth is usually prepared using traditional clay stewpot due to its specific flavor. With the development of food industry, chicken broth is nowadays prepared using electrical stewpots instead of traditional clay stewpots (Zhang et al., 2017). Thus, research on electrical stewpots has garnered increasing interest in few past decades which promotes traditional food industrialization for consumer convenience.

Flavor is an important factor for sensory attributes with regard to eating quality of chicken broth. It is primarily formed through the cooking process, during which numerous flavor precursors are degraded and react with each other to form multiple volatiles and non-volatiles (Dashdorj, Amna, & Hwang, 2015; Meinert et al., 2009). The non-volatile compound precursors mainly include free amino acids, reducing sugars, peptides, nucleotides and unsaturated fatty acids (Madruga, Elmore, Oruna-Concha, Balagiannis, & Mottram, 2010). Heating temperature, time and heating rate during the cooking process have an important effect on the flavor profile (Domínguez et al., 2014a, Domínguez et al., 2014b; James & Calkins, 2008). It is known that many components change related to heating time and temperature during cooking (Hoac, Daun, Trafikowska, Zackrisson, & Akesson, 2006). Therefore, the different cooking processes with varying heating temperature influenced the raw materials and products differently and contributed to the unique aroma of the meat (Calkins & Hodgen, 2007). The main thermal reactions in cooking process are the Maillard reaction, lipid oxidation as well as interactions between their reaction products. Lipid is one of the important factors influencing the meat specific flavor (Mottram, 1998). The aldehydes, alcohols and ketones mainly come from fatty acid oxidation and some of them can also react with the degradation compounds from Maillard reaction and thiamine in cooked ham (Thomas, Mercier, Tournayre, Martin, & Berdague, 2013). Carbohydrates are also important flavor precursors, as they can react with amino acids through Maillard reaction, which can generate other volatiles, such as roasted and meaty flavor compounds (Mottram, 1998).

In the past few years, GC–MS has been widely used to detect and determine volatile compounds in cooked meat products due to its low-cost, simple to handle and high sensitivity (Ma, Hamid, Bekhit, Robertson, & Law, 2012). Although a large number of volatile compounds have been detected, not all the volatiles lead to the flavor as their concentrations are below the detection thresholds. Therefore, GC–MS/O is a useful approach to evaluate the odor-active compounds in meat products (Moon, CliV, & Li-Chan, 2006).

Moreover, some multivariate statistical methods including principal component analysis (PCA) (Purriños, Franco, Carballo, & Lorenzo, 2012) and Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) (Mitchell, Brunton, & Wilkinson, 2011), have been also used to evaluate the relationship between sensory attributes and aroma compounds. However, few studies were reported on the relationship between chicken broth sensory attributes and aroma compounds by PLSR.

The composition of the volatile compounds generated during the heating of chicken meat has been reported by many researchers (Byrne, Bredie, Mottram, & Martens, 2002; Schindler, Krings, Berger, & Orlien, 2010). However, no attempt has been made to assess the effect of heating modes on the flavor quality of cooked chicken broth in stewpots. During our preliminary experiments, we found that chicken broth heated in traditional purple clay stewpot (TS) had stronger chicken meat-like flavor and lower off-flavor than in commercial ceramic electrical stewpot (CS). Each chemical reaction had its unique activation energy and rate at a given process temperature. The reactions occurring in the formed volatiles were dependent on the processing temperature (Health & Reineccius, 1986). Therefore, the reason for the different sensory results in TS and CS might be due to their different cooking temperature and time. To further improve chicken broth heated in CS, the samples cooked in TS and original CS provided by the FoShan ShunDe Midea Electrical Heating Appliances Manufacturing Co., Ltd. were set as the control samples and reference. We then attempted to design different modulated temperature modes in order to decrease the formation of off-flavor compounds and improve the flavor quality of chicken broth, and compare the flavor profile from different heating modes. The present study aimed to identify the odorant compounds of chicken broth cooked in stewpots by means of GC-MS and GC-MS/O, and investigate the taste compounds (free amino acids and nucleotides) of chicken broth in different heating modes. Moreover, this study also explored the relationship between sensory evaluation and odor-active compounds, and investigated which odorants have a contribution to sensory attributes of chicken broth. Based on our findings, directions are given out for the production of chicken broth with desirable flavor for consumers and the design of efficient stewpots for stewpots makers.

Section snippets

Materials

Traditional purple clay stewpot (TS), commercial ceramic electrical stewpot (CS) and ceramic electrical stewpot prototype were purchased from FoShan ShunDe Midea Electrical Heating Appliances Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (Foshan, China).

The chickens of an average weight of 1.2 kg were purchased from Huzhou chicken Co., Ltd. (Huzhou, China). Methanol, 1,2-dichlorobenzene and n-alkane mixture were all of chromatography grade purchased from Sigma-Aldrich Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China). Other authentic

Sensory evaluation

The different chicken broths were described as chicken meat-like, fatty, off-flavor, kokumi and umami. Three replicates were used to assess the sensory analysis data. Results showed that there were significant differences (p < 0.05) among the samples from different heating modes for all attributes. As shown in Table 2, the intensity scores of sensory attributes for different cooking modes were different. It could be seen that chicken broth cooked in TS showed higher chicken meat-like and lower

Conclusions

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of different heating modes (TS, CS and TM) on the quality of chicken broth cooked in stewpots. Sensory results showed that chicken broth prepared in electrical stewpots using TM modes could improve the chicken meat-like flavor and decrease the off-flavor compared with that in CS. Moreover, 36 major volatile compounds and 17 odorants were detected by GC-MS and GC-MS/O in chicken broths prepared in stewpots, and the chicken broth prepared

Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported in part by National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFD0400105 and 2016YFD0400801) and the program of “Collaborative innovation center of food safety and quality control in Jiangsu Province”. It was also funded by FoShan ShunDe Midea Electrical Heating Appliances Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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