Unified Flavor Quantitation: Toward High-Throughput Analysis of Key Food Odorants and Tastants by Means of Ultra-High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Because foods are perceived through combined inputs from taste and odor, which are determined by the concentration of the individual odor and taste molecules, the unified high-throughput quantitation of volatile odorants and non-volatile tastants with the very same instrumental setup has been a long-standing but yet unmet dream. The research presented here for the first time demonstrates, after only minimal sample workup, the highly accurate, rapid, and sensitive unified quantitation of odorants and tastants of key flavor molecules in apple juice on a single ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) platform over a large dynamic range of up to 6 orders of magnitude. While flavor-active aldehydes, ketones, and organic acids were analyzed after derivatization with 3-nitrophenylhydrazine, taste-active polyphenols and odor-active esters were directly analyzed by means of UHPLC-MS/MS with and without target analyte enrichment through stir-bar sorptive extraction. This "unified flavor quantitation" approach holds promise to accelerate the transition of today's labor and time-consuming, low-throughput analysis of odorants and tastants into a new era of high-performance quantitation of key flavor molecules.